BERLIN, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Germany wants to ease pension payments for former Jewish workers in ghettos of the Nazi regime, according to a newspaper report.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper Tuesday said Germany is studying ways to compensate tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors who had to work in ghettos set up by the Nazis.
Officials from the German Finance Ministry are currently in talks with the Jewish Claims Conference, which looks after the interests of Jews persecuted under the Nazis, the newspaper said.
Tens of thousands of pension claims have been filed with German courts since the country's parliament passed a law in 2002 providing for pensions to be paid to slave workers, but nine out of ten claims have been rejected.
Berlin is now seeking less bureaucratic ways to compensate the survivors, after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his frustration during a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year.
