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Zionist Reparations Extortion
 

Excerpt from

Nahum Goldmann's book

The Jewish Parodox

goldmann

GERMAN REPARATIONS A History ofthe Negotiations

 

 

Zionist Holocaust extortion

"During the war the World Jewish Congress had created an Institute of Jewish Affairs in New York (its headquarters are now in London). The directors were two great Lithuanian Jewish jurists, Jacob and Nehemiah Robinson. Thanks to them, the Institute worked out two completely revolutionary ideas: the Nuremberg tribunal and German reparations."

Quotes from famous books on the Reparations Racket

 

9-11

 

 

Excerpt from Nahum Goldmann's book The Jewish Parodox

This explains the origins of the reparations as explained by Nahum Goldmann. Robert H. Jackson, Assc Justice of the US Supreme Court and Walter Halstein seem to be instrumental in the process. It was a plan to fund the creation of the state of Israel from the very beginning.

Apart from my encounter with the survivors of the concentration camps after the liberation, I only returned officially to Germany in order to meet Chancellor Adenauer and open negotiations about reparations. These reparations constitute an extraordinary innovation in terms of international law. Until then, when a country lost a war it paid damages to the victor, but it was a matter between states, between governments. Now for the first time a nation was to give reparations either to ordinary individuals or to Israel, which did not legally exist at the time of Hitler's crimes. All the same I must admit that the idea did not come from me.
During the war the WJC had created an Institute of Jewish Affairs in New York (its headquarters are now in London). The directors were two great Lithuanian Jewish jurists, Jacob and Nehemiah Robinson. Thanks to them, the Institute worked out two completely revolutionary ideas: the Nuremberg tribunal and German reparations.
The importance of the tribunal which sat at Nuremberg has not been reckoned at its true worth. According to international law it was in fact impossible to punish soldiers who had been obeying orders. It was Jacob Robinson who had the extravagant, sensational idea. When he began to canvas it among the jurists of the American Supreme Court they took him for a fool. 'What did these Nazi officers do that was son unprecedented?' they asked. 'You can imagine Hitler standing trial, or maybe even Goering, but these are simple soldiers who carried out their orders and behaved as loyal soldiers.' We therefore had the utmost trouble in persuading the Allies; the British were fairly opposed, the French barely interested, and although they took part later they did not play any great part. The success came from Robinson managing to convince the Supreme Court judge, Robert H. Jackson.

The Institute's other idea was that Nazi Germany ought to pay after its defeat. That still required belief in the defeat, at a time when it seemed likely that the war in Europe was lost for the Allies, but like Churchill and de Gaulle I kept my faith. I never doubted for a moment, because I knew that Hitler would never mange to moderate himself and that his excesses would draw the Allies into the conflict. According to the Institute's conclusions, the German reparations would first have to be paid to people who had lost their belongings through the Nazis. Further, if , as we hoped, the Jewish state was created, the German would pay compensation to enable the survivors to settle there. The first time this idea was expressed was during the war, in the course of conference in Baltimore.

Once the Nuremberg trials were over, this reparations problem received further consideration. Several Jewish leaders then attempted to establish relations with Adenauer, but their proposals were often ridiculous. One orgaization suggested a payment of twenty million Deutschmarks--and at the conclusion of the agreement I obtained, the Germans will have paid out a total of eight billion!

Our 'contacts' were Walter Hallstein, then an under-secretary of state and later president of the EEC, and the diplomat Herbert Blankenhorn, director of the political department of the German Foreign Ministry and Adenauer's right-hand man. These two have remained close friends of mine.

goldmann

During a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in London, a Russian Jew called Noah Barou, a wonderful man and great idealist whose premature death was a severe blow, talked me into taking an active part by first of all meeting Adenauer. I was very hesitant at heart, because it was no easy matter for me to talk to the Germans again. And infact it was eventually my head, and not my heart, which decided me to negotiate. But I laid down a pre-condition: before I would meet the Chancellor to open negotiations, Adenauer had to make a solemn statement to the Bundestag; he must say that although the Germany of those days was certainly not the Germany which had produced auschwitz (Adenauer himself had been in prison under Hitler, and then had to hide in a monastery because the Gestapo were looking for him), it nevertheless inherited the Nazis' responsibilities, and reparations were its duty; he must add that material reparations could not erase the evil done to the Jews by the Germans.

 
f

The Hebrew University 0/Jerusalem
Institute o/Contemporary Jewry

GERMAN REPARATIONS A History ofthe Negotiations

By
NANA SAGI


ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, New York
THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, Jerusalem

CHAPTER I

GERMAN REPARATION - TIlE ALLIES' AITITUDE

The reparation imposed on Germany after World War I by the Treaty of Versailles bad left a bitter legacy. The disturbanccsin the economy and in the foreign and domestic policies of Germany resulting from the repa­ ration and the Gernian attempt to evade payment as far as possible had a worldwide impact with ruinous consequences in every sphere. Linked as it was to the Allied Powers' mutual indebtedness. the reparation prob­ lem undermined the structure of world trade and credit, hampered post­ war reconstruction and Contributed to the gravity of the world economic crisis of 1930. And so, when, in the early years of the war, the idea was first broached in Allied circles that after the war was over Germany, the aggressor who had begun the war and was the cause of enormous destruc­ tion of property and loss of life, would .gain be required to make resti­ tution, there were many who doubted the wisdom of such a policy. They
advanced a variety of arguments in support of their view:
Repa~tions in ;oney would destroy not only the economy of the paying
country but also of the receiving country.
Germany still owed the Allies money as a consequence of World War I;
this would be a source of tension undermining the possibility of achieving peace in Europe after the war.
Large-scale reparation could be levied only if Germany Were under direct Allied occupation. Only close supervision of the German national economy could ensure payment, but such supervision would interfere with normal economic activity both in Germany and in the world economy. Commer­ cial and monetary restrictions would have to be imposed, and this would have harmful consequences.
Germany would not be able to pay all the reparation in money. Even all
her funds abroad, if confiscated, would not. suffice. Having no alternative she would have to pay in commodities and t~us be obliged greatly to
develop her export trade, as happened after World War I. Then, to increase her exports. Germany invaded world markets with harmful consequences .for countries not at all connected to the war or' reparation. At tlmt time,

[7}

The Background 01 the Negotiations

protective customs harriers were raised by Britain, Italy, FranCe :aod Belgium. Furthermore. because of the need to pay reparation, German
heavy industry was rebuilt, though one of the Allied war aims was precisely
to destroy Germany's war potential. notably her heavy industry.'
The Soviets had a different attitude towards reparation. Their eco­ nomy, based on complete control by the authorities of production, dis­
tribution, manpower and natural resourees. could, they thought, absorb a constant unlimited How of imports without disruption. They felt, then, that they could exact large-scale reparation from Germany and need not
consider the effects on tbe world economy. Moreover, the U.S.S.R. was
not concerned by difficulties that reparation payments might create for any democratic regime to be established in Germany after the war; she was prepared to control and supervise Germany and her satellites as long as necessary to secure payment. The Soviets proposed that reparation be
allocated among the Allies aceording to each country's needs for economic
reconstruction. Since the U:SA. and Britain had resources for recons­
truction upon which they could draw, preference should be given to the
countries whose economies suffered most - that is. to the Soviet Union. They demanded reparation in the form of. commodities and means of
production (often whole factories). Germany and her satellites would be
made to transfer, to the countries entitled to reparation, industrial equip­ ment and machines. railway equipment. seagoing vessels and heavy ve­ hicles. coal, metals and agricultural produce. The principle underlying
this demand was that the post-war situation of the defeated countries
should be not better than that of countries attacked in the war. Repara­
tion in commodities - both basic equipment and current production
should be paid until the defeated countries were redueed to the level of the
countries they had overrun. The Russians also claimed foreed labor from
the citizens of Germany and the satellite countries for the rehabilitation
of regions laid waste in the war.'
Among the Western Allies, too, there were groups alld circles. including
special research bodies studying the international problems that would arise after the war, who maintained that claims to the property seized by

Robinson; N: 01', cit. pp. 210--216. BaJabkins, N: West Getman Reparations to 1s....1. p. 40.

 

 

\

the Germans in occupied or annexed countries should not be waived, and that the return of this property to its rightful· owners be demanded. This view was reftected in the first Allied statement (January 5, 1943) on the
subject of restitution and reparation. [n tbis document, the Governments
of seventeen Allied countries and the French National Council announeed that they reserved all tbeir rights to declare invalid any transfers of pro­
perty or title of property in territory under Axis control, whether the
transfers were effected by force or ·by· quasi-legal means. The declaration referred to aets of seizures already committed and to those which might
occur in the future, and was a warning to the Axis that the Allies would
refuse to recognize any such aeis. While nothing was said about imme­
diate legal steps to be taken, the importance of the declaration lay in its
intimation of the direction of future policy.'
A further step was taken by Sir Herbert Emerson, head of the [nter­ Governmental Committee for Refugees, in a Memorandum submitted to the Allied Governments on June 3. 1943. Emerson stated his view that the Allied declaration of January 1943 should apply not only to wartime
seizures but also to those carried out before the war on grounds of race.
religion or political opinion. He also voieed the opinion that it would be unfair to restore property only to persons who had escaped the Nazis and
not to those who had failed to llee their grip.
In this Memorandum, Emerson was primarily' concerned with the funds the Nazis had confiscated from the Jews and which they wanted to use in
1938 (under the Schacht-Rublee scbeme) for financing the settlement of
Jews outside Germany. This was the /irst time an international body ­
in this instance, the lnter-Governmental Committee for Refugees - dec­
lared that steps be taken to secure reparation for the rehabilitation of
individual victims, and particularly Jews.' At the Allied Conference in Paris in December 1945 which dealt with the matter of German repara­
tion, this view was endorsed and acted 00.
Towards the end of 1943. as the tremendous scale of the destruction wrought by the Nazis became known, the Allied position on reparation
underwent a decisive change. It was now apparent that to aid the post-war
reconstruction of the countries that had suffered reparation in one form

Ibid., p. 11 l.

