Amt für Wiedergutmachung Saarburg

The Amt für Wiedergutmachung, located in Saarburg, Germany, is a branch office of the Landesamt für Finanzen and as compensation authority for the State of Rhineland Palatinate responsible for the fulfilment of the Federal German Restitution Law [BEG] as well as processing applications in accordance with the hardship fund of the State of Rhineland Palatinate to support victims of national socialism. The Landesamt für Finanzen is directly responsible to the Ministry of Finance.

According to the Federal German Restitution Law [BEG] of 29th June 1956 in the version from 14th September 1965 victims of national socialist persecution who have been persecuted for reasons of racial discrimination, believe or outlook on life as a result of enforced measures by national socialists and have suffered as a result by losing their life, physical injury, ill health, loss of freedom, property, substance, and have been prevented from making progress in their career or business have the right to file claims for compensation.

The implementation of this legislation has been entrusted to the eleven former Fed-eral German States. In this case the State of Rhineland Palatinate is responsible for the processing of applications of persecuted persons who had their principal domicile or who stayed permanently in the Rhineland Palatinate on 31st December 1952. Apart from this we are special responsible in particular for persecuted persons from the expulsion territories as well as for stateless persons or refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention with place of residence abroad outside Europe. This has re-sulted in former persecuted persons being serviced by the office are living to more than 98% abroad outside Europe.

The compensation benefits initially laid down in accordance with the Federal German Restitution Law [BEG] were laid down to a predominant extent in the 1960s. Today the main task of the office is servicing the regular pension claims and making hard-ship compensation payments as well as processing applications made under the granted health treatment provided for under the Federal German Restitution Law [BEG] for damage to health as a result of persecution. The number of regular pen-sions and hardship compensation payments on July 1st, 2011, as set date, totalled 13,034 of the approx. 39,850 paid throughout the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the year 1996 the Office for Restitution (Amt für Wiedergutmachung) was addition-ally entrusted with the processing of applications in accordance with the new formed hardship fund of the State of Rhineland Palatinate to support victims of national socialism. Accordingly directly concerned victims of intentional NS persecution measures who today have their place of residence in the Rhineland Palatinate and who had received to no or not only little compensation up until that time and were also not able to get compensation elsewhere are now supported from the hardship budget fund according to the measures laid down in the directives of the Ministry of Finance of the State of Rhineland Palatinate. Up to January 1st, 2013 a total of 467 applications have been filed. Of these regular assistance could be granted as once only benefit and as regular assistance in 57 cases. The other 39 claimants have been referred to other priority compensation funds. (Source: https://afw.lff-rlp.de/en/about-us/task-and-responsibility/index.html)

Among others contains restitution- and/or compensation-related materials: Amt für Wiedergutmachung Saarburg; "live" BEG and "Härtefonds Rheinland-Pfalz" files