All over the world
More than 2.000 people - three-quarters of them in Europe - received pensions in February from former collaborators of Germany's Nazi regime or those forcibly recruited, the German Labor Ministry told AFP today.
The Belgian parliament on Thursday passed a motion calling on the government to end these pensions granted by Germany. 18 elderly Nazi collaborators are currently retiring in Belgium.
In all, 2.033 such meetings were held worldwide in February. The amount of the pension reaches up to 1.300 euros per month.
In Europe, 1.532 people are retiring, of which 573 are in Poland. They are followed by Slovenia (184), Austria (101) and the Czech Republic (94). The list also includes Croatia with 71 retirees, France with 54, Hungary with 48 and Britain with 34.
There are only 13 beneficiaries in Africa, of which 9 in South Africa and the rest in Namibia.
There are 250 retired Nazi partners in the United States, 121 in Canada, 18 in Brazil and 8. 409 in the United States.
Another 44 retirees live in Australia and about 30 in Asia - 12 of them in Thailand.
These pensions are granted under a 1951 German law that compensates Germans who have been victims of war. These include both former Nazis and collaborators with the Hitler regime abroad, as well as people who have been forcibly recruited. The law excludes former members of the SS, as well as all those convicted of war crimes.
Since 2008, the law has allowed German states granting these pensions to abolish them. However, there are very few cases where this has happened, according to data available in 2017 by the German federal government.