Foley Wins Pension for Widow of Holocaust Survivor

On September 3, 2013, Partner Richard Albert and Associate Jean-Paul Ciardullo were notified by the German Federal Pension Insurance Agency that they had successfully won pension coverage for an elderly widow of a Holocaust survivor. The pension is technically tied to labor performed in the Nazi camps before and during World War II, but our client was in the difficult position of not having any evidence of her husband’s experiences prior to his liberation from the infamous Dachau concentration camp in 1945. Foley reached out to the German Embassy, and ultimately obtained documents from a German agency dating back to 1954 that tracked our client’s husband’s prisoner records. Foley also obtained a videotaped interview of our client’s husband recorded twenty years ago by the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, and supplied a copy of the video as evidence in the case. In the interview, our client’s husband detailed his experiences in various Nazi camps, providing the necessary corroboration to win the pension claim. The matter was referred to Foley by Bet Tzedek Legal Services.