German Reparations To Israel - Wiki
QUOTE
The Reparations Agreement between
Israel and West Germany (German:
Luxemburger Abkommen,
Hebrew: הסכם השילומים) was signed on
September 10,
1952,[1]
and entered in force on
March 27,
1953.[2]
According to the Agreement,
West Germany was to pay
Israel for
the slave
labor and persecution of Jews during
the Holocaust, and to compensate for Jewish property that was stolen by
the Nazis.
Background
The Claims Conference
According to the website of the Conference
on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or
Claims Conference, "In response to calls from Jewish organizations and
the State of Israel, in September 1951 Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer of West Germany addressed his Parliament: `… unspeakable
crimes have been committed in the name of the German people, calling for
moral and material indemnity … The Federal Government are prepared, jointly
with representatives of Jewry and the State of Israel … to bring about a
solution of the material indemnity problem, thus easing the way to the
spiritual settlement of infinite suffering.'
"One month after Adenauer’s speech, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, co-chairman of the Jewish Agency [For Israel] and president of the World Jewish Congress, convened a meeting in New York City of 23 major Jewish national and international organizations. The participants made clear that these talks were to be limited to discussion of material claims, and thus the organization that emerged from the meeting was called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — the Claims Conference. The Board of Directors of the new Conference consisted of groups that took part in its formation, with each member agency designating two members to the Board.
"The Claims Conference had the task of negotiating with the German government a program of indemnification for the material damages to Jewish individuals and to the Jewish people caused by Germany through the Holocaust."
Israel's dilemma
Following
the Holocaust, Israel's relations with Germany were very tense. Israel
was intent on taking in what remained of European
Jewry. Israel was
also recovering from the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, and was facing a deep economic crisis which led
to a
policy of austerity. Unemployment was very high (especially in the
ma'abarot
camps) and foreign currency reserves were scarce.[3]
David Ben-Gurion and his
Mapai party
took a practical approach and argued that accepting the agreement was the
only way to sustain the nation’s economy.[3]
"There are two approaches", he told the Mapai central committee. "One is the
ghetto Jew's approach and the other is of an independent people. I don't
want to run after a German and spit in his face. I don't want to run after
anybody. I want to sit here and build here. I'm not going to go to America
to take part in a vigil against Adenauer.”[4]
Negotiations
The Negotiations were held between
Israeli Foreign Minister
Moshe Sharett and
West German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer.
In 1951, Israeli authorities made a claim to the four powers occupying post-war Germany regarding compensation and reimbursement, based on the fact that Israel had absorbed and resettled 500,000 Holocaust survivors. They calculated that since absorption had cost 3,000 dollars a person, they were owed 1.5 billion dollars by Germany. They also figured that six billion dollars worth of Jewish property had been pillaged by the Nazis, but stressed that the Germans could never make up for what they did with any type of material recompense. Negotiations leading to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany began in March 1952, and were conducted between representatives of the government of the Federal Republic, the government of the State of Israel, and representatives of the World Jewish Congress, headed by Dr. Goldmann. These discussions led to a bitter controversy in Israel, with the coalition government, headed by David Ben-Gurion, claimed that reparations were necessary to restore what was stolen from the victims of the Holocaust.
Opposition
Public debate was among the fiercest in
Israeli history. Opposition to the agreement came from both the right (Herut
and the
General Zionists) and the left (Mapam)
of the political spectrum; both sides argued that accepting reparation
payments was the equivalent of forgiving the Nazis for their crimes.
On
5
November 1951,
Yaakov Hazan of Mapam said in the Knesset: "Nazism
is rearing its ugly head again in Germany, and our so-called Western
'friends' are nurturing that Nazism; they are resurrecting Nazi Germany....
Our army, the
Israel Defense Forces, will be in the same camp as the Nazi army, and
the Nazis will begin infiltrating here not as our most terrible enemies, but
rather as our allies...”
At a session of the
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in September 1952,
Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, then a Mapam MK, stated, "I am not assuming that
there are people who believe that Germany will pay a total of three billion
marks, over a period of 12 years, and that this is no empty promise.... The
Israeli government will obtain nothing but a piece of paper referring to
three billion marks. And all this is only intended to mislead the public and
claim the government has attained....".[5]
The rally
Menachem Begin protesting against the Agreement in March 1952. The sign reads: "Our honor shall not be sold for money; Our blood shall not be atoned by goods. We Shall wipe out the disgrace!".
