Another session of the German land court in Hildesheim on October 4 continued to try the combined case of Zherdytsky-Didenko accused of walking away with 4 million marks in compensation to the victims of the Nazi repression. The money allocated by the German government was transferred to Ukraine into accounts of Hradobank headed by Zherdytsky. Although all the DM 86 million disbursed by the Germans to Hradobank in the 1990s was stolen, most of the charges cannot be pressed due to the statute of limitations.
What happened is solely the shame and the problem of the Ukrainian side, since the German government entrusted the compensation to Ostarbeiters to an official structure, Director of the Ukraine-Europe Service Center Serhiy Monchenko told The Day on October 3. In his opinion, the reason for the fraud lies in the fact that the officials responsible for paying the compensation were changed throughout the implementation of this project. Had there been a single person in charge of payments who could be held accountable, the situation would have been different, Mr. Monchenko said. Meanwhile, he noted, talking to the officials of the national Defense and Security Council on October 2, representatives of German organizations dealing with the consequences of World War II, proposed their services to set up a Ukrainian- German group to study the theft issue. Earlier, a similar group had been created in Ukraine, but the offers of cooperation from the Germans have been ignored.
Meanwhile, first deputy head of the foundation Stepan Kosiak believes that, despite a heavy blow to the international image of Ukraine delivered by the malefactors, it is undesirable to raise the issue now since the Ukrainian government has refunded the damage and payments of compensations to Nazi victims have started. Mr. Kosiak also assured listeners that all Ukrainians entitled to compensation will get their money.
The problem, however, is not so much Ukraine’s image or even the fact that Ostarbeiters will at last receive the money donated by the German government. If we turn a blind eye to this disgraceful fraud, we will soon find similar ones. If you will, this is an acid test for our society: will it be able to put an effective brake on those who can shamelessly walk away with the money of the old and emaciated who spent their youth in Nazi concentration or forced labor camps. Come to the foundation and take a look at the faces of those who had survived the horrors of life under Nazism. Speak to them. Will you then be able to forgive the Hradobank saga?
Seeing people waiting in long lines in the foundation’s corridors, we realized that Ukrainian pensioners still have the hopes of receiving their compensation. The husband of Tamara Fedorova, Volodymyr, was held in several concentration camps. The documents confirming his imprisonment were destroyed by the Germans themselves but Volodymyr Fedorov remembers his camp number forever. The German side confirmed that a man with this number was actually a prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but it will take some time to confirm his identity. Tamara Fedorova is anxious that she will not be able to get all the required documents before the deadline for compensation applications expires. Getting numerous references takes so much effort, she complains.
Kateryna Andriyivna Doroshenko has come to the foundation several times on her husband’s behalf. She says that the references she submitted angered the official who accused her family of forging the documents. Unfortunately, Vasyl Doroshenko could not disprove the accusations since he is suffering from sclerosis, strengthening the suspicions of the official. Finding more credible references in archives, Mr. Doroshenko decided to try again, for the family badly needs money for food and medicine.
Spared the plight of a concentration camp prisoner, Tetiana Kozlova still looks back with horror at the years she spent in Germany during the war. “The Germans did not care that girls sometimes had to do the hard work of men. We lived in a special camp without any heat, where we were counted and locked up every night. We went to bed, tired to death to the accompaniment of the guard dogs,” she recalls.
Ms. Kozlova welcomes the initiative of the German side to pay compensation to Ukrainians for damage done to their health while in Germany, however, saying that the whole procedure of getting compensation hurts her health just as much. “Sick elderly people have to spend many hours in lines only to learn the payment procedure and the documentation takes a lot of time. I do not know who has created these problems, Germans or Ukrainians, but those who have had more than their share of sufferings are deeply humiliated,” she says.
According to Mr. Monchenko, procrastination with the compensation payments due to endless red tape has been caused by the lack of transparent data exchange between Ukraine and Germany. He also says that the number of Ukrainians receiving compensations from Germany could be larger if the Ukrainian officials had not imposed too rigid a definition for those who can be granted the status of Ostarbeiters. Judging by his words, some categories, denied the status of Nazi victims in Ukraine, can qualify for it under European laws. Incidentally, he noted, Germany has not objected to earmarking much more money for compensation.
