Helping Holocaust Survivors
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Hello and welcome to Connected With Latham, where we discuss ideas, legal developments, and business trends shaping the global economy. I’m Laura Atkinson-Hope, Public Service Counsel and Director of Global Pro Bono at Latham & Watkins. Since 2008, Latham has assisted Holocaust survivors in applying for reparations and social security pensions from the German government for work performed in Nazi-controlled ghettos during World War II.
This work has involved more than 350 lawyers from various Latham offices, helping over 400 Holocaust survivors and their families to secure millions of dollars in lump-sum payments, with thousands more dollars coming into our clients in ongoing monthly payments. Today, I’m honored to be joined by Isabelle Sarfati, the daughter of one of our Holocaust reparations pro bono clients.
Isabelle is giving her time today to speak about her family’s experiences during the Holocaust, as well as the role that Latham colleagues have played in bringing about recognition and acknowledgment for her family’s suffering. And I’m thrilled to have a chance to finally sit down with Anna Bravo, who has courageously led our Holocaust reparations initiative for almost 20 years.
Throughout her time at Latham, Anna has worn various hats, culminating in her role as Attorney Support Manager for Latham’s Boston office. Anna’s dedication to pro bono is second to none and reinforces that pro bono participation is encouraged for everyone at Latham, not only those who are licensed to practice law. Anna, it’s lovely to have you with us. Isabelle, thank you for joining us.
Anna Bravo: Thank you for the kind intro, Laura. Happy to be here.
Isabelle Sarfati: I’m glad to be here on the podcast. Thank you, Laura and Anna.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Anna, Isabelle, Latham has just wrapped up our final Holocaust reparations case. And with each passing year, we recognize that there are fewer Holocaust survivors alive to help us remember “never again.” So it feels particularly important to be having this conversation in this moment. Thank you again for joining me. Anna, starting with you first, can you give us a brief understanding of the two programs that Latham has been involved in, the ZRBG and the GGWP?
Anna Bravo: Sure, thank you, Laura. It is not easy to sketch the historical evolution of German reparations with a few words, and I hope our listeners will bear with me while I try. Chronologically speaking, the ZRBG Ghetto Pension Law was enacted by the German government in 2002, prompted by a German social court order. Under this ZRBG law, which we’ll allude to throughout our conversation, Holocaust survivors who lived and worked in Nazi-controlled ghettos can file for a lifetime monthly pension. The pension comes directly out of Germany’s general social insurance system, which is administered by the Ministry of Finance. The court, in short, acknowledged in its 2002 ruling that when Nazi Germany invaded other countries during World War II, it immediately superimposed its own government infrastructure onto these annexed areas.
Starting with the invasion of Poland in 1939, theoretically — and as acknowledged by the court’s ruling in favor of survivors — this meant that work performed in ghettos in those annexed areas was subject to retirement compensation under the general German pension plan. In reality, if small amounts of money were exchanged for survivors’ work, it was collectively paid by the SS to the local Judenrat. In October 2007 — five years later — German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a directive that created the German Ghetto Work Payment program, or the GGWP, as it has come to be known in the US.
This program awarded Holocaust survivors — under the same parameters of having lived and worked in Nazi-controlled ghettos — a one-time payment of €2,000. By 2007, around 70% to 80% of US applicants had been rejected in the first round of applications for the ZRBG pension, and GGWP was designed to provide a benefit to these survivors whose ghetto work had not been recognized under ZRBG.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Thanks so much, Anna. Perhaps you can tell us a bit about how Latham came to be involved in this work and a little bit about those early days and getting this program set up at the firm.
Anna Bravo: Sure. Here we were in 2008, after GGWP had just been created — everyone willing to help, but with so much still to learn. This is where Bet Tzedek, a nonprofit legal aid organization based in LA, comes into our timeline. Bet Tzedek recognized early on the need for broader assistance with these filings for survivors, and they organized an effort known as the Justice Network.
The initiative enlisted the assistance of several larger law firms, including Latham, and trained those of us participating in the major cities with large Holocaust survivor populations. At that time, in 2008, each participating law firm was assigned to monitor a hotline number for survivors to call into, and we spoke with hundreds of potential survivor applicants in those days over the phone. In New York, which was my home office at the time, we offered legal support to weekly clinics in Brooklyn, where we met with our clients in person. Similar efforts were organized by Latham colleagues in LA and DC. Through our work, we also often interacted with the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, which estimated that there were approximately 23,000 survivors living in the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area at that time.
