(Courtesy of Claims Conference) The Kindertransport Fund opened on January 1 and will begin processing eligible applications shortly. Although some survivors were provided a small payment in the 1950s, prior payments under compensation programs will not bar claimants from receiving this new benefit. The fund will issue one-time payments of €2,500.

This fund is open to Jewish Nazi victims who met the following criteria at the time of transport:

They were under 21 years of age, unaccompanied by their parents and took part in a transport that was not organized by the German government in order to escape potentially threatening persecution by German forces.

They were transported from somewhere within the German Reich or from territories that had been annexed or occupied at the time.

The transport took place between November 9, 1938 and September 1, 1939 or was approved by the German authorities after November 9, 1938 but before September 1, 1939. The fund is intended to acknowledge the suffering of Holocaust survivors who endured unimaginable trauma in their childhoods, encompassing a range of experiences that included separation from parents, living in hiding with the terror of being caught, privation and abuse in ghettos and even the horrors of concentration camps, where very few children survived.

The application form will be available in the next few days. Applications must be submitted by survivors, not heirs. However, if an eligible survivor passes away after an application form is received and registered by the Claims Conference, the surviving spouse is entitled to payment. If there is no surviving spouse, the child(ren) of the eligible child survivor are entitled to the payment.

Learn more at http://www.claimscon.org/what-we-do/compensation/.