Moses, S: The I~wish Post War C1aims, pp. 12-15. Robinson. N: OJ). cit. Pl'­ 4 Adler~RudeJ. S; AUs der Vorzeit der koUektiven WiederauhnacbuD8. pp.
216-218. 207-208,

[8] [9)

The Back.ground 01 lfie Ne(Jolialions

or another would be required. That Germany would have to pay repa­ ration gradually 'became tbe accepted view. Differences of opinion now focused on the scale and form of reparation and the period over whicb
they were to be paid.
The tum in opinion was reHected in the program concerned with post-
war relations between the victorious Allies and Germany presented by
u.s. Secretary of the Treasury. Henry Morgenthau. al the second Quebec
Conference in September 1944:
a) After the war. Germany must surrender all machinery and industrial
equipment needed by the.countries she had ruined. and the remainder of
German industry must be destroyed.
b) Germany must be turned into a ·fioo-trading. agricultural country;
reparation payments as such would not be exacted; but industrial equip­
ment would be confiscated instead as a form of reparation.'
The first official Allied declaration to the effect that Germany must pay
reparation was included in the agreement made public after the Yalta
Conference on February 10. 1945 and was based on the ideas that had been raised at Quebec. The Allies decided that in order not to create prob­ lems of currency transfers they would not exact monetary reparation. Reparation would take the form of commodities and manufactures and
would be levied from three sources:
i) industrial equipment. machines. ships. German investments abroad;
Ii) transfers of annual quotas from current industrial production;
iii) use of German labor power. Payment in the form of commooities and equipment would eliminate ,the need. for foreign loans to enable Ger­

 

 

\

Th'e Allies.' Attitude

many as reparation. and laid down that the· reparation to the U.S.S.R. would come lrom the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany. as well as from seized German property in Bulgaria. Finland. Hungary. Rumania and the Soviet-occupied Zone in Austria. In addition the U.S.S.R. would receive 15% of the industrial equipment and machinery to be con6scated in the West. in exchange for which she would periodically transler quotas
of food products to the West. A further 10% of equipment and machinery
would go to the U.S.S.R. without any equivalent transfer. The claims of
the U.S.A.• Britain and other Allied countries entitled to reparation would
be met from the Western occupation zoncs. from German assets abroad (other than those enumerated above). and from gold reserves in Ger­ many confiscated by the Allies. Until a decision could be reached on the quantity 01 goods. machinery and commodities to be taken from the
Western occupied zones as reparation. the Potsdam Agreement provided
for the seizure of the German Navy and half the merehant marine.'
After concluding the Potsdam Agreement. the Western Allies had to
6x the details of the amounts and types of reparation they were entitled to receive under the Agreement. These arrangements were set out in the
Paris Reparation Agrecment signed on December 21. 1945 at the close
01 the Paris ReparationConference (November 9 to December 2\). The
Agreement laid down the Allies' share in all categories of reparation. set
up an Allied organization to handle the distribution 01 the reparation
(the Allied Reparation Agency). dealt with the utilization of the gold and jewellery it expected would be found in Germany. and established a
special fund for the rehabilitation of refugees who could not be sent back
to their own countries - the "non-repatriables'" (see below. Part B.
Ch. III).

many to pay. as had been the case after Wo'rld War I. The U.S.S.R.

pro­

Although the question 01 restitution of property seized by Germany was

posed that the over-all sum' to be exacted from the Reich be put at twenty
billion dollars.. to be shared equally between the Soviet Union on the one
hand and the W!OStem Allies on the other. Their proposal was not accept­
ed.'
!he subject of the reparation to be paid the Allies was discussed. but
their size not fixed. at the July 1945 Potsdam Conference. The agreement
reached there spoke of machinery and equipment to be talcen out of Ger-

Robinson, N: 01'. cit. Pl'. 216-235.
BIlJabkins. N: 01'. cit. Pl'. 40-45. Robinson. 1'4: Reparation and Restitution

not on the planned agenda of the Paris Reparations Conference. ten of
ihe participating countries decided to add it, in accord with the Allied
declaration of January 5. 1943. Restitution would apply to identinable
property. and that which had been seized during the period of conquest with or without payment. Moreover, indemnification was to be paid for objects of an artistic, educational or religious character which had becn

Balabkins, N: QP. cit. pp. 40-45. Robinson. N: op. cit. p, 187.
The AJDe Files: Reparation 1946. Robinson, N: Reparation and Rest.itution

in Internationall..a:w llS Affecting Jews, p. 181, op. cit. .pp. 191-192.
[ IOJ [ 111

Tile Background of the Negotia,io!U

seized by the Gennans but which could no longer be restored to their
rightful owners.'
Immediately after Germany was defeated, the Soviets began faithfully
to implement the Yalta 'and Potsdam decisions in their zone, In the lirst
two years of their occupation,the Western Allies too followed the policy
of dismantling German industry - notlso much to secure reparation 8S to destroy Germany's war potential. This followed from the assumption of American policy-makers in the years 1944 and 1945 that world pea~ would not be secure 8S long as Germany retained her heavy industry.
They were still following the so-called Morgenthau Plan of September
1944 (p. 9 supra). The British and Americans dismantled first and fore­ most installations of Germany's heayy industry, and transported the machinery out of the country. Con~rns that had directly served the German war effort were blown up and wrecked, while production at the
remaining enterprises, inclUding iron and 'steel, was restricted to low pro­
duction quotas. In addition. research in physics and chemistry was halted.
peeple' who had held important executive and economic posts in the Third Reich were arrested - leaving the economy and administration without its upper echelons - and qualified cadres were dispersed.
It might be mentioned that the methods adopted by the Allies were, on the surface. remarkably similar to those applied by the Nazis in wartime. The Nazis. too, had obliged the conquered countries to send raW mate­
ri~ls to Germany, removed industrial plants. mobilized skilled 'laborers
for work in Germany, controlled prices and wages, allocated food and
consumer goods. set quotas for industrial and agricultural production, and

The Alii... Atlltude

picion of and hostility towards the Soviet Union increased. the British and American zones in 1947 were unified into the bizone (Bizonia) and tbe policy towards Germany underwent change. Germany was now to be part of the plans for the reconstruction of Western Europe, and economic reconstruction was begun in the bizone.
On August 19. 1947 the American and British Military Governments published an amended industrial plan for the bixone. It stated that under the existing policy of reparation the bizone could not be restored to ec0­ nomic health. and that for it to stand on its own feet and contribute to
the economic reconstruction of Western Europe, German industry must
reach its 1936 level. Nevertheless, a list of concerns to be dismantled.
mainly steel works. was drawn up. The German economy was considerably
damaged by the destruction of these concerns, arousing fears that the plan for European reconstruction would in consequence suffer. Partly in res­ ponse to pressure in the U.S.A. and Britain, reparation and the razing of industrial COncerns were terminated by the November 22. 1949 agree­ ment between the West German Federal Republic and the Allied High
Commissioners.tJ
This was one of a series of measures, which included the Marshall
Plan, monetary reform, the later plan for an European Defence Commun­ ity and the Contractual Agreement between the Federal Republic and the
Allies. intended to bring about the reintegration of Western Germany in
Western Europe. Decisive for the change in the Allied altitude towards
Germany was her pla~ on the map. The Western Allies were prepared
to make a completed turnabout in policy in order to prevent Germany

controlled foreign exchange, imports and exports.'· ' from becoming a Communist, or neutral, country.

The Potsdam Agreement stipulated that the future of German industry
would be setUed by an Allied Dismantling COmmission. which would de­
cide what concerns were to be brokcn up and transferred to the Allies as
reparation. The program. drawn up by March 1946. emphasized security rather than economics: Germany would be prevented from manufacturing planes and ships, her metallurgical and chemical industries would be sharply curtailed, and the German standard of living be reduced. The plan
was to reduce German national income to half. and industrial output to
45% of the 1938 level. Political realities. however. did not allow much time for the implementation of the program. The cold war developed. sus­

9 Robinson, N: ibid. p, 195
10 Dalabkins, N: op. cit. pp. 61-12.

[ 121









11

 

 

 

 

Ibid. pp. 57-63.

 

 

 

 

 

113)

, Securing R~Para!iDns from Germany

ties. They discussed the evaluation of losses inflicted on the Jews by Germany. bul reached no practical conclusions.
Late in 1940. when Ben Gurian visited London. Adler·Rudel sent him

CHAP'I13R II

JEWISH ACTION DURING THE WAR IN THE MATTER OF
SECURING REPARATIONS FROM GERMANY

,

a copy of his memorandum and oudined what little. had been accomplish· ed until then. Feeling himself isolaied. Adler·Rudel complained of lhe lack of interesUn his proposals displayed by Jewish bodies and person. alities. Their failure to act was. however. understandable: Brilain was ill
a state· of war and great difficulties were being encountered in taking in
and settling the numerous refugees from Germany. In this situation. Jewish

Beginning in 1939. and continuing throughout the war, demands were bodies and personalities were disinclined to concern themselves with pro­
advanced that Germany pay reparation to the Jews. Initially, the demands jects for after the war. an end to which was hardly in sight' .

formulated at that time largely by Jewish leaders, scholars and research.
en; active in Britain and the United States, who had escaped from coun­ tries overrun by the Germans. were for compensation for property and.
monies taken from the Jews. In 1944. as information accumulated on the
mass murders committed by the Nazis, the call for coUeclive reparation
to the Jewish people was finally crystallized.
The demand for German reparation was first brought before the public
by Shalom Adler·Rudel. who for many years had deall with refugee aid
and' rehabilitation as Director of the Organisation of Eastern Jews in
Berlin (1919 to 1930), and Director of the Berlin Jewish Community's
Department of Productive Welfare (1930 to 1934). By 1939 he was in London, serving as Director of the Central British Fund set up to aid
Jewish refugecs from Germany. On 10 October 1939, immediately after
the war broke out, Adler-Rudel drafted a memof',mdum containing con­
crete proposals for collecting factual information relating to Jewish de­
mands for compensation from Germany. The memorandum was sent to
a number of personalities in England and the U.S.. most of whom reo
jected the proposal. among them the banker Max M. Warburg, Wilfred Israel and Norman Bentwich. Weizmann alone expressed agreement with the principle underlying the memorandum, and invited Adler·Rudel to see him. He assured him that he would raise the idea in meetings during
his forthcoming visit to the United States and particularly with the Jewish
organisations.1