Every Thursday back then, a team of Latham lawyers and staff headed out on the subway with printers and laptops to meet with survivors in the senior center in Brooklyn. We brought bagels and cookies, thinking it might break the ice when connecting, but we were completely unaware that many survivors joined us week after week because the senior center was the main meal source. These interactions also burst our initial bubble that we were obtaining €2,000 as extra money for someone later in their life, or maybe for a trip to their grandkids in Israel. What we learned through our direct work and observations was that a fair number of survivors needed the money for food, housing, medication, limb replacement, or dental work.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Sounds incredibly important. Why did the survivors need lawyers? Why did they need our firm’s help?
Anna Bravo: Well, many survivors hesitated to undertake the complicated and time-consuming application process on their own. Additionally, there was confusion over the reparations’ language, which evolved over decades and across various programs. Work under these two specific programs was defined as “non-forced.” But how can you speak with a survivor and make that distinction? It really was a strictly legal definition in order for Germany not to compensate twice for forced labor, which had been recognized under other programs in the 1990s. You can imagine how insufficient that language was for all of us at certain times during our conversations in those days.
Leading over to the Ghetto pension now, the eligibility criteria for ZRBG was still unclear in 2008. Certain parameters — such as the definition of what constituted remuneration under the extreme daily circumstances and duress of living in the ghetto, plus a more situation-specific definition of employment — were either lacking in those first years or were very narrowly applied by the pension agency. It was not until 2010 that a subsequent court ruling on ZRBG in Germany opened the door for a broader interpretation, and a review of any filing that was previously denied.
It gets a bit technical here, so I hope everyone will forgive me, but I do feel it’s important to sketch what we were working with at the time. Here comes a glimpse into some of the legal hurdles survivors were facing. General German pension law requires a five-year working history from anyone who wants to collect a pension, which is different from our requirements for Social Security in the US. That also applied to ZRBG law. In recognition of the fact that the war lasted under six years, from 1939 to 1945, the law had already built in so-called substitution periods into ZRBG law. For example, the work of survivors — mostly male and heads of household — during a period following the war in some European countries, in Israel, or in the US counted toward the five-year work requirement. Female Holocaust survivors who had worked in the ghetto but were more often housekeepers after the war were unable to prove the five-year period, and the applications were denied until the law was amended years later.
We also had clients from countries that were not recognized at the time as eligible at all, such as Romania. Latham stepped in to help survivors navigate this complicated, time-consuming application process. We maintained a coordinated effort across our offices to reach out to hundreds of clients and initiate reviews by the German insurance agency on their behalf. And that’s how we started helping Isabelle and her family when she contacted us. And now I’d like to hand it over to you, Isabelle.
Isabelle Sarfati: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Isabelle, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your background and some of the experiences that led to your family seeking reparations?
Isabelle Sarfati: Yes, we were in France. I was born in Paris. My father was born in Poland and moved to France after the war. My mother was born in Tunisia. She also experienced the Holocaust only for six months, but still. They met in Paris. We didn’t talk very much about the Holocaust. However, when in school, I started getting beat up because I was Jewish and was told, “Dirty Jew, go back to your country.” My parents decided that the only country they could go where we would never be told that was Israel. So we moved in 1972 to Israel as a family. I never really heard the stories of my family — neither my mother’s side nor my father’s. The only thing I knew was that he had no other siblings or parents except one brother. My mother’s family was a huge family, and so the contrast was very striking.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: You began to research a bit about your family’s history. Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about that.
Isabelle Sarfati: Yes. An event in my life led me to start researching my ancestors on my mother’s side, which I had done many years prior. And in 2020, during Covid, I had a lot of time on my hands, and I also wanted to know more about my father and his family. I started researching a lot of the organizations that had repositories of documents and stories, and I contacted them — based on my father’s name, his brother’s name. I had a list of his siblings and his parents. That was the only thing that I had, and I started researching for about four years.
My goal was never to really go that route of asking for reparation. It wasn’t on my radar at all. My goal was to know more about what had happened, and years had passed and I felt that I wanted to understand more what was going on. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the political aspect of what was going on here or in the States, but it led me there.
