Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

WWII

Fifteen in Sweden receive German WW2 pension

Fifteen people in Sweden, including six Swedish citizens, receive a war pension from Germany, authorities in Berlin have confirmed.

Published: 2 March 2019 16:18 CET
Fifteen in Sweden receive German WW2 pension
File photo: TT

The people, who are aged between 82 and 101 years, receive the equivalent of between 1,500 kronor (140 euros) and 10,000 kronor (950 euros) monthly, Dagens Nyheter (DN) reports.

Around 200 Swedish volunteers joined the German war effort during the Second World War, and were thereby promised lifetime pensions, the newspaper writes. Approximately 100 fought in battle.

According to German authorities, the persons who are currently receiving the pensions were not members of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the Nazi Party's SS organisation. Neither have they been convicted for human rights crimes.

“This is compensation for persons who sustained injuries in connection with war efforts,” Germany’s Federal Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs told DN via email.

Civilians injured by war actions such as grenade firing or bombing also receive German war pensions.

Sweden was neutral during the Second World War.

READ ALSO: 'A true story of love and espionage in WW2 Sweden'

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

SHOW COMMENTS