Jerusalem, Israel - Tunisian-born Israeli Jews who suffered under Nazi occupation have won a 5-year battle to be paid the same Israeli government stipends as European survivors of the Holocaust, according to a court document obtained by The Associated Press.
David Etzion, an attorney acting for 19 claimants, said the ruling meant that approximately 20,000 Tunisian Jews who immigrated to Israel are entitled to claim the monthly benefits, which average about $330.
German troops occupied Tunisia in November 1942. According to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, around 5,000 Jews there were rounded up and subjected to forced labor, and 20 Jewish activists were sent to their deaths in the extermination camps of Europe before allied forces arrived in May 1943.
During the six months of Nazi rule in Tunisia, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars on their clothing, many had their property seized and community leaders were arrested, according to Yad Vashem's Web site.
The vast majority of around 100,000 Jews who lived under the Nazi occupation of Tunisia had emigrated by the 1960s, mainly to Israel and to former colonial ruler France. Figures published by Israel's Jewish Agency show that about 1,500 Jews remain in Tunisia.
Many of those who moved to Israel left everything behind, Etzion said, but despite their hardships the Israeli government has maintained they did not qualify for payments from a fund set up from German reparations for Nazi victims because they weren't displaced from their homelands.
The claimants rejected that explanation, however, arguing they should be treated the same way as European Jews who received reparations under a German law that provided compensation for those who were unable to flee Nazi persecution to a country of refuge, Etzion said.
"No justification was found for denying the eligibility of the Jews of Tunisia for compensation," read a copy of the ruling, obtained by the AP Sunday.
Etzion said the claimants would not be able to file retroactive demands but would seek payment of the benefits dating from the court ruling last Monday.
"For more than five years our Finance Ministry has rejected claims by the Jews of Tunisia," he said. "Now the Finance Ministry has to pay."
A ministry spokesman said he was not aware of the court ruling and had no immediate comment on the issue.