Several months later. on 6 March 1941. Adler-Rudel wrote another memorandum which he sent to Sir Herbert Emerson. head of the Inter­ Governmental Commillee for Refugees. Estimating the damage inflicted
by the Nazis on the Jews of Germany and Austria at 4 billion marks, he
put forward proposals' for more accurate evaluation of damage and for claims for compensation. He also underscored the sui generis character
of the situation as being not one of warring states. but of a state's striking
at and declaring war on its own citizens.'
All of Adler·Rudel's activity at the beginning of the war on the issue of compensation was underlaken on his own personal initiative, without awareness of similar activity taking place in the United States and Pales­ tine.
In the United Slates, imPortant Jewish organisations - the World
Jewish Congress, the American Joint Distribution Committee and the
American Jewish Conference (set up during World War II) assisted by
Jewish researchers from Europe. who could supply relevant information
- began in 1941 to act on the question of post-war rehabilitation and
compensation.
The first American body to raise the issue of reparation to German
Jewry was the Committee fo~ Peace Studies, set up by the American'
Jewish Committee in 1940 and headed by Professor Morris R. Cohen. It
sought to carry out research on the situation of the Jews in Europe and
to present proposals for securing their rights and getting compensation for

On 12 March 1940, Adler.Rudel met with Leonard Stein, President of them after the war.' )
the Anglo·Jewish Association, L. Schwarz, a lecturer at the London School
of Economic~. and A. Brotman. Secretary of the Jewish Board of Depu·
Ibid p. 202. Adler·Rudel, S: Oral History Division (OHO) 26.4.1961. p. 9.
Ibid pp. ·W-D.
Adler·Rudel, s: "p. cil. pp. 200-203. . Batabkins, N; op. cH. p, 81.

[ 14J [ 151

Th~ JJDCkground oJ the Negotiations
S~cu'ing Reparations from Germany

In March 1941. the World Jewish Congress. which had already moved
its headquarters from Geneva to New Yorl::. set up the Institute of Jewish Affairs with Jacob Robinson at its head. This research institute concerned
itself with a number of issues, but it was soon apparent that Jewish policy
should concentrate on remedying the consequences of Nazi persecution
and providing the survivors of European Jewry with the means of sub­
sistence. Accordingly, the Institute focused its efforts on securing.for the
Jews the maximum amount of compensation from Germany onre she was
defeated.
The principle that reparations should be paid by the defeated country

Schreiber correctly foresaw that the possibilities of restitution would depend on the willingness of the victorious Allies to interfere in the in­
ternal affairs of Germany. and the readiness of the future German govern.
ment to make reparation in view of the fact that the Jews were
not the only claimants on Germany's economic capacity. He expressed his belief that all the necessary extensive documentary data would have
to be well· prepared. well·organised. and Centralised.
Ni, itself took steps in this direction and (ried to gather as many claims as possible for individual property located within the borders of the

j

not only to the victors but to a persecuted minority among its own citizens as well, was a new departure in international law.'. The implementation
of such a plan called for an awakened. especially Jewish, public opinion
that could spur the governments concerned to action. To that end, the
<Worl<l;Jewish:Gonm:ess:con"ened:a:P1ln~American'confere~or;;::,

Reich. It suggested to owners of such property who were living in Pales.
line. and who could bring proper evidence, that they give Nir power of
attorney to represent them before the respective authorities and to liqui.
date the property after its restitution. Ni, pledged to pay property.own.. ..,./
ers up to 50% of the sums obtained by liquidation in cash. the balance

in~e.!llber_I941. Although Germany was then at the height of her to be paid in company stocks. By this method; the company sought not

power, the-WOrld-l'~'ish Congress deliberated on Germany's defeat. the
liberation of the occu~S!'Jlntries and ~yment of compensation for all
(property stol:n .an~~es~iled2~ his openiillfaddressto-thnonfere~cd.
Nahum-Goldmann saId: "Who can doubt that we Jews have every fight
i to international.help.for.European.Jewry.after.the_warJJiTrepaiitio;;S are]

only to concentrate efforts and economise On expenses. but also to tmns.
fer all funds to Palestine where they could be invested in productive ven.
tures of benefit to the nation as a whole. Schreiber hoped his company's plan would arouse interest within the Yishuv and among world Jewry
and ultimately lead to the establiShment of a world·wide Jewish organi- ~

0.-:Palestine too, ~J!.I!!.~J!."-E.a~~ac!aimJo.}~·~·;------ !:Bi~! ~~

salion dealing with Jewish claims.'

In

the demand for reparation for Jewish property seized

That Jewish immigrants from Germany. who had a personal interest

in Germany and in occupied countries was raised in January 1943. fol·
lowing the Allies' declaration. The initiative came from the Ni, Com­
paQY. which, before World War II. had handled the "Ha'avara" agree·
ment wWch transferred to Palestine capital owned by German Jews. In

in seized Jewish property. would be concerned with reparation was only
natural. and indeed the Association of Celllral European Immigran!S in Palestine. which began its political activity in 1943, dealt with this issue
from then On.

'an interview with "Haarelt" on 20 January 1943. Ni,'s director. Zvi One of the outstanding personalities in the Association of Central Eu.
J

Schreiber. distinguished between three types of seized property: indio
vidual property for which claims could be made; individual heirless pro· perty. and property of Jewish communities and organisations that had been destroyed and for which it' was not possible to make any claims. He also called attention to the fact that the necessary data on losses sus·
tained had not been regiSlered, nor had a Jewish organisation that could
appear before the respective authorities as the official claimant of the
JJewish people for its lost properties been established.

ropean Tmmigrants in Palestine was Dr" Siegfried Moses. In December ,/
1944 he scI up the Palestinian branch of the Council for the Protection
of the Rights and Tmerests of Jews from Germany - an international body with its center in London. Moses was concerned with the question of war reparation in peace treaties, especially in the Treaty of Vcr. Milles. and attempted to aSAess what conclusions could be drawn from such precedents for the Jewish cause. During 1943. he published severn I articles in Ha'a,elt and in the organ of the Association of Central Eu­
ropean Immigrants which considered the extent" to which existing inler.

S
6

Goldmann, N: "p. cit. pp. 216-218.
Goldm.lll\. N: Ibid p, 2S0.

national law, as embodied in the Versailles and other peace treaties, could

Ho'arelr. 20,1.1943, vot 2.5. no, 7114.

116)
[ 17)

Tht Background of the Ntgotiatiorl.l Securing RtparalJonJ from Germany

Jbe invokedbeintoreliedlaid.oftoOnthetheJewishextentwho concludedpresenteXisting law
support ease. He that had been citizens in the past? Could a collective claim be presented in

could not

on

any great

and that new legal foundations

the name of the Jewish people, and who was to present it? How should

would have

be

issue of

was to

tbe claims,

the claims be classified, and on what legal' grounds could they. be jus­

Moses eame down' in favor of the Jewish Agency as the body to present
the collective Jewish claim after the war.'
During September and October 1943. 'Ha'arelZ" earried an ~xchange between Moses and Nathan Feinberg. Professor of International law and Relations. While both agreed that the time was ripe to establish the right of the Jews to reparation by extensive political action. they differed concerning the legal bases upon which the claims should rest and on who should be entitled to receive reparation, Feinberg examined the rights
of German Jews who had remained in Germany. whereas Moses occu­
pied himself with Ihe claims of Jews in all occupied countries as well as with the collective claim of the Jewish people. Feinberg wanted to apply
i the minority rights enshrined in the sevres Treaty (1920) to the Jew~ who
, had left Germany. bUI Moses questioned the wisdom of this approach.
.; The entire malter of minority rights was insecure and controversial and
had yet to be put into effect with regard to compensation claims. It could

tified?"
Moses thought it a wrong tack to use international law as the point of /'
departure. for ha.ndling the Jewish ease, and • mistake to advance only those clal~wh.ch accorded with international law. The course to be
followed was precisely the opposite: first work out the claims and only ,-­
afterwards the legalities to be invoked when presenting them. What was
called .for was political, not legal, action. Have the justice of the claims
recogmsed and that would be followed by politieal decisions on the palt
of the powers, formulated in concepts of international law. But eare
should be taken to avoid a situation where satisfaetion of Jewish claims
would depend on internal legislation in Germany that would mean no ,,/
ass.uranee of their being met. The conditions and methods of implemen­
tatIOn must be laid down iii the peace treaties." Sinee the accepted usage
was that claims for compensation are presented only by citizens of vic­
torious states, in order not to discriminate against Jews from Germany

not be used as a basis for the collective claim of the Jewish people. In­ this provision must be revoked as regards Jews. '

slead. he felt that a legal framework should be established which could
also be utilised for politieal ends. The Jews who had ned from Germany
after 1933 should be considered part of a nation at war with the Reich and thus be entitled to reparation. as were all other nations who were fighting Hiller. The recognition of such a right would enable the Jews who had Hed from Germany to claim compensation either officially
through the AIIi~ countries in which they were living. or, if they were
not citizens of an Allied country. through a specially set-up international

In addition to individual compensation. a collective claim must also he
presented. for reparatiQn to the Jewish people. This would be a claim in
respect of Jewish property whose owners were unknown or dead. the
property of jewish institutions and communities that had been destroyed
or had vanished and for damage done to' the very fabric of the Jewish
people's existence. To make the collective claim clfective. a body was ,/
nceded to represent the Jewish people. The Agency represented the Jews
of Palestine. and it was incumbent upon it, together with Jewish inter­

.; Jewish organisation.' . national organisations, to take the initiative in setting up a representative

