Tehran children continue to accuse: 62 people filed a lawsuit with the Tel Aviv District Court, demanding to receive reparations money from Germany, as Holocaust survivors, due to the fact that to date, the children of Tehran have not been recognized as Holocaust survivors, because they did not directly escape from the territories occupied by the Nazis.
The case was heard before Deputy President of the District Court, Dr. Drora Pfeil, and the verdict was given today.
The story begins with an identical lawsuit filed in 2007 by 217 children from Tehran to the Tel Aviv District Court, which was also heard by Judge Pelpel. The court discussed the matter, with the questions before it being, whether the lawsuit was time-barred? And are the children of Tehran indeed entitled to compensation from Germany?
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The court ruled that, due to the special circumstances of the case, the statute of limitations did not apply, and that the money could be claimed even after decades had passed.
On the question of eligibility, the court ruled that since the reparations money was transferred from Germany to Israel for the purposes of rehabilitating the survivors and resettling them in the country, when the calculation was $3,000 per person, or in today's values, about 50,000 NIS, and since those Tehran children did not benefit from the rehabilitation and resettlement, they are entitled to receive the money today.
The state appealed to the Supreme Court, which accepted the appeal and rejected the district court's interpretation of the reparations agreement. However, because during the hearing the state agreed to pay NIS 25,000 to each of the plaintiffs, and the money had already been transferred to them, the Supreme Court ruled that the state would not collect the money back.
In light of the above ruling, another group of 62 people, claiming to be part of the Children of Tehran, sued, demanding that they too be entitled to receive the reparations money.
Here the question arose as to whether it was appropriate, for reasons of justice, to accept the second claim as well, because some of the Tehran children's group did receive a sum of money, and if the second group did not receive it, then there would be injustice in this.
After lengthy citations and quotations about the nature of justice and the fact that everyone should receive the same thing, Judge Pelpel ruled that the state would be required to pay NIS 25,000 to each of the Tehran children included in the second lawsuit.
Who are the 'Children of Tehran'?
The Tehran Children were a group of Jewish children who were Holocaust survivors from Poland, who arrived in Israel in 1943 with the Anders Army. They fled with their families to the eastern regions of Poland at the outbreak of World War II. Some of the refugees were deported by the Soviets east to Siberia and the Asian Soviet Union, and some fled to these areas when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
With the establishment of the Polish army on Soviet soil under the command of General Władysław Anders, who was nicknamed 'Anders's Army', thousands of refugees, including children, were added to it. In 1942, Anders' Army arrived in Iran, which was under British control. The Jewish Agency in Tehran established a camp for the group's children called the 'Jewish Child's Home' and gathered 719 children there.
After a wandering journey, the children arrived in the Land of Israel - and a heated debate developed in the country over their absorption, between religious and secular elements about the children's education. The religious elements, and the Chief Rabbi of Israel among them, demanded that every Jewish child without parents be sent to a religious educational setting. In contrast, secular elements demanded that the children be given to secular settings, and in particular kibbutzim, saying that there were better conditions there. The Haredim were outraged at the children's admission to secular institutions because, they claimed, most of the children had grown up in Haredi homes in Poland.
To this day, this affair remains a symbol of the uprooting of religion by the Zionist regime.
