Wire transfer fee waived for Holocaust victims

State officials announced yesterday that more than 60 banks will waive the international wire transfer fee for Holocaust survivors receiving reparations or restitution payments.

Holocaust victims, bankers, and state employees gathered in the Great Room of the State House to mark the Holocaust Restitution Payment Fee Waiver program. The fee, about $15 for every yearly or monthly payment, will benefit survivors statewide who receive compensation from Germany and other European countries for being victims of Nazi persecution.

"The average age of the survivors is 80 years old, and a number of them live in low-income situations," said Janice S. Tatarka, director of the state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. She said that the program is voluntary and that officials hope more banks will participate.

"They should benefit fully from payments available to them," said Israel Arbeiter, the Greater Boston president of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. There are about 3,000 Holocaust survivors in Massachusetts, officials said.

Arbeiter was 14 when World War II started. He said his parents and younger brother were sent to Treblinka, an extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but that he and two other brothers instead performed manual labor for the Germans.

"We were young and, according to the German Army, capable of doing the slave labor for them," said Arbeiter, 81. "So my parents were murdered and my younger brother."

Arbeiter worked in an ammunition factory and endurec several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, before immigrating to Massachusetts in 1949.

Arbeiter has lived in the Boston area for most of his adult life. As a youth in Germany, Arbeiter was unable to walk along the sidewalk. Yesterday, he was proud to address the group on Beacon Hill.

"Every time I come into this building, I become emotional; I get tears in my eyes," Arbeiter said. "In my wildest dreams, I could not ever imagine to be able to come into a building like this."

April Simpson can be reached at asimpson@globe.com.