Early Times Report
Jammu, June 16: Even as Germany has agreed to distribute an additional $1.4 billion to Holocaust survivors around the world next year, the victimized Kashmir Pandits have pitched voices seeking similar compensation.
About the victims of the Nazi rule, the figure was negotiated with Germany’s finance ministry on behalf of Holocaust survivors around the world, said the Claims Conference, the New York-based nonprofit working to secure restitution and compensation for Jews who suffered under the Nazis.
The compensation for the Jews includes funding for direct compensation for survivors, social welfare services and continued funding for Holocaust education.
The majority of funds, some $888.9 million, will go towards providing home care services for survivors, including $105.2 million to address the aging group’s “increased needs,” the Claims Conference said.
As the news about the compensation for the Holocaust survivors spread like wildfire across the world, the development has raised hopes among the displaced Kashmir pandits who were forced to migration in 1990s when terrorism erupted in the region.
“#KashmiriHindus must get their due too. Apart from making sure we go back to our home, We must be given compensation for facing transgenerational trauma and be compensated with dignity for our almost Annihilated society and dwindling numbers,” said a prominent Kashmir pandit on her social media handle. Her idea went viral drawing support from the victims.
Another prominent voice of the community said: “If survivors of the Holocaust can get compensation around 80 years after the tragedy, why shouldn’t the same yardstick apply to the Kashmir Pandits who suffer unheard for the last over thee decades?”
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.
The Kashmir pandits on the other hand were forced to leave their native valley when Pakistan sponsored terror erupted in the region and many of the innocents were killed and their property destroyed. |
