Last update - 00:00 05/02/2008
Holocaust survivor aid probe won't single out officials
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
The state commission of inquiry investigating failures in providing aid to needy Holocaust survivors, which began its hearings Tuesday, will refrain in its final report from singling out individual officials for disciplinary action.
The commission will rather devote its recommendations to changes in the institutional structure of the aid allocation process, Haaretz learned Tuesday.
At the opening of the hearings, held in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, former Supreme Court justice and inquiry chair Dalia Dorner said that the large number of Holocaust survivors who had approached the committee with accounts of failures of the system so early in the panel's work "is an indication of the shortcomings in government treatment of the victims of Nazi horrors."
Dormer pledged that the commission's final report would be presented no later than Pesach, which begins on April 19.
The commission heard testimony Tuesday from survivors who applied for aid and had been confronted with difficulties in receiving it.
Among the witnesses was survivor Avraham Berkovich, who told the committee that he was forced to wait two years between submitting a request to the treasury, and receiving a notice that his request had been turned down.