J Moses expanded on these points in "Jewish Posl-War Claims", a book­
.Iet published in September 1944 by Ihe Assoeiation of Central European
I Immigrants. which began with a series of questions:
Would Jewish claims to compensation be ineluded in the peace settle­
ments after the war? Who would present these claims, now tbat so many
Jews had been expelled from their countries or emigrated? Would the
.claims of Jews who had emigrated from Germany be recognised. seeing
Jthat they would be presented againsl a slate of Which they themselves

body ~o present the ·Jewish collective claim. The first step must be co­
operalton between the larger Jewish organisations in the United States _'
and England and the associations of immigrants from Germany. The role
of these latter, who were the most closely involved, was of special im­
portanee.
A. necessary condition for rendering the claim effeetive would be the
readmess toaceept .compensation in the form· of German commodities
andlor services. The Agency would have to declare that as part of the

Mo.... s: OHD 31.1.1971, p. t. 10 Mo",•• s: op. cit. pp. 1-5.
9 •·Ha'ar~rr." 19.10,1943, vol. 26. no. 1340, \I Ibid pp. 15-30.
( 181 1191

-Securing R~patQlicru from Germany
The Background of·llle NegoflQlions

seulemem between Germany and the Jewish people, Palestine was pre- J pared to accePt German commodities, Jews who had settled in Palestine
and who were entilled to compensation would be able to receive money
from the Agency in respect of their claims, The commodities received as
collective reParation would be utilised both for building up Palestine
and to help rehabilitate the victims of Nazi persecution among the Jewish
people in the Diaspora,"
In addition to claims to be presented by Jews from Germany. attention
should also be directed to claims to be presented by Jews from countries annexed or occupied by Germany, These latter claims would probably be
presented by the annexed or occupied countries concerned,
For securing post-war claims. Moses proposed the following stages:

Political activity aimed at inHu.neing projected peace treates insofar as they touched On Jewish claims; registration of all Jewish claims; deter­ mining the capacity of Palestine to absorb German commodities and par­ ticularly capital commodities; ships, railways, etc, insofar as this might
constitute a condition for satisfying individual and collectve claims; COn­
fiscation of German real estate and other property in Palestine,
Besides claims in respect of loss and destruction of propeny, claims
would also be advanced (in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty
of Versailles) arising from discriminatory legislation and administrative
measures dating from the beginning of the Nazi regime."
Dr, Moses' booklet was the first document presented to Dr, Weizmann
in London in which the question of reparation was put on a solid basis
after thorough examination of the legal aspects, and played no small part
in encouraging Dr. Wcizmann to present the Allies with the May 1945
statement of Jewish claims," Indeed, the crystallisation of post-war Jew­ ish claims owed much to this booklet which covered all the most irnpon-
J ant features of the claim submitted eight years later by the State of Is­
rael: the Jewish claim as an innovation in international law; the collect­
ive claim regarding heirless Jewish propeny and· in respect of the damage inflicted on the Jewish people; payment of compensation ,by
Germany in the form of commodities for the development of Palestine;
the establishment of a Jewish umbrella organisation to represent world
I Jewry in its claims for reparation from Germany,

The Association of Central European Immigrants adopted' Dr. Moses'
recommendations, In, this resolutions of 27 October 1944 concerning Jew­
ish problems after the war, it was· stated that
Jewish claims for reparation after the war should be based on the re­
cognition that the Jews constitute part of a nation at war with Germany since 1933; that reparation payments received for the collective claim of the Jewish people should first of all be utilised for the upbuilding of Palestine; and that individual claims by Jews for damages suffered through the Nazis should be centralised, every effort should be made for their realisation, and emphasis placed on the desirability of having such funds
transferred to Palestine,"
At a convention of the Association of Central European Immigrants,
held on 23 June 1945. Dr. Moses stressed the imponance of cooperation
between the Council for the Protection of the Rights and Interests of
Jews from Ger~any and the Jewish Agency. He expressed the hope that the Jewish Agency would be ready to work jointly with the Council on
.11 matters concerning Jewish claims, and added thai the intention was
cooperation not only in concrete actions, but also subsequently in deci­
sions concerning the distribution and use of the funds, Inasmuch as the Council considered itself the official representative of the Jews from Ger­ many, Dr. Moses proposed that whenever Jewish communities through­ out the world would be asked to express their opinions on the question
of Jewish claims, the Council too should be consulted,"
In the same year that Moses' booklet appeared (1944), another work on the same question was produced independently in the United States.
The book of Dr. Nehemiah Robinson (member of the Institute of Jewish "
Affairs), "Indemnification and Reparations - Jewish Aspects" (New York, 1944), which also, became a basis for the claim for reparation
later made by the Jewish people. advanced proposals similar to those of ,,­
Moses,
Robinson described the process of dispossession and persecution of the
Jews, classified the kinds of damage inHicted, and estimated the value of
property'seized from the Jews at two billion dollars, Reparation would
cenninly be. demanded, but: he streis'ed,ihe'-m;tter would be far from simple. Many Jews had emigrated from their, countries of origin and

12 Ibid, pp, 50-61. IS "Amudim" IO,Il,1944, voL I. no, IS,
13 Ibid. pp. 65-BO, 16 ."Amudlm"', 13.7,1945. vol, 1. no, SO.
14 Amer, G: OHD 30.9.1971, p, 3,
/21 J
[20]

_ _Securing Reparations Itom Gttman),

claiming compensation. but only ·of his place of residence at the time he

would not want, or would be unable· to return; many others who had

suffered the injury.

.

suffered from Nazi persecution would want to emigrate; many J.ews had,
been killed and left behind no family or heirs; thousands of Jewish com­
munities had been wiped oul."
Robinson proposed that the following principles be adopted in the de­
mand for reparation:

(13) Indemnification must begin immediately after Ihe cessation of hos·
tilities. even before peace treaties are signed.
In addition to compensation to individuals. claims should also be pre·
sented in respect of heirless property. The general rule in such cases. is that the State inherits. but in this instance. it would be unjust to the Jew·

(1) Comprehensive indemnification with the objective. of resloril:8 J.cw.­ ish people if the German Treasury should profit from the mass murder

ish life to what it had been before the Jews were subjected to d,SCrlml­
natory treatment;
(2) Restitution of property wherever possible - whether coll~scaled.
seized by ostensibly legal means. or soI,d. frozen or transferred under du­
ress.
(3) Wherever title to Jewish property bad been transferred in except·
ional circumstances. it must be assumed that this was done under duress.
On presentation of evidence of ownership. such property ~hould nnme·
diately be restored to its owners. The process of confirmlOg Ittle must
be simple and speedy.
(4) Restitution of commercial and industrial property must, include reo
venues that had accrued from this property and compensation for any
fan in its value.
(5) In cases of property in the form of money. stocks. ~ha:cs and Gov·
ernment loans. account must be taken of currency deprecmtlon and com·

committed. The survivors. many' of whom had emigrated to other coun­
tries. must be assured adequated economic and political conditions. and
considerable resources must be earmarked for their rehabilitation. Heir· /'
less property should be utilised for this purpose. and a successor organi· sation must be established to be the heirs and to use the property for aiding Ihe victims. A number of factors made it necessary 10 create such an organisation; Jews from the Axis countries Or neutral countries could not expecl aid from their countries of origin. and only an international organisation would be able to concern itself with this question.
To ensure that the property would not be damaged. deteriorate or disappear, it should be transferred to the custody of the Jewish succes­ sor organisation, This organisation would provide economic and legal assistance to Jewish claimants in presenting their claims and in establish­ ing their right to their property.
Since the Axis countries would probably pay part of the compensation

pensation be claimed in full. .. in commodities. the successor organisation should be able to claim part
(6) Property which had been destroyed or otherwise ceased to eXist ­ of these commodities. sell them and utilise the proceeds. ,/'
and thus unable to be restored to its owners - should be compensated The successor organisation would see to the fair distribution of com­
b~~ . pensation to the victims of Nazi persecution and would provide imme·

(7) The loss and destruction being enormous. all injured parties would
not be able to be immediately indemnified. In the order of preferences
that would have to be established. Jews should be given priority over
other claimants.
(8) Iewish institutions and concerns should be re-established.

diate assistance when individual compensation could not be sccured with·
in a short period of time. The organisation should have legal status in every country in any way connected with the question of compensation. It should have the right to transfer property from one country to another unhindered by government restraints. to cooperate with international bo­

(ev Jewish public services should b~ restor~. . dies. to conduct negotiations regarding seized Jewish property with the
(10; Persons practising the liberal profesSIons should ~ r~lO.sta.ted. countries that had belonged to the Axis. and to participate in the process
(II) Compensation should be paid in respect of phYSIcal lO}unes suf­ of securing legislation concerning compensation."

fered.

. . ed

.

Robinson ended his book with two important observations, which sub­

(12) Account should nol be taken of the nationality of the IOJur pam sequently proved accurate:

18 Robinson, N: ibid pp. 250-'-262.
11 Robinson. N: 01'. cit. pp. 24:;-245.
[231
[221

The Background of the Negor/alions . ~ecuri"g /{eparal;ons from Germany

First that restoration of Jewish property wouid depend 011 the general attitude of the Allies towards Germany: whether German industry was
to be rebuilt or not; into how many parts Germany would be divided:
and how 10llg the Allied occupation would last.
Secondly. that large.scale rehabilitation projects and the utilisation of
raw materials. manufactures and equipment would be feasible mainly in
Palestine. These projects must be coordinated with the needs of, Pales­
tine industry."
The great importance of Robinson's book for the question of compen­
sation was shown eight years later when the compensation claim was put .; forward in concrete form by the Claims Conference. It was Dr. Robin·
son who then made the most important l'Ontribution in giving the claims
their final form, drafting the texts and laying the legal foundations. It
was he who drafted the' protocols between the Claims ,Conference and
I Germany, and he was later present at every staS" in the enactment and
amendment of indemnification legisiation. His book too, like the l>?0k­
let of Dr. Moses, was wriuen without realization of the scale and nature of the European Holocaust, which explains why he could speak of res­ toring the previous state of alTairs, Once the dimensions of the Holoeaust
became known, this was seen to be impossible. Nevertheless. the princi­
pal claims. the classification of the kinds of loss suffered, and the· me· thods of indemnification as set out by him in his book, were all to be found in the claim presented to Germany by the Claims Conference in
11952.
It was Dr. Jacob Robinson, brother of Nehemiah Robinson and one
of the directors of the Institute of Jewish Affairs, who drafted the resolu­
tions on reparation which were accepted by the Conference of the World Jewish Congress held in Atlantic City from 26 to 30 November 1944.
This was the largest international Jewish Conference held during the
war. It lasted five days. and 269 delegates, representing the Jewish com· munities of 40 countries, participated. In addition to 24 members of the
Executive and Administrative Committees of the World Jewish Con­
!l!:ess, there were 81 delegates from the United States, 86 from overseas
countries, and 76 from the European Representative Committees instal·
led in New York. These delegates spoke in the name of Jewish commu· nities which were still under the Nazi heel or had just been liberated.
J Palestine's Va'ad Leumj sent a delegation composed of Dr. Bernard Jo·

t9 Robinson, N: Ibid p. 269.

