News Brief14:34 PM

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told cabinet ministers at the weekly Sunday meeting that the "first circle" of Holocaust survivors, those who survived the ghettos and concentration camps, received a payment over the weekend retroactive to October.

The stipend is part of a new aid program for adult and elderly Holocaust survivors. "This is very significant, encouraging and important for them," said Olmert.

Olmert said a "second circle" of survivors, who are not direct survivors of concentrations camps and who are in better health, would soon begin to receive supplemental aid under the program as well.  Thousands of survivors are living below the poverty line.