| | Words in the News |
INTRO | | In this week's story, a fund of one and a quarter billion dollars has been established to compensate Holocaust victims and their relatives for money frozen in Swiss bank accounts after the Second World War and for gold seized by the Nazis and sold to Swiss banks. |
IN FULL | |  | Listen to the report in full |
 |  | 1st July 1999 Swiss banks - compensation for Holocaust victims |
|
| NEWS 1 | | "Launching the information campaign, one lawyer described it as an historic moment which represents the late beginning of a process of justice for Holocaust survivors. There are an estimated eight hundred and sixty thousand survivors around the world and almost half of them could be eligible for payments from the compensation fund. So the task of telling them all how to apply is enormous. Five hundred newspapers in forty different countries will be carrying full page advertisements this week advising people on how they can claim. A web site has also been set up to enable people to file claims electronically." from Jane Hughes, a BBC Correspondent in New York |
WORDS | | launching: starting represents: a formal way of saying 'is' Holocaust survivors: those people who survived persecution under the German Nazi regime which ended in 1945 estimated: approximately eligible: suitable for / qualified advising: this refers to the advertisements, which will tell people how to ask for the money |
|
| NEWS 2 | | "Because Holocaust survivors are all now elderly, the lawyers are anxious to speed up the claims process. They’ve said all applications must be submitted by the end of October. The one and a quarter billion dollar settlement was agreed by Credit Suisse and UBS - two of Switzerland’s leading banks last August under the threat of sanctions by many American states. One of the lawyers representing Holocaust victims said the settlement addresses the financial but not the moral issues of restitution. He said no sum could compensate someone for the suffering of having lost family, for being deported or for having worked as a slave labourer." |
| WORDS | | submitted: sent in sanctions : economic or financial restrictions placed on a country or company restitution: the act of giving back to a person something that was lost or stolen |
|
| | | Read about the background in BBC News Online |
|