[24 J

seph. representative of the Jewish Agency Executive, Dr. Siegfried Moses, Dr. OS(:8r Wolfsberg and Mordechai Bentov .
The Atlantic City Conference. which discussed current affairs and
problems of post-war rehabilitation. may be regarded as a turning point / '
in the thinking of the Jewish organizations and communities on the Jew·, ish question of the day and on the relations of the Jewish people to the non-Jewish world.
The problem of restitution and indemnification was dealt with by a
special commission chaired by Dr. Siegfried Moses. The points brought
up in the commission were:
Reparation to be paid by Germany and her satellites; /
property of the Jewish communities that had been destroyed and heir­
less propeny of individuals,
Although considerable differences of opinion came to the fore in the
commission, particularly with regard to the use of heirless Jewish pro­ perty. agreement waS ultimately reached: Germany should be obligated to pay indemnification to the Jewish people and the funds retrieved should be used for the up·building of Palestine as the only constructive
,solution to the Jewish problem. Noah Barou, Vice·President of the Bri­
tish branch of the World Jewish Congress, also proposed that Jewish or­ ganizaiions claim reparation from the German government for the over­
all loss inflicted on the Jewish people." ,/
Two resolutions passed at thc Atlantic City Conference concerned the
question of post-war reparation: ."
Resolution No.4: Restitution and compensation for losses suffered by
surviving lewish communities and by individual Jewish vietims of Nazi -' and Fascist murder and seizure of property.
Resolution No.5: Recognition of thc principle that the Jewish people
had a right to collective reparation for the material and moral losses sus­ tained by the Iewish poople and its institutions or by those Jews who
(or whose heirs) could not make their own claims. These reparation
were to serve the upbuilding of Palestine.
The Atlantic City resolutions further affirmed that in view of the un­
precedented suffering that had been the lot of European Jewry, the claims
of Jewish claimants and their representatives should be among those

20 Kubovitzkj, L: Unity in Dispersion, pp. 221-222. "Davur" 12.1.1945. vol. 21.
no. 5928., "Amudim" J6.3.1945. yot I, no. 34.

125J


The Bat:!t.ground "of tlle·NegotiatiQIU

given Ihe highest priority when reparation came to be diseussedby na­
tional and international bodies,"
It was also decided to establish a successor organization - an inter­
national reconstruction conference - and reconstruction committees in
the various countries which would see to the transfer of compensation
payments to the Jews, Property rights Ihal bad belonged to Jewish com­ munities. organizalions. funds and institulions no longer in existence or to families thaI had been wiped oUlleaving no heirs, would be declared vesled in the international lewish reconstruction conference. This con­
ferenre would utilize the funds at its disposal for the rehabilitation of tbe
Jews of Europe and their communities, 4lId .would transfer funds for the
developmenl of Palesline through the Jewish Agency. It would be de­
clared the legal representative of all misSing Jews and those unable 10 pre­ sent their claims, The international reconstruction, conference would be entitled 10' take part in United Nations deliberations concerning repara­
lion and restitution.'l
During these years. the Jewish Agency Executive iniliated aclion on
parallel lines. On 24 September 1943, Dr, George Landauer (from 1925 to 1934 head of the Palestine Office in Berlin. enlhusiastic SUPPOrler of
Ihe "Ha'avarah" ("Transfer") agreemenl with Germany. and. from
1934 10 1954 director of the Jewish Agency Central Bureau for the set­
Ilement of German Jews) addressed a memorandum 10 the Jewish Agen· cy Executive affirming that after the war,l.as won. the Jewish people
m~st be allowed to present its claims against Germany, Although aware thaI the Allies would not easily accept the idea of a collective claim of
the Jewish people against Germany. Landauer insisled Ihat in view of
the special.accounl to be settled belween Germans and Jews. the'claim muSI be presented. The chief objeclive of the Agency's polilical activity
after the war musl be the implementation of the claim,"
The Jewish Agency London Executive discussed the questi!:!n of repa·
ration in March and May 1943. and appointed.a .committee (Professor
Frankenstein. Leo ISlorik. Harry Sacher, Paill Singer and Shalom Adler­ Rudel) to tackle Ihe problems involved. In late 1943. Ihe Jerusalem Exe­
cutive appoinled a committee which was also intended 10 deal with Ihe
mailer of reparation from Gel1l'!any and 10 prepare a plan of action for

21 KubovilZki. L: op, <it, pp221-229,
22 The Wodd Jewish Consrcss: ·Resolutions of the Atlantic City Conference.
23 Balabkins, N; QP. ~it:· p. 82. Balabk.inli. N: The Birth of Restitution. p. 9.

(26]

. -Securing Reparations from Gtrmany

the post-war period, lis members were David Ben Gurion. Eliezer Kaplan.
Dr, Siegfried Hoonen and Dr. Elieur Shmomk,
These two committees were present al a meeting of Ihe Jewish Agency
Execulive in London On 1\ March 1944 which dealt wilh Ihe question of
compensalion. According 10 Adler-Rudel. it also discussed Ihe queslion of collective reparalion. Opinions were divided, Some doubted the pros· pects of winning reparalion. olhers Ihought it feasible. Weizmann held that the post-war polilical situation would decide Ihe issue, Moreover. if a Jewish Commonweallh were sel up in Palestine, the question of re­ paration would also be solved," Afler Ihis meeting. the legal Adviser
of the Jewish Agency Executive. Dr. Bernard Joseph (laler Dov Joseph).
was direcled to draw up a memorandum describing the unique nature of
the damage inHieled on the Jews by Ihe Nazis and presenting the argu­ ments upon which Ihe claims to be presenled by the Jewish Agency
should be based,
The memorandum. comprising fourleen sections. was put before Ihe
Jewish Agency Executive on 27 April 1945, In the first part. dealing wilh the damage inHieted upon European Jewry. Dr Joseph disagreed with Dr, Robinson's estimate. and evaluated Jewish property losses at 6 billion dollars (nol including loss caused 10 Jews in Russia by Ihe Nazis). Dr, Joseph underscored Ihe responsibilily of the German salellites for losses caused to Jews in different counlries. and suggested Ihat it mighl be
possible 10 invoke existing inlernational law as Ihe basis for Jewish claims for reparalion, In Ihe second parI of Ihe memorandum. Dr, Joseph pointed 10 the decisive role of Palestine in solving the problem of Euro­ pean Jewry. and he dwelt on the role of Ihe Jewish Agency as represenl.
ing Jewish interests. including the righl to claim collective reparation
from Germany, The memorandum also stated explicitly that the righl of
the Jewish people 10 collective reparation to be used for the rebabi·
litation of Nazi victims in Palestine. would nol affect the right of the
persons concerned to demand iodividual compensation."
The memorandum by Dr. Bernard Joseph was Ihe last in the long ,se'
ries of memoranda and proposals drafted during Ihe war. dealing with the
question of the compensation to be paid to the Jews after the war, As long as the war' raged. these proposals remained visionary spoeulation. Only when Ihe war ended did their importance become clear.

24 Adler·Rudel, S: op, cit. pp, 209·211. 25. Ibid p, 212.

(27]


CHAPTER' III

JEWISH ClAIMS AFTER THE WAR AND.
THEIR IMPLEMENTATION

On September 20 1945, Chaim Weizmann, acting in the name of the Jewish Agency, presented the four Powers with the first post-war Jewish claim for restitution of property and indemnification. The extent of the horrors inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews was now becoming known;
moreover, the Allies, at the Potsdam Conference, had already fixed their
claims for indemnification from Germany. Thus, he calculated, the pro­ per moment had arrived for the Jewish Agency - representing the Jew­
ish people and its link with Palestine - to put forward the Jewish claim.
In approaching the issue, Weizmann was influenced ·both by Sieg­
fried Moses' booklet containing the legal case for the Jews' right to per­
sonal and global Compensation, and by Dr. Bernard Joseph's memoran­ dum detailing the damage and loss inflicted on the Jewish people. Both
writers, it should be added, stressed the special role of Palestine as a
place of refuge for survivors of Nazi persecution, and that global repara­
tion was necessary for its development.
Using these arguments, Weizmann began his letter to the four powers
by assessing the material damage inflicted on the Je~s of Europe at two billion pounds sterling. Other crimes against the Jewish people - mur­ der, oppression, the snuffing out of spiritual and intellectual creative forces - could neither be measured nor atoned for.
He proceeded by presenting the following claims:

I) Restitution of property including buildings, installations, equipment,
funds, . bonds, stocks and shares, valuables, as well as cultural, literary
and artistic treasures. If the owners of the.property, whether individuals
or institutions, were still alive, their claims for restitution must be dealt
with in the same way as those of citizens of th~ United Nations.
2) Heirless Jewish property remaining in Axis and neutral countries
should not revert to those states but should instead be restored to the
representatives of the Jewish people, and thus finance the material, spi­

[31 J

uading Up to Negotiations

ritual and cultural rehabilitation of the victims of Nazi presecution. Pro­ ceeds from such sources earmarked for use in Palestine should be handed
over ,to the Jewish Agency.
3) Since heirless property would not suffice for Ihe enormous task of
rehabilitation and reseulement in Palesllne, the Jewish people should he
allocated a percentage of all reparation to be paid by Germany. This al­
location, in the form of installations,'machinery, equipment and materials,
to be utilized in developing the National Home in Palestine, should be
entrusted to the Jewish Agency.
4) The share of reparation allocated to the Jewish people should in­
clude the assets of Germans formerly residing in Palestine,'