With that research, I began asking for my father’s file as a refugee from France. Then I started looking for where I could get my father’s file from Germany. Through contacting the German consulate, I connected with someone who had helped many Holocaust survivors apply for reparations. He was no longer doing that kind of work in the consulate, but over the course of a few weeks, and telling him a little bit more about my family and my desire to know more, he volunteered to help me request some of my father’s file.
One of which took a year to get, and a lot of the documents that I was given from that file were documents we already had. My mother and my father both never threw important things away, so I could recognize some of the documents. But a year later, we were wondering — he and I — why was it that there was nothing referring to the ghetto in that file? We kept saying, there must be something else — must be another file or something. The persistence of asking and questioning that something was not adding up led us, a year later, to get a file that had a lot more details and had specific reference to the ghetto, to my father’s time in the ghetto, to his time with his wife in the ghetto, to the fact that his daughter was born in the ghetto, to the fact that they had to escape the ghetto because there was nothing to eat. They were starved even though they worked; obviously they weren’t paid. The only thing they were paid with was probably some bread at some point in time, maybe once a day.
It was so moving to have seen it in black and white — even to the extent of referencing the righteous people who helped, their address as to where he was hiding and how long, and how he couldn’t actually hide with his wife and his daughter because it was too dangerous. So he had to hide in a different location, and all that was just flowing. It was something I was really longing for, something that I was really hoping to come across. And one day, as I was searching through some of my mother’s documents, I came across four 5x7 pieces of paper. They were pink with handwritten text. Although there were no dates on those pieces of paper, they exactly referenced the places and the addresses and the names of the people who saved them from that file that we had gotten. So I knew it was accurate that he was in the ghetto, that he had worked in the ghetto, that his business as a tailor was taken away from him, that his home was taken away from him = when he was in the ghetto.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: That’s really incredible. After all that time where these issues and the things that had happened in your family remained unspoken, it must have been a really overwhelming moment to have that sort of validation and recognition of the things that your family had been through. It sounds like it was really complicated as well to get to this point. And I know, Anna, we were doing similar research for all of our clients. Do some of Isabelle’s challenges and experiences resonate with you?
Anna Bravo: Absolutely. I also recall, Isabelle, when we first got in touch, how it seemed absolutely implausible that your father — who was an adult and already a skilled tailor; I think he went through the whole apprenticeship plus in Europe before the war — would not have worked in the ghetto. I do recall how that in itself just seemed impossible. But to answer your question, Laura — absolutely.
As Isabelle explains in her search for resources, we often depended on the research skills of our associates. And so here comes one example. In 2010, historians were still identifying new ghetto locations and getting their names on the map. In one such example, a client that we worked with had been denied reparations since the 1950s, and she was always told her ghetto was not recognized. Basically, it didn’t exist or she made it up. It took the patience and resourcefulness of her assisting associate to find the JewishGen website, which can identify the names of towns in the multiple languages spoken there before the war or during constantly shifting jurisdictions at that time. Our client grew up in the Jewish section of a Polish town and never knew the name of it in any other language but Yiddish. That’s hard for us to understand today, but that is how it was in those days. You stayed on your own side of town.
After our associate found this Yiddish name through JewishGen, we were able to help our client to do a successful filing and to get awards under ZRBG and GGWP by submitting the Polish name of a ghetto, which was a well-known ghetto. To me, it brings a lot together because these were also the early days of our dabbling on the internet, which seems so mainstream now. In those days, it took the initiative by someone on the team who said, “I believe this lady; it’s got to exist.” And he found it.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: That’s incredible. So, Isabelle, I think you left off by saying you received that first file from the German government. What did you find there? Was it helpful to you?
Isabelle Sarfati: The first file? No, not really. It was basically recognizing that my father had a disability due to the ghetto, and he had health issues and so forth. I mean, it was helpful in reinforcing that it happened during the war, but it wasn’t giving me any clues about his wife, his kids, what had happened even after the war. The second file really was the one that helped. And of course, when you get a second file with more information, it helped me do more research. I contacted probably 50 organizations around the world just asking for documents, researching their websites, and listening to testimonies. Everywhere in the world people were helping Holocaust survivors — documenting, if you will, archiving their stories. So it wasn’t in one place.
