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Jakob Kowalewski Was A Typical
Victim
Jakob was a partisan during
Germany's World War II occupation of Poland, and he paid a heavy
price for helping the resistance.
The Nazis knocked out all of his teeth, then packed him in a cattle
car to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they ordered him to
clean streets in 15-hour shifts and turned him into a human guinea
pig in medical experiments.
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Medical Guinea Pigs
Six decades later, the 83-year-old
Kowalewski , one of 1.7 million Jewish victims, gained a small
measure of compensation for that suffering -- about $20,000 -- from
a German fund set up to help survivors of the Nazis' forced labor
program.
Kowalewski said the money meant a
lot to him, but it just wasn't enough. He spent it on physical
therapy and other medical treatments for his son, Adam, who was born
with epilepsy and cerebral palsy -- disabilities Kowalewski blames
on either the typhus injections he was given at Auschwitz, or a
later experiment inflicted on him at Dachau.
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Ukrainian Jewess
Dimidov, . She lost her grandmother,
great-grandmother, 3-year-old sister and 2-year-old cousin were
immolated by the Nazis in 1943 in what is now Belarus.
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Eight Years Old
Markiyan was 8 years old at the
time, was sent to a concentration camp and did forced labor in
Latvia
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Ovens
Markiyan Dimidov
testified - "The Nazis burned my relatives to death before my eyes,"
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$20,000 And Lifetime Pension
"This money helped me a lot --
without it I could have just died," said Yakov Sivakov, a
75-year-old from Belarus, who used half his money on cancer
treatment. The rest went to fixing up his 1960s house in
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Nazis Were Inhuman
Sivakov was only 11 years old
when he dragged heavy sacks 12 hours a day at a facility
in Crimmitschau
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Beaten Senseless
Over Apple Core
He got two meals a day
and was once severely beaten by a guard for stealing a gnawed apple
core.
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Ten Billion Deutschmarks
"This isn't just about money," said
Guenter Saathoff, director of the Remembrance, Responsibility and
Future foundation that administers the fund. "It's much more about
morality: These payments are one way that Germany recognizes the
wrongs inflicted on its victims."
Interviews with some survivors throughout eastern Europe suggest the
money met with gratitude, but also with bitterness as being too
little, too late. And even with enduring rage.
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