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WORLD WAR TWO

Red Cross transfers war archive to Germans

The Geneva-based Red Cross says it is handing over to German authorities a huge archive of people who were persecuted by the Nazis and who went missing amid the chaos of the Second World War.

Published: 29 November 2012 14:53 CET

The massive International Tracing Service (ITS) archive created in 1943 to provide answers for millions of families seeking relatives lost during the war would as of January 1st be managed by Germany, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

The agency said it had decided to let go of the archive because the ITS mission had extended beyond purely humanitarian work.

The archives "reflect human beings and the unthinkable suffering of so many millions during the Second World War and beyond," ICRC chief Peter Maurer said.

The ITS archive houses over 50 million card files relating to more than 17.5 million civilians persecuted by the Nazis, ICRC said, pointing out that it covered civilians detained in Nazi concentration or labour camps and others forced to flee their homes because of the war.

Despite the handover of the archive, which has been in Red Cross hands for more than half a century, the organization said it would continue to support the database and its new administrator the German Federal Archive.

"The ICRC will continue to provide its technical expertise, helping the ITS serve the victims of Nazi persecution and their families," the agency said.

The Red Cross is handing over management of the ITS "but were not leaving it," Maurer said.

The Red Cross's central tracing agency in Geneva and other national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies around the world would provide back-up support to the German authorities, he said.

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Spain's basic income scheme hits backlog dead-end

Red Cross volunteers bring food packages to elderly and low income people. Photo: Cesar Manso/AFP

The measure was a pledge made by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's leftwing coalition government, which took office in January, bringing together his Socialist party with far-left Podemos as the junior partner.

The scheme — approved in late May — aims to guarantee an income of 462 euros ($546) per month for an adult living alone, while for families, there would be an additional 139 euros per person, whether adult or child, up to a monthly maximum of 1,015 euros per home. It is expected to cost state coffers three billion euros ($3.5 billion) a year.

The government decided to bring forward the launch of the programme because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit Spain hard and devastated its economy, causing queues at food banks to swell.

Of the 750,000 applications which were filed since June 15 when the government started accepting requests, 143,000 — or 19 percent — have been analysed and 80,000 were approved, according to a social security statement issued on August 20.

'Months of waiting'

But Spain main civil servant's union, CSIF, paints a darker picture. “Nearly 99 percent of requests have not been processed,” a union spokesman, Jose Manuel Molina, told AFP.

The social security ministry has only really analysed 6,000 applications while 74,000 households that already receive financial aid were awarded the basic income automatically, he added.

For hundreds of thousands of other households, the wait is stressful. Marta Sanchez, a 42-year-old mother of two from the southern city of Seville, said she applied for the scheme on June 26 but has heard nothing since.

“That is two months of waiting already, when in theory this was a measure that was taken so no one ends up in the streets,” she added.

Sanchez lost her call centre job during Spain's virus lockdown while her husband lost his job as a driver. The couple has had to turn to the Red Cross for the first time for food.

“Thank God my mother and sister pay our water and electricity bills,” she said, adding their landlord, a relative, has turned a blind eye to the unpaid rent.

'Rushed everything'

A spokeswoman for the ministry acknowledged that the rhythm “was perhaps a bit slower than expected” but she said the government was working to “automate many procedures” so processing times should become faster from now on.

“The launch of a benefit is always difficult … and this situation is not an exception,” she added.

But Molina said this was a new situation, that was made worse by years of budget cuts to the public service which has lost 25 percent of its staff over the past decade.

“The problem is that they rushed everything, did it without training and a huge lack of staff,” he added.

The social security branch charged with the basic income scheme has only 1,500 civil servants, who also process most pension applications, Molina said.

These officials are facing an “avalanche” of requests, which already match the number of pension requests received in an entire year, he added.

About 500 temporary workers have been recruited as reinforcements but their assistance is limited because they do not have the status of civil servant, so they cannot officially approve requests for financial aid.

Demand is expected to increase. The government has said the measure was expected to benefit some 850,000 homes, affecting a total of 2.3 million people — 30 percent of whom were minors.

When the scheme was launched the government said all it would take is a simple online form, but this is a problem for many low-income families without computers and internet access, especially since the waiting time for an in-person meeting to apply is about two months, according to the CSIF union

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