A lot of it I couldn’t understand. It was in a different language. I don’t speak Yiddish. I don’t speak German. I don’t speak Russian. I don’t speak Polish. So I even got help from someone in Poland to try and help me with some websites in Poland that were not dual-language English or any other language. I would say that the second file was really an eye-opener in terms of the journey my father and his family had bared, and obviously it helped in terms of the application.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Anna, maybe you can tell us just a bit about what the requirements are for these applications and how this was significant for Isabelle’s legal case.
Anna Bravo: Sure. The core requirements for the ZRBG and GGWP are that a recognized survivor — very important word — lived and worked in the ghetto. So these three: recognized, lived, and worked in the ghetto. For Isabelle’s father, when he filed that first filing that came with the first package, that already established him as a survivor. That was not something we really had to be concerned with, but that is something we assisted other clients with.
Then comes the part about “lived and worked in the ghetto.” Our lens at Latham during conversations with our clients, or when we reviewed the documentation about prior narratives and other programs, was always on strengthening these three key elements. Isabelle, I want to give you a lot of credit because you came to us with so much documentation and very thorough research that you had already undertaken yourself, like no one else before.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Isabelle, you’d actually gone ahead and filed your application, but you reached out to the firm because you were not sure where to go from there. Perhaps just tell us a little bit about how you came to find us.
Isabelle Sarfati: Yes. you’re right. I had done a lot of research, and I would say I attribute that to the time that I had on my hands, really. It was finally meeting my desire to know more with free time to research it. It’s not always possible to do a lot of research like that. What happened was, the person who helped me from the German consulate in LA suggested that I file the application and worry about all the supporting documents being exact and precise at a later date.
Although I did not take that advice. I wanted to have everything ready to go, and so I did everything that I could. I was in Israel. I translated all the documents from my mom. I had them notarized and signed. It was very kind of him, I went to the consulate and he took the application and submitted it for me from LA to Germany.
But for me, submitting the application was not the end. I didn’t find enough information from my research. I wanted to know more about his wife — his first wife, who died after the war — about my brother, about my sister. Where were they? Where were they held after the war? How did they end up in Paris? Why Paris? It led me to so many questions in so many places.
Along the way, I also realized that filing the application was not going to be easy. It was going to be hard to communicate with Germany and to file it on my own without any representation, legal representation, was going to make it a lot easier to have it denied. So I did a little bit of research and I came across — well, at first I contacted Bet Tzedek and the Claims Conference. The two of them were, one, hesitant because I had already filed the application, and two, they didn’t have the dedicated legal resources anymore because most of the Holocaust survivors had filed way before I did. So there was no other venue, and I was kind of crushed because I thought, wow, that would have been the perfect venue to ask.
But then I searched for other law firms, and I came across Latham. I saw all the research that you guys had done, and I was floored, I was like, “wow.” I said, okay, I need to contact them; I need to contact Daniel. And I contacted Daniel and, of course, Anna. They hesitated, obviously, for the same reason that I had filed my own application — my mom’s application — on my own, with no help. And I understand because how thorough can it be? Maybe you disclosed things that you didn’t need to, or you went in one direction versus the other, I totally get it.
It took us a few weeks for me to send the information and let them consider taking the case. And you took the case — you said yes. I told my mom, and my mom was amazed that a law firm would be willing to do that kind of work to help Holocaust survivors, but also do it pro bono. I may have done 80% of the work — all the research, the filing, so forth and so on — but without the rest, without the 20% to get to the finish line, it would go nowhere. And so I was really happy that you were able and willing to take our case, and my mom was extremely happy as well.
It really taught me a lot about the research, about what the law firm had learned over the years, and how they were looking at things, obviously through a different lens than I was. I was a family member versus somebody looking at it from the outside and trying to help, and knowing what Germany was looking at and how they were looking at things.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Anna, maybe you want to comment briefly on Isabelle’s experience putting this together and what we needed to do when you were connected with Isabelle.
Anna Bravo: I think what definitely comes to mind is when Isabelle describes receiving the first file, which alludes to a filing that came out in the 1950s where the survivors’ filing was. These were reparations for “damage to life and health” of the survivors. I’m quoting that here because that is really something I personally learned over the years was that the German authorities often pointed back to that early filing from the 1950s and said, “You didn’t mention the ghetto in there.”