Anticipating the debate in the Knesset on 7 January 1952, all adjacent roads were blocked. Roadblocks and wire fences were set up around the building and the IDF was alert to suppress a mutiny. The rally, gathered by the agreement's opponents drew 15,000 people and the riots that ensued would be the most significant attempt in Israeli history to overturn a democratically-made Knesset decision. The decision was ultimately accepted by 61-50 margin, but not before the advancing riots interrupted the plenum debate for the first time in the Knesset history. [3]
Following a passionate and dramatic speech, Menachem Begin led the protesters towards the Knesset. The demonstration turned violent as protesters began throwing stones at the building’s windows while the police used force to disperse them. After 5 hours of riots, the police took control of the situation using hoses and tear gas. Hundreds were arrested; about 200 protesters and 140 policemen were injured.[3]
Further protests
The decision did not end the protests, and
in October 1952
Dov Shilansky was arrested near the
Minister of Foreign Affairs office, carrying a pack of
dynamite.
In his trial he was accused of being a member of an underground against the
Reparations Agreement and was sentenced to 21 months in prison.[3]
A
parcel bomb sent to Adenauer killed the sapper who handled it. It was
argued to have been sent by
Irgun alumni,
although that was never proved.[6]
Renewed opposition
Some American
conservatives have questioned the philosophical basis for such payments.
Most notably, columnist
Warner Todd Huston, writing in 2009, argued that "reparations of all
kinds" are misguided because "[t]here is no 'justice' for slights made by
history."[7]
Implementation
Despite the protests, the agreement was
signed in September of that year, and West Germany paid Israel a sum of 3
billion marks over the next fourteen years; 450 million marks were paid to
the World Jewish Congress. The payments were made to the State of Israel as
the heir to those victims who had no surviving family. The money was
invested in the country's infrastructure and played an important role in
establishing the
economy of the new state. The reparations would become a decisive part
of Israel's income, comprising as high as 87.5% of the state income in 1956.[3]
Yad Vashem noted that "in the 1990s, Jews began making claims for property stolen in Eastern Europe. Various groups also began investigating what happened to money deposited in Swiss banks by Jews outside of Switzerland who were later murdered in the Holocaust, and what happened to money deposited by various Nazis in Swiss banks. In addition, individual companies (many of them based in Germany) began to be pressured by survivor groups to compensate former forced laborers. Among them are Deutsche Bank AG, Siemens AG, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW), Volkswagen AG, and Adam Opel GmbH. In response, early in 1999, the German government proclaimed the establishment of a fund with monies from these companies to help needy Holocaust survivors. A similar fund was set up by the Swiss, as was a Hungarian fund for compensation of Holocaust victims and their heirs. At the close of the 1990s, discussions of compensation by insurance companies that had insured Jews before the war and who were later murdered by the Nazis were held. These companies include Allianz, AXA, Assicurazioni Generali, Zürich Financial Services Group, Winterthur, and Baloise Insurance Group. With the help of information about Holocaust victims made available by Yad Vashem, an international commission under former US Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, has been trying to uncover the names of those who had been insured and died in the Holocaust. The World Jewish Restitution Organization was created to organize these efforts. On behalf of US citizens, the US Foreign Claims Settlement Commission reached agreements with the German government in 1998 and 1999 to compensate Holocaust victims who immigrated to the US after the war."
Reopened claims
In 2007, Israeli MK
Rafi
Eitan made suggestions that were interpreted as a claim to reopen the
agreement, although he insisted that he merely intended to “establish a
German-Israeli work team that would examine how Germany could help the
financially struggling survivors”.[8]
German Finance Minister
Peer Steinbrück originally argued Germany would not consider expanding
the agreement,[9]
but later German government spokesman
Thomas Steg said that Germany was willing to discuss the possibility of
making extra pension payments to Holocaust survivors if the Israeli
government makes an official request.
UNQUOTE
An ungrateful lot, the Jews but then that is the way they are.