Welzmann did not mention claims to compensation on the part of vic­ tims of Nazi persecution who had emigrated to countries other Ihan Pa­
lestine, The claims being made were solely in Ihe name of the Jewish
Agency which, at the lime, was demanding that 100,000 survivors living
in Displaced Persons camps be permitted entry into Palestine, and not
in the name of a world-wide Jewish umbrella organization.
Weizmann's memorandum was, then, the basis of only the State of Is­
rael's claim which, six years later, was presented to the Federal Republic.
At the same time, however, leading Jewish organizations in the United
States were addressing mcmoranda on thc reparation question to the State
Department. Proposals were submitted as early as April 1945 by thc Amer­
ican Jewish Conference and by Ihe American Jewish Committee.
011 I February 1946, the World Jewish Congress sct up a bureau, head·
ed by Dr. Nehemiah Robinson, for the purpose of collecting information,
initiating and promoting international activity in the matter of reparalion, collecting documents and making recommendations on legislation.
This bureau published pamphlets on the subject of restitution of pro­
perty, war damage, Ihe status of Jews from Axis countries residing in Allied countries, as well as bulletins of current news with reports of prog­ ress made in the matter of reparation.', But to increase effectiveness, Jewish

lewltll Claiml

decided in Octo~r 1945 to establish a joint committee. Their respective
representatives were Maurice Boukstein (legal adviser to the Jewish Agency
in the USA). Moses Leavitt (Vice-Chairman of the AJOC), the adviser
On, foreign affairs to the American Jewish Commitlce. Nehemiah Robin­
son (member of the Institute of Jewish Affairs) and Isaiah Ke~ncn (for
tbe American Jewish Conference).
Seeking to influence the American Military Government to enact a pro­
perty restitution law and to have heirless Jewish private and commllnal
property tmnsferred to a successor organization yet to be established,' the
committee set out on its work with much energy, On 19 October 1945, only
a few weeks after being formed, the committee already presented'proposals and recommendations to Under-Secretary of, State Dean Acheson and to
other senior Stale Department officials.'
An outstanding role in 'contactS:::With::the::State:Ileparlme'ht and the
White House was played by Jacob:BliiUSteln (at thc time Executive Com­
mittee Chairman of the American Jewish Committee and its President from 1949 to 1954). He began his activity among the higher echelons of the administration in the mattcr of compensation and rcstitution of pro­ perty in 1945, and continued this work for "1ore than twenty-five years. To make contacts and influence people in the State Department and the White House,.he,made;use.of-his:personal:and:political:eonnections;:.which car­ ried considerable weight. Blaustein was an oil magnate (a member of the family that founded the American Oil Company). Vice-Chairman of thc US Petroleum Administration's Marketing Committee during the war, and member of other wartime bodies. After the war, he served as adviser to the American delegation at the founding of the UN, As a result, he had contacts with leading figures in the 'JS Administration and evcn had ac­ cess to the President of the United States.
The Committee's efforts were not without effect. Military Government' Law Number 59, the first dealing with restitution of identifiable property in the American Zone of Occupation in Germany, clcarly reflected State Department and White House, and indirectly the Committee's influence.

organizations active in this field the Jewish Agency, the American Moreover, the Committee's work could also be seen in the line adopted
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJOC), the World Jewish Congress, by the American representatives at the November-December 1945 Paris
the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Conference - , Conference. This was a conference of the Allied powers (other than Rus­
sia and Poland) and was convened to dedde upon the distribution of the
Israel. Foreign Office; Documents Relating. to the Agreement between tbe
Govttnment of Israel and the GoVernment of the Federal Republic of
Soukotein, M: OHD, 28,6.1971. p. I.

Germany. pp. 9--10,
Kubowitui. L: 01'. tit. p. 269.

 

(32)

4

KubowilZki. L: op. <it., p. 270,

[ 331

Leading Up to N~goliatfonJ

Oerman assets acoording to the Potsdam Agreement. ~e confer~n~. the
first after the war to deal with payment of compensation t.o vlchm~ .of Nazi persecution who could not he returned to. their countnes of ~~Igm.
decided to establish an international compensation fund for these non­
repatriabl~s". The idea was proposed ,by the US delegates and they pressed
for its acceptance. Although opinions differed on the general problem of
-refugees. all the delegates felt duty-bound to give e~ective and speed~ as­
sistance to the "non-repatriables". It was-not explICitly stated at the !lme.
but it was well understood that many of these were Jews. and the confer­
ence acknowledged that responsibility for their _rehabilitation rested on

JewIsh Claims

Part of the non-monetary gold that the Allies would find in Germany: twenty·five million dollars to be taken from German assets in neutral
countries; and a further twenty·five million dollars to he taken from assets
in neutral countries belonging to victims of Nazis perseeution who had died without leaving heirs.
Clause 8 further stipulated that the fund would he administered by the
Inter-Governmental Committee for Refugees to which the gold to be found
in Germany. as well as the money, would be entrusted. The moneys in question would he utilized for rehabilitation not for individual compensa·
tion (in projects implemented by public organizations). [n consequence.

the entire civilised world.' .. receipt of assistance from this fund would not prejudice a person's later

A draft resolution. stating that a special fund be set up to prOVide .'m­
mediate assistance to stateless persons. was prepared by the Amencan
delegate. Jim Angel. The joint committee of the Jewish organizati~?s of­
fered its comments and the draft was accordingly amended - not state­
less persons". which would include hundreds of thousands who ~d' not
suffered at the hands of the Nazis, but "victims of Nazi perseculI?~ ~ho
cannot be repatriated"; not "immediate assistance" but "~hablhtation
and seitlement". Furthermore, the amended version now also mcluded the
right to present claims.
The new draft was later accepted as Clause g of the Conference R~o.
lutions. "Non.repatriables" were defined as "victims of Nazi persecution in need of rehabilitation and not in a position to secure assistance from
governments in receipt of reparation f~m Germany:' (I.e. the U~A.
France. Britain. Czechoslovakia. YugoslaVia). It was decided that a p~leet
he worked out. in consultation with the [nter-Oovernmental Committee
for Refugees. for
Refugees from Germany and Austria unable to return t? those countries;
refugees from Oermany and Auitria still in those counhes who would.be
helped to emigrate; and refugees from countries that had ~n OCCUPI~
by the Nazis and who were unable to return to those countrtes (not In'
cluding prisoners of war).'
-The international fund for the rehabilitation of "non·repatriable" refu­
gees would draw on three sources: -

Adler-Rudel. S: Reparations from Gennany. pp. 86-88, Alder-Rudel, S: Aus
der Vorzcit der kolickli'lCJt Wicdt:rautmachuns. pp. 2U-214,
Kubowitzki, L: op. cit. pp. 210-271.

[ 341

claims for compensation from the German government.' Details on when
and how the money would be transferred were not included in Clause 8. These were to be worked out at some future stage by representatives of the five governments in cooperation with the [nter-Oovernmcntal Com·
miltee for Refugees.
For the Jews, the Paris conference was somcwhat disappointing. The Jewish people as such was not represented. Dr. Jacob Robinson Was pre· scnt on hehalf of the World Jewish Congress. but as an observer; nor did the resolutions contain any explicit reference to Jews. Moreover, it was
clear that the proposed fund waS much less than was needed to rehabilitate
the tens of thousands of uprooted survivors of Nazi persecution in need of help. Nevertheless, the Jewish organizations demanded a share in the
implementation of Clause 8. Projects in which they would participate
at various stages were prepared and discussed with representatives of the
State Department.'
Shortly hefore the "Big Five" met again in Paris to discuss the details of Clause 8, the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Con. ference persuaded the State Department to appoint a Jewish advisory com·
mittee to he involved in the implementation of the clause. The committee
was comprised of representatives of the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency. the AJDC. the American Jewish Conference and the American
Jewish Committee.
On 14 June. 1946, the five Powers signed an agreement, according to
which a fund would be set up for non·repatriable refugees to he financed

The AIDC Files - R.estitution 1946. Robinson, N: Reparation and Restitutiun in International Law as Affecting Jews, pp. 191-193.
Kubowitzki, L ~ op. cit pp, 271-272

!3S I


" lewish Claims
Uading Up 10 N~tlolia'i(ms
of their rehabilitation were met by Britain and the United States. the AJOC

from the three sources referred to in Clause 8 of the Paris agreement;
the money:; were not to be utilized for personal compensation but for reha­
bilitation and assistance; Most of the refugees in'the category being Jews.
90% of the non-monetary gold in Germany. 90% of the twenty-five million

w,?uld not receive the supplementary pereentage. It was also agreed that the funds referred in the Five-Power June agreement would not be distri­
buted by the Allies themselves. and were to go directly to the Jewish Agency
and the AJOC. These two organization. would ,themselves coordinate the

dollars to be drawn from German deposits in neutral countries. and 95% projects for utilizing the funds, '

of heirless assets in neutral countries were to be utilized for Jewish rehabi­
litation; German assets and counterpart funds for gold would go to the
Inter-Governmental Committee for Refugees or to the successor organ­
ization. which would transfer the funds to public bodies presenting projects of refugee rehabilitation, It was also agreed that funds intended for Jews

In August 1946. as anticipated. the Illter-Governmental Committee for Refugees requested the Jewish Agency and the AJOC to present their reo lief and .rehabilitation projects in order to receive their share of the funds, The projects. relating to migration and transfer, child rehabilitation medical
institutions. vocational training and economic assistanee. were s~bmitted

would be handed to the Jewish Agency and the AJOC which. when pro­ shortly thereafter. in September 1946. .