But what we learned from survivors was, first of all, in the persecution sequence, the ghetto came before the concentration camps. And people in the 1950s who had just made it out of this hell, their memory was more about the concentration camps. That was where “damage to life and health” was more startling, was more on everyone’s mind. So that’s what they quoted in these 1950s filings. It was not an intentional omission. I hear that part very strongly. I know you were disappointed when that first batch of documents came, Isabelle.
Our main focus here at Latham has always been to identify that the father worked in the ghetto. And like I said earlier, it seemed already convincingly documented that he was a recognized survivor. He had lived in the Warsaw Ghetto. We understood the many elements you had already assembled, and we felt that the work portion had to be stronger.
For us, I think a breakthrough came when a staff member — who was a junior associate here in Boston with limited knowledge of French — he listened to an audio recording, I think by your mother. He called me and said, “I think there is a reference there to the father having worked in the ghetto.” Then there was a staff team member here who had gone to the French high school in Boston, and I asked him if he would do me a favor — if he would listen to it. He was very excited, translated everything, transcribed everything, and there it was. We had it notarized, and that was submitted as a supplement to your application, Isabelle. I think it was the collaboration between us — what you had already submitted — and, really, these words of your mother, transcribed from the recording, that brought the success.
Isabelle Sarfati: Yeah. That’s interesting because, you know, I’m not a researcher. This is just a passion to know more about the family. But I also felt that journalism and people who really document things sometimes have to use resources that are right in front of them. They may not be written in words on paper, but my mom lived with my father. They had an intimate relationship, obviously, and they knew what had happened to each other. One day I said to myself, “Mom, let me ask you a few questions.” I recorded it with no intention to necessarily go anywhere but to know more about the history again. Then I asked, “Mom, didn’t he tell you that he was in the ghetto working as a tailor? Do you remember?” She said, yes, he did. He told me. He wouldn’t talk about it very much, but that’s what he said. It was his talent as a tailor.
Which is actually an interesting thing, because when we moved from France to Israel, as a tailor you know the intricacies of fabric. You know the intricacies of putting buttons together and zippers, and there are compartments in clothing that are not too obvious to people. But it was obvious to him because he made them from scratch. I know there are stories. I know that we had things in our coats hidden when we moved: some documents, and maybe some other things that my father would have told my mother about. And so, yes, she remembered and she said yes. We didn’t talk very much about it, but he had told me. And after that he would close up and not talk much about it, because, I mean, let’s face it, not only did he suffer so much during the Holocaust, but he also lost his entire family except his brother. Everyone. Every single family member: sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents. Everyone on either side and his wife’s side were taken.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Thank you for sharing your story, Isabelle. It must have been very hard to acknowledge and process all of these things in the course of putting together your application. But at the same time, hopefully it’s made some things in your life make a bit more sense and, in some ways, bring some of this to closure. To me, it really speaks to the power of pro bono, and I’m so proud that we were able to help your family and other families like yours over the years.
Isabelle Sarfati: Thank you, Laura, for the work that you do and the work that this firm has done. Because, you know, we grew up very poor, actually. We didn’t own an apartment or a car in France. When we moved to Israel, my parents decided that for once in their lifetime, they’d own an apartment. So they bought an apartment, but we couldn’t move. We couldn’t move yet. They had to work really, really hard. And the apartment was closed for two years until they were able to gather enough money to actually move. They didn’t want any help from the government. They never got what we call the Aliyah and the money from Israel to move. They were very proud people. To me, growing up was hard.
You know, two people who had a history like that, who started all over again, didn’t speak Hebrew. My father was able to read because his family was very religious, so he did his bar mitzvah and so on. But speaking is a whole different story. My mom didn’t speak Hebrew. We didn’t speak Hebrew. It was really hard, and when we got there, a month after that, my father was ill. For three years he was in and out of hospitals, and he died three years later. So he never actually really enjoyed his retirement in Israel, the promised land that he was really hoping for, and a promised life.
We grew up very poor. My mom was struggling. She had to find a profession and raised my sister and me. And so, to be able to eventually get to a place where I could rest assured that my mom has the funds to be taken care of in her old age is really giving me comfort. The best present my mom had was last year on her birthday when we got her the funds she needed to be taken care of. On her birthday, we got the award, and that was wonderful.
