Latvian to Receive 1st Holocaust Funds

A 75-year-old Jewish survivor of a Nazi labor camp in Latvia will be the first person to receive money from a Swiss fund set up to compensate Holocaust victims. Riva Sefere, who lives in the Latvian capital, Riga, will receive $400 at a ceremony Nov. 18, said Gideon Taylor, acting vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York. Payments of up to $1,000 to other destitute Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe will follow shortly, Taylor said. The money will come from the special fund set up by Swiss banks earlier this year to answer allegations that they profited from the Holocaust and helped fuel Adolf Hitler’s war machine. The fund contains about $200 million.