jects would be presented. would be recognized as the public bodies con­
cerning themselves with Jewish rehabilitation and assistance. and that
neutral countries would transfer 95% of their heirless assets directly to the
Jewish Agency and the AJOC,'
Shortly before this agreement was formally endorsed. the Jewish Agency
and the AJOC. aware of its content. reached an understanding that the
projects to be presented would be coordinated. and that the claims sub­ mitted would not exceed the amounts earmarked for the Jews under the agreement. The assumption underlying this arrangement was that 100.000 persons would be migrating to Palestine and that the Agency would takc
charge of resettling them,
The Jewish Agency-MOC agreement. signed on 9 June 1946 on behalf
of the Jewish Agency by David Ben Gurion. and on behalf of the AJOC
by Harold Linder. Vice-Chairman 01 the organization," also stipulated
that:
the AJOC would receive one-third of the German assets in neutral coun­
tries and one-third of the gold counterpart funds in Germany. These sums
would be used to finance AJ OC projects in the field of medical aid. child
care. education (general and vocational), and settlement in countries other than Palestine. including the costs 01 migration. The Jewish Agency would
receive the other two-thirds; that if the MOC also bore the cost of migra­
ti~ to Palestine. it would receive a further sixteen and two-thirds per
cent of the funds. or the cost of migration: that if the 100.000 immigrants
did not reach ,Palestine within a period of eighteen months. or if the cost

 

 

 

 

 

 

I

Tbe moneys at the disposal of the Pund. however. were not distributed
WIth the same alacrity. Tn fact. only after several years of efforts on the
part of the Inter-Governmental Committee lor Refugees. the IRO which replaced It at the end of 1946, the Jewish Agency and the AJoc, were the
moneys in questi?~ actually received." 01 the neutral countries holding
the twenty-five mllhon dollars of German assets. Sweden alone transferred
her share (twelve and a half million dollars) with due speed. The money
was tr.ansferr~ to t~e Jewish Agency as early as July 1947. despite the dif­
ficult mternatlonal S!luation concerning hard currencies and exchangc con­
trols. Switzerland. which was to hand over a similar amollllt. made its first ~ransfer of four and a half million dollars only in June 1948. and its second mstalment 01 four million dollars only in 1952. Switzerland's final transfer
and the payment by Portugal were completed only in 1958.
The second source of funds - n~etary I!0~ in Germany - was
";en I~ tra~ble. though to be sure. th~lis extended every as­
SIstance In tracmg the gold. Classification. valuation and sale continued un­
til 1950..Expectations from this source were disappointed ~nd the final
sum received by the Jewish organizations amounted to only aboutJ!l.lye
and a half million dollars.
'~~tiations over fietr1~ss Jewish property in neutral countries. especially
m Sw~tzerland. were even more protracted and difficult. No way was found
to waive the secrecy of banking operations protected by Swiss law. Efforts ~ade ~y governments. international organizations and Jewish organiza­ t~ons YIelded results only in 1962. sixteen years after the signing of the AI­
hed agreement on the fund."

The AIDe Files: Restitution 1946. Adler-Rudel, S: Reparations from OCJ11"l3ny, 12 Adler~Rudet. S: Au! der Vorzeit de'r koUektiven WiedcTOutmachung.
213-21 S, .• pp, p,87,
10 The AJDe Files. Reparalion 1946. 1I Ibid,
[37J
[361

The relatively meagre practical results to ensue from the' Paris agree­ ments should not detract from an appreciation of their historic signi­
ficance. Those agreements established important precedents of principle:
among the victims of Nazi persecution. the Jews were recognized as a spe­ cific group entitled to compensation.· Furthermore. the' right of Jews to e1aim individual compensation from Germany was also recognized.
Although the Allies' exertions to secure assistance for .Jewish war refu­
gees were such as to justify the p6ssimism of Siegfried Moses and Nehe:
miah Robinson, who foresaw that the Allies would not go to any great
lengths to secure indemnification for the Jews. the Allies. and more parti­
cularly the United Slates. in the zones of occupation in Germany. did pass laws on the restitution of property and·on indemnification.
In their Declaration of 5 January 1943. the Allies had stated that all
transfers of property executed by the Nqzis and their allies would be re­
garded as invalid. and under the occupation decrees. the Allies reserved the right to enact legislation for the restitution of property. In the econo­ mic situation prevailing in Germany in the first years of the Allied occupa­ tion. this was an easier task than indemnification for loss of life. physical harm. deterioration of health. loss of liberty and professional status. The property in question. compriSing residential premises. institutions. facto­ ries and public buildings. was still partly in existence and still of value. Moreover. not to restore property to its proper owners would have cansti­

Jewislt Cla;ms

Jewish organizations in the US had played a decisive role in drafting /
Law No. 59. ,and of the restitution laws it was clearly the most important as well as bemg tbe most fully elaborated. The situation in the American zone also benefited from the positive altitude and sincere interest in the
matter of r~.stitution and compenSation of Jewish victims of Nazism dis­
played by the Military Governor. General Lucius Clay. and bis successor.
John McCloy (later the American High Commissioner in Germany). Both. always ready to be helpful. went beyond duty's call and themselves initia­ ted numerous proposals later passed On to the State and War Depart.
men:s. ?eneral ~Iay. whose share in the initial stages of developing the
Reshtullon Law In the American Zone was considerable; pressed for the
law's enactment and implementation. H
~e~t~ve.-Jew~iiiiiiQii"S:blid:liiid-down·the-basis·ofJ
'Law-59-as-earlY'as-l94:6?On 2October 1946, it presented its observations on the proposed Restitution Law for the American Zone of OccUpation
in Germany to Dean Acheson at the Slate Department. The Committee proposed that heirless property be handed Over not to the future German government but to a special Jewish organization which would utilize .the'
property for the rehabilitation of Jewish refugees. The property of Jewi~h
organizations and communities no longer in existence should also be hand.
ed over to this organization." In mid-October, 'a draft Restitution Law worked out by the legal advisers of the War and State Departments waS

J

tuted recognition of Nazi acts. For two years then. it was hoped that the

under discussion· in these departments. It was first intended that the law

Quadripartite government of the Allied Military Commanders would enact
a uniform law for the British, American. Russian and French zones; and many drafts indeed were discussed by their legal officers. The hope for action. however. receded as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and tbe Western democracies emerged, beginning in 1947.

be drafted by the Laenderrat, the German regional authority whieh. in
mid-Oetober 1946. did consider several drafts of the Restitution Law but
without reaching agreement on a final draft. Some of the proposals of the
Committee of the five organizations were quiCkly accepted by the war and
State Departments. such as exemption from inheritance tax on restored

But even in the Britisb. American and French zones. a uniform law did property. Those that were not transfer of heirless property to the Jewish

~

not come into being. Between the years 1947-1949. eacb COiltrolling author­
ity proceeded to issue its own law in its zone.13
The American and French occupation authorities were the first. Both promulgated laws on 10 November 1947: Military Government Law No
59 in tbe American Zone. and Military Law No. 120 in the French Zone. respectively.

 

i 3 Bentwich. N: Siegfried Moses and the United Restitution Organization. p. t94.

[38 I

successor organization: establishment of a Military Supervision Commit­ tee; appointment of officials to supervise the German restitution author­
ities - were discussed with General Clay during his visit to New York
in November 1946. after which they too were accepted. In this connection.
Dr. Nehemiah Robinson was very active. remaining in close contact with
General Clay and' his advisers. The ,amendments. were included in the new draft law of March 1947. The La,lUIerrat, however. refused to pass the

t4 Kagan. S: OHD. 24.3.I!nl. pp. 5-6. IS The AJDe Files: Reparation 1946.

!39J


Leoding Up 10 Ntgotiationl 'J~wilh Claims

J8w and General Clay decided '10 place the question before Ihe Allies for them either to their previous owners or to Jewish organizations. institu.
their decision. It WaS soon apparent thatlhe Americans. British and French tions and Jewish communities throughout the world." •
differed in their views on heirless property and that the prospects of ar· , . --ewiSh-RFstitiitio
riving at a common view were slim. The Committee of five organizations
accordingly pressed General Clay and the State Department to enact the istrationJ."2-11ne 1948:-Thi8 orga..EiZJl~:'J

law as a Military Law. and this was done on 10 November 1947."
The French Restitution Law. promulgated 011 the same date, was simpler than the American Law. The British Authorities were slower to follow
the American and French example, only in July 1949 did they finally pro·
mulgates law forthe British Zone which incorporated the major features

American.Military_GOvernmenl.=.the.loendedn'l
'the-ArrieficanZil'i1eOf.Occupailon]iii"(ooi~i~gt~-do with'i!.
JRsO-;;;;t~-';:;;;;p;iscl of thirteen Jewish organlia-tio;;:. With the assist· ./
ance of General Clay, JRSO was granted the status of a Government
agency in restitution matters in the American Zone in Germany. and re­

of the American legislation. and that only after many efforts of persuasion ceived facilities in matters of quarters. transport. ete. -'
directed at the responsible British departments in the Foreigll Office and JRSO presented tens of thousands of claims tl? heirless property.The
in Germany." The promulgation of these laws. however, still left many moneys secured in this way were used for welfare and for aid to the Jewish
problems unsolved. Certain categories of property, for example, such as Agency and the AJDe. JRSO also presented claims for the restitution lost or destroyed property, bank accounts, bonds, stocks and shares. jewel. of the property of communities. organizations and institutions. The