She has a secure life now. In April of this year, she had a health complication and was in a hospital for two weeks. And she’s now — again, with the help of the reparations that we got through your firm’s help — able to have 24/7 care. As Anna was alluding to, a lot of the Holocaust survivors were poor and in poor health and didn’t have enough money to take care of themselves or feed themselves. I feel that now, there is a relief that we can breathe now that she’s taken care of 24/7 and has the best care she can have. So, thank you.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Incredible. Thank you for sharing that. And, Anna, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what this work has meant to you and some of the recoveries that we’ve been able to achieve for our clients.
Anna Bravo: On the personal level, it’s just very emotional. A lot of what Isabelle alludes to, I saw, we saw. For example, going back to our work on Thursdays with Holocaust survivors in Brooklyn, many had decided after the war that they did not want money from Germany. That resonated very strongly with them. But here they were now in their 70s and 80s.
It’s tough to be in America and to provide for your medical needs as you age, and they needed them. So they began, reluctantly, to speak with us because they knew we were the way to possibly receive some of these reparations that, in their hearts, they didn’t want. For those of us who worked with these survivors, it was a big commitment to try not to probe but to be as compassionate as we could be, to understand enough of their lives to subsume that under these filings when we submitted them — to be able to get them the help.
The truth is also that at least 25% of Holocaust survivors in the US live below the poverty line. The money you receive from these pensions can help with medical care, provide for their families, and live the remainder of their lives here in more dignity. It’s a point where I can really become emotional, and I recall moments where I couldn’t help. I had to work with a lovely client, a Hungarian lady in New Jersey, and she wanted to remain for the rest of her life in her house. Her eyesight was going, and I remember one day I was on the phone with her, and she didn’t recall if she had turned the burner off or not.
I mean, Laura, you know, our work was broader than filing for these reparations. We amassed all these resources of agencies. At least in the New York–New Jersey area, where I and many of us worked, so we were able to make connections to connect the survivors with other agencies and organizations that could help them where we could not.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: It’s just amazing. And I think for you — you are German-speaking — and were able to really personally contribute in a way that I hope has been meaningful for you through your career, so thank you so much for sharing that and thank you, Isabelle, for telling your story. As I said when we started, the firm has recently concluded our last Holocaust reparations case, but our work continues with other reparations programs addressing human rights violations around the world. So thank you so much for really honoring that legacy, for sharing your story, for all your hard work through the years. I am so grateful to hear from you both. Anna, Isabelle, any final thoughts that you want to share as we conclude?
Isabelle Sarfati: I would say, for me, always follow your heart, and if there is doubt, still follow it. If you think there is something there that we can actually learn, then go for it — because it’s there. It’s waiting to be grabbed and learned and shared. Throughout the process, I involved my siblings, and they all know about the research. They were amazed. They had never seen their grandparents’ marriage certificate or birth certificate, which I had found. It extended so far beyond just the reparation and the filing of the widow pension. That’s priceless to me, just sharing all that information. So thank you again to the firm for helping me and for helping my mom. It meant a lot to us.
Anna Bravo: Well, Laura, for me, I just hope that my colleagues here at Latham are encouraged by my experience and the trust that the firm — and you and several others — invested in me over the years, and that they will apply their time and talents to work with our pro bono clients. We are really a multitude here at Latham with so much language potential, so many different backgrounds. We can really do a lot to heal the world a little bit.
Laura Atkinson-Hope: Thank you so much to you both, and thank you to our listeners for checking out the latest episode in our Connected With Latham podcast. You can subscribe and listen to new and archived episodes of Latham’s podcasts on lw.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. If you have questions or would like additional information, please email us using the links located in the show description. We hope you’ll join us again next time.
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Over two decades, more than 350 Latham lawyers have taken on Holocaust reparations matters, helping Holocaust survivors apply for pensions for work performed in Nazi-controlled ghettos during World War II.
In this episode of Connected With Latham, Laura Atkinson-Hope, Public Service Counsel and Director of Global Pro Bono at Latham, sits down with Anna Bravo, Attorney Support Manager and longtime leader of the firm’s Holocaust reparations program, and Isabelle Sarfati, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor client. Together, they reflect on the completion of Latham’s final reparations case in 2025, the challenges survivors faced in documenting their experiences, and how Isabelle’s curiosity and research about her father’s experience in the Warsaw Ghetto ultimately led to a successful outcome for her family.
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