(16 Jul 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Exterior of Tel Aviv District Court
2. Various of Gideon Fisher, lawyer of Fisher Fund, presenting the lawsuit papers to journalists
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Gideon Fisher, lawyer for the Fisher Fund:
"It's the very first time ever worldwide that a court would be addressed and asked the German federation, the German government, to step ahead and to take responsibility for the damage that not only the first generation (of Holocaust survivors) has suffered, but unfortunately also the second generation. Psychiatrists have it that the second generation walks around with the feeling that the Holocaust is not something that has happened in the past, the Holocaust is still something that is within their world."
4. Cutaway cameraman
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Baruch Mazor, Director of the Fisher Fund:
"The idea is to take responsibility. The idea is to solve a problem. The idea is to see that people are suffering, a very deep suffer(ing), will have the chance to lead a normal life."
6. Mazor and Fisher walking
7. Various of Mazor and Fisher handing lawsuit papers to court secretary
STORYLINE
A group representing thousands of children of Holocaust survivors filed a class-action lawsuit in Israel against the German government on Monday, demanding that Germany pay for their psychiatric care.
The Israelis, calling themselves second-generation Holocaust survivors, said the scars of the Nazi genocide on their parents had crossed generations.
Their suit claims the second generation grew up "in the shadow of depression, grief and guilt of their parents, which created a powerful inclination among the children for pain and suffering".
Children had a "twisted relationship with their parents" that impeded their development and led to severe psychological problems, the suit suggests.
Many still lived with an irrational fear of starvation and incapacitating bouts of depression, the lawsuit claims.
The suit seeks to set up a German-financed fund to pay for biweekly therapy sessions for between 15 and 20-thousand people, or about 10 (M) million US dollar annually for three years.
"The Holocaust is still within their world," said Gideon Fisher, a child of Auschwitz survivors who founded the Fisher Fund, the nonprofit group behind the lawsuit.
Baruch Mazor, the fund's director, said four to five percent of the 400-thousand children of survivors in Israel required treatment.
Since many cannot hold steady jobs, they cannot pay for their own treatment and aid from the Israeli government and health insurance had been inadequate, he explained.
About four thousand people have joined the suit.
It was unclear what standing the Israeli court would have in a damages case against a foreign country.
But Mazor said the suit was a first step aimed at winning recognition that Germany carried responsibility for the suffering of survivors' children.
The plaintiffs will then try to negotiate a settlement or will take their case to a German or an international court, he said.
In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry said it would not comment on an ongoing legal process.
But Germany was likely to see the suit as a window for an indefinite number of future claims.
Since the 1950s, Germany has paid more than 60 billion (b) US dollar in reparations to concentration camp survivors, families of the some of the six (m) million Jewish victims and to the state of Israel.
Much of that money went to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based organisation that negotiates with Germany and distributes the payments.
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