The Secretary General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, Michael Chlenov, has participated in the anniversary session of the Claims Conference. The session was timed to the 60th anniversary of the Luxembourg Agreement, according to which Holocaust survivors began to receive reparations from Germany with the aid of the Claims Conference.

The EAJC has a permanent place in the Directorate, as well as the International Union of Public Associations of Jews - Former Prisoners of Fasicsm, which is also a part of the Congress. The latter was represented at the Directorate session by Michael Treyster (Minsk).

The two main topics of the meeting were directly relevant to the Jewish communities of the EAJC's region. First and foremost, according to an agreement which has been reached, Jews who were prisoners of ghettoes and concentration camps, as well as those who had hid in occupied territory, will be also paid by the Claims Conference a monthly compensation sum of 300 Euro, exactly the same as citizens of other countries. The compensations will begin to be paid from January 1, 2012.

Second, the Difficult Living Conditions Foundation, created in the 1980s to support Jews who are former prisoners and refugees and who emigrated from the USSR, has widened its one time fee to former USSR refugees from the 100-kilometer immediate battle area, and in 2013 plans to widen it to those who remain in the republics of the former Soviet Union. In accordance with this last amendment, Claims Conference believe that a one-time payment will be made to approximately 80000 Jews from the former USSR.

As Michael Chlenov stresses, “These important decisions are the result of constant, persistent effort of both the Jewish communities of the former USSR and their representatives in the Claims Conference – the EAJC and the International Union of Public Associations of Jews - Former Prisoners of Fasicsm. We raised these topics year after year, struck in the same spot, and now justice has been finally restored. I would like to stress that the EAJC will continue to be the community representative of the Claims Conference in the Euro-Asian region.”