On the last survivors – Timofey Neshitov in Der Spiegel:

‘When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made his September appearance in Berlin’s Jewish Museum to mark the 70th anniversary of the Luxembourg Agreement between West Germany and Israel, he spoke of a "miracle.” The miracle that in 1952, just seven years after the Shoah, the Federal Republic of Germany committed to paying reparations to the Jews.

Since then, Germany has paid out more than 80 billion euros to victims of the Nazis. "Today and in the future,” said Scholz, "it is a matter of utmost concern” for the government "to secure the ongoing reparations payments to aging Holocaust survivors.” The speech had a dual message: We are ashamed of Auschwitz, but we are proud of our efforts at restitution.
At some point during the event, Eva Umlauf – a slender woman in a black skirt suit and wearing a Patek Philippe on her wrist – took the stage.
She had survived Auschwitz as a child. And she was likely added to the program as a symbol of reconciliation. Instead, though, she told the story of how her mother, who was in Auschwitz with her and gave birth to a second child in the camp, sent in application after application over the course of several decades, but never received any reparations.’

(…)

‘Following this ceremony, I visited Eva Umlauf in her apartment in Munich. I wanted to know more about this Jewish woman who was uninterested in showing gratitude.
She lives alone in the Harlaching neighborhood, not far from the Isar River, in an apartment with a rocking horse, a mahogany grandfather clock, a number of Chagall prints on the walls and plenty of light. She used to live a few streets away with her three sons in a house built by her first husband. He survived Dachau only to die in a gymnastics accident in the basement.’

(…)

‘Almost 4.5 million people sent in an application at the time. The German authorities rejected more than one in four.
But it also took quite some time before Eva Umlauf was ready to talk about Auschwitz.
She couldn’t even talk to her mother about Auschwitz. Her mother, she says, only ever spoke of the camp as if they were still there – in the barracks, on the roll-call square. She always started crying. "There’s no such thing as a former concentration camp prisoner,” says Eva Umlauf.
When the American miniseries "Holocaust” was broadcast on German television in the late 1970s, with Meryl Streep playing the good German, the two of them watched separately.’

(…)

‘The income of Holocaust survivors who apply for indemnification may not be higher than the German government deems appropriate – a sum that the German Finance Ministry negotiates each year with the Jewish Claims Conference.
When Eva Umlauf submitted her application, at the age of 76, the income limit was $49,850 per year. But she was earning more than that from her practice. She received official notification in February 2020, just a few weeks after Frank-Walter Steinmeier had held a moving speech in Yad Vashem.
The German president had spoken of a "miracle of reconciliation.” "The documents you have thus far submitted,” Eva Umlauf read in the notification, "demonstrate that your income exceeds the current limits set by the German government.”’

(…)

‘After I had met with her several times, I came to the conclusion that she had done it. She had managed to do what her mother was never able to: stand above it all, above the horrors of the Holocaust and above the commemorative hype of the present day.
We visited Dachau together, where she told a group of schoolchildren about her nightmares during her third pregnancy of infants being thrown into an open fire. Now, she says, she no longer has nightmares. As a child, she thought that all children had a blue number, and then she avoided wearing short sleeves for her entire life. Today, when people ask her about the tattoo, she says it’s a telephone number.’

(…)

‘Suddenly, she said that she was getting old. "When you get old, it’s not just your knees that hurt,” she said. "Everything grows fragile, including your psyche. I used to be stronger. I had the strength to suppress things. Now, I have to protect myself. You know, I find it more and more difficult to put up with these old Germans. My age. One of them frequently invites me over for a meal, and then they sit there and talk about being driven from their homes after the war, how they suffered. None of them ever think to say why they were displaced or who started the two world wars. With their white hair and self-pity talking about all the things they can’t eat, I sit there and think to myself: What are you doing here? It keeps getting worse, and I protect myself by saying that I can’t make it, I have a migraine. I smell them. Just like they say they can smell Jews, I smell them too.”’

(…)

‘She was then driven along a dark, country road to Hotel Imperiale.
It is a four-star establishment in Oświęcim, the Polish town where Auschwitz is located, situated directly across from the main camp. The clocks at reception show the time in Warsaw, New York and Tel Aviv.
The Warsaw clock showed midnight as we arrived. She paused briefly in front of her room, wondering whether she should knock on Naomi’s door across the hall.
When Eva Umlauf was pregnant with her first son, her husband insisted that she give birth in the United States. He wanted their son to be a U.S. citizen from his very first day. Today, that son lives in New York and has two daughters. Naomi is 19. She studies literature.’

(…)

‘She, too, has now begun receiving compensation for her time in Auschwitz – 600 euros per month. At some point she began treating fewer patients and fell below the income limit.

he ate her sole at the Italian restaurant, cutting it into small pieces, and sipped a glass of wine. She seemed calm, almost at peace. But then she set her cutlery on her plate and began to cry.
She wept silently, only with her eyes.
She said: "Nobody understands, but I don’t need the money, thank God, none of it. I only went through all this shit for my mother.”’

Read the article here.

The unfortunate bureaucratization of humanistic ideals can be found everywhere, and it’s definitely not only German, but here it is more appalling, more painful.

The self-congratulatory remembrance culture has been criticized enough probably, nevertheless, application after application without reparation, well: the ‘Wiedergutmachung’ and its black holes.

As soon the last survivors have disappeared, the remembrance culture will fade away automatically, slowly but steadily. It will be replaced by new wars, new victims, new reparations.