,j

lery. ete, were not covered by these laws. nor did they deal with c1aims,for
restitution presented against the Third Reich. the Nazi Party and affiliated organizations.
The Restitution Laws enacted in the American. British and Frcnch zones respectively, each referred to successor organizations to be created to take
custody of ownerless and heirless property. The establishment of a sue·
cessor organization had been proposed earlier. when, in 1946. the Com·
mittee of five organizations were discussing the restitution laws with the
State Department.
In December 1946. Bernard Bernstein. legal adviser to the American
Jewish Conference (he had been a legal adviser to Eisenhower at SHAEF
during the war) had proposed setting up two bodies:
A Jewish Restitution Commission which would be the successor organiza.
tion implementing restitution claims regarding heirless private property as
well as that of organizations and communities that had disappeared. The
Commission would assume all responsibilities relating to the property
claiming it, taking possession, caring for il. and utilizing its revenues for renabilitation, resettlement and assisting emigration.
A Commission for the Cultural Reconstruction of European Jewry which
would take charge of cultural treasures and religious objects in Germany

moneys received were primarily utilized for the cultural and religious needs
of communities re-established in Germany. providing them with synago·
gues and welfare institutions. Up to the end of 1961, JRSO received 200 ~
million DM (in addition to property in rcal estate which was restored to the communities). The greater part of this sum was secured in an overall
arrangement with the lAender and West Berlin.'>
The parallel British co;g;;;.ization for-the restitution of property - the
Jewish Trust Corporation - was set up in 1950, but only after protract· /
ed negotiations. The British had intended to establish a single organiza.
tion for Jews and non·Jews alike. which would claim all heirless and un·
claimed property and use the proceeds for the benefit of Nazi victims in·
discriminately. Ultimately. however. they recognized the justice of the v
request of Ihe Jewish bodies for a distinct corporation which would reo cover heirless and unclaimed Jewish property in the British Zone and use

t8 The AjDe Files,: Reparation 1946.
The Jewish Agency. the Aloe:.. American Jewish Committee. the World Jewish CooS..... !he Agudat Israel World Organization, the Boord of Deputi.. of British Jews, the Central British Fund. The Council for the Protection of the
Rights and Interests of the 'eM from Germany~ the Central Committee of
liberated Jews in "Germany. the COlutii .reprlsl!ntl,ui/ dtl luifs de Ff'(l1t.Ct.
Jewish CuJtural Reconstruction Ine., the Analo-Jewish Auociation. and the

and in the countries occupied by her to claim, collect. and distribute lnfertSltnllutrttung /sNuJiti$cnef Kulturg~nJe(ndtn in the American Zone in
Oen:nany. '
16 Kagan, S: op. cit. p. 6. Kubowitzki. L: op. cit. pp. 287-288 J9 Kagan, S. op. cit. PI'. 7-8. Boubitcin, M.; op. Cit: p. 3. Bcntwich, N: 01'.
17 &ntwich. N: They Found Refuge. p. 16. cit. p, 194.

(401 ( 41]

teat/ii,s Up 10 N£gotiatjons jewish Claims

il for awslam:e and rehabilitalion of Jewish victims. the n-c, which was
established in consequence, had mueb the same functions and preroga­
tives as the JRSO."

Governmental bodies were eslablished to deal with personal claims, and _/
special ,tri'bunals were appointed to decide disputed claims, In July 1948.
a group of German Jewish lawyers created an organization for the pur­

/

The main task of the HC was 10 locate and lay claim. wilhin eighleen
months. to property not claimed by 30 June 1950 (the final date fixed by Ihe British restitution law for the submission of claims by property·own­
ers or their heirs). Only 30 per cent of Ihe claims presenled by Ihe Jew­
ish Trust Corporalion were personal claims. The remaining 70 per cent were based on research and surveys carried OUI by Ihe Corporalion itself. The organization submitted claims to Ihe Courts for restitulion of pro­
perty in natura. or reached money settlemenls with the present holders
of ~Ihe properly. Claims in respccl to losses caused to communilies were

pose of affOrding legal aid to claimants in difficult economic circumstances, helping them get what they were entitled to and protecting them from avaricious lawyers anxious to exploit their claims. The group prepared claims with meticulous care, secured evidence and documents and pre­ sented material to the German courts. Established' in England. it deve­
loped into a large organization called the United Restitulion Organiza-./
tion. The central office of URO was set up in London, chosen for its proximity to Germany. and because it served as a link between Germany, Israel and the USA - the countries where the majority of the claimants

, settled in arrangemenls with Ihe Laet/der. By the end of 1967. the kwish
Trust Corporation had secured about 170 million DM. These moneys
went to Ihe Jewish Agency, the AJ DC, the Central British Fund. Ihe Council for the Protection of the Rights of Jews from Germany. commu­

were living. The URO opened olfJCes in Paris, New York. Los Angeles,
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, as well as legal offices in the American. British and French Zones and in Berlin. Since the work of these offices
required expertise ill German law. they were manned by German Jewish ,/

nities in Germany. and organizations for building synagogues and yeshivot

lawyers who had practised in Germany before Hitler.

-'r

in Israe!."
The French successor organization. Ihe Frcnch section of Ihe Jewish
J Trust Corporation, was Sel up only in 1952. Initially, the French aUlhor­

The URO soon came to embody the international 1ewish efforts con­
corning indemnification, and the three major organizations concerned
with the Jewish refugee problem - the Jewish Agency, the Central Bri~

ities granted the righls to heirless property 10 the Laender. and the mo­ Fund and the AJDC agreed to finanee its modest budget. ,/

neys ,secured were used for general indemnification purposes, In Sep­
tember 1951, these rights of the Laender were annulled, and in March
1952, the successor organization was established. By 1967, it had secured
27.5 million DM.
, As for <:ompensation, in those years Ihe laws passed in Germany were J only on the Laender leveL 'lbe first. the General Claims Law, published
on I April 1949, was enacted in Southern Germany in Ihe American Zone
under pressure from the American Military Government. The most tho­
rough.going and inclusive, it differed from the laws enacted in other
Laellder with respecl to the kinds of losS and damage dealt with, the de­
finition of the victims of persecution entitled to submit claims, and the le­
vel. of compensation awarded to the injured parties. As a result of the lack

In the first few yca:rs of its activity, the URO did not secure much
money and had a permanent deficit, These difficulties continued until 1953, when the Federal Republic promulgated ils indemnification law earmark­ ing funds for indemnification payments. After the Luxembourg Agr~e·
ments, the Claims Conference took over financial responsibilily for the
URO, and by 1967, the URO had secured two billion DM for its clients and had repaid all the money il had received from the organizations that
had supported it."
It will be recalled that at the Paris Conference. the Allies dealt with the question of heirless Jewish property in neutral countries and decided that
a sum of twenty-five million dollars from this source be earmarked for the rehabililation of non-repatriable victims of Nazism. Within the Allied

i

of coordination between the Laender. the rights accorded to claimants
differed in each region."

20 Benwitch, N: op. cit. p. t86, 21 Bentwich. N: op. cit p. 195.
22 Robinson. N: Ten Years of German Indemnification1 p. 22.

[42J

countries themselves. Ihere also remained a great deal of Jewish property,
In the United Slates, however. property belonging to Jews from Germany. ".
Rumania and Hungary 'vas blocked as enemy assets. The definition of

2) Benlwich. N: op, cit. pp. 193-198.

{43J


uading Up 10 Negotiations Jtw{sh Claims

enemy nationals included persOns not only of enemy citizenship but also of As tbe work in tbis domain of the American Jewish organizations pro­
j enemy residence or origin, and made no allowance for the fact that the ceeded apace. the new State of Israel also began to act. Confronted as it
Nazis had stripped the Jews of their nationality. According to the Trading was with immense and pressing problems of defense. immigration and
with the Enemy taw in the United States. all enemy property in the coun· construction. the State of Israel could nOt immediately turn its attention ~
try - which thus included property held by Jews from Axis countries to the reparation problem. But as early as the beginning of 1950. the
/ was transferred to the Alien Propcrty Custodian. and there was no way then Minister of Finance. Eliezer Kaplan. asked Dr. Hendrik van Darn. <an
of claiming it. The problem was partially, resolved by General License 42. / inlluential Jewish lawyer in Germany who was Secretary-General of the
which released the property of individuals who. on October 5 1945. were Central Committee of liberated Jews in Germany. to draw up a memoran­
resident in the United States or in a non-blOCKed foreign country. Not all dum on the question of the legal <basis for claims to hdrless property and ,/ Jews, however. came under this general license. and to enable the Alien thc propeclS of securing its restitution to the State of Israel. On 1st J~ly Property Custodian to return their assets. Congress. in March 1946 and 1950, van Dam presenled his conclusions to the Finance Minister<. Repa­
August 1946. enacted Public Laws 322"and 671. respectively. These laws ration to the Jewish people. he w<rote. are a moral question for both the ~<
J stipulated that property vested in the Alien Property Custodian should be German and the Jewish peoples. In Germany. tbe awareness of a moral
released if the owner had at no time sincc December 8 1941 enjoyed full obligation was giving way to political and economic considerations. The right of citizenship under the laws of his country of residence. Drafted ill German Government, motivated by such considerations. was interested in response to actions talcen by the committee of Jewish organizations. these reaching a selliement of the question of reparation. but its readiness to laws left unsolved the problem of possessions not vested in the Alicn Pro­ do SO would not persist for long. The moral claim of the Jewish people. perty Custodian but blocked by the Treasury Departmcnt. mainly hallk no less than the moral obligation of the Gennans, could not be denied and deposits. After Congressional intervention. the Treasury Department. in Israel could not continue to reject reparation. Bound to take action. Israel its leuer of December 19 1946, agreed to apply to those funds the same should do so soon. Van Dam affirmed the Government of Israel's special
; rules set out in Law 671. Still another unsolved problem was that of heir· right to present the global claim in the name of the Jewish people. Israel.
less property: by law. a waiting period of fifteen ycars was needed before / he concluded. itself constituted the legal authority for its claim. ./
any claim could be presentcd. The committce of Jewish organizations be· Van Dam stated a number of grounds justifying action on the part of
I gan to press to have the law amended. the Government of Israel: <Since a settlement had to be reached on the
The Committee proposed that Clause 32 of tbe Trading with the Enemy governmental level. there was no potential partner to the negotiations other
Law, dealing with a claim to property presented by the owner Or his heirs, than the Government of Israel. It would in any case be neces.<ary to im· ..­ be widened so that lewish organizations in the United States be able to port merchandise from Germany. The US too. had an interest in a Ger­
be named successors to heirless property and be entitled to present claims many paying reparation to Israel. This would offset. as it were. America's
to property still unclaimed by August 1948. A proposed amendment to failure to carry out de-Nazification and ilS courting of Germany. /
the Law. incorporating the above provision, and also stipulating that heir· It should be noted that van Dam did not consider the possibility that
less property could be transferred to successor organizations only if the any other lewish bodies would participate in the negotiations with Ger- "
latter provided guarantees that the property would be administered in the many.2'
intEest of 'the political. radal or religious group to which it. previous At about the same time. 011 25 July 1950. another memorandum on
owner had belonged, was discussed in the State Department and was put Jewish claims against Germany was drawn up by Alexander Basterman• ..­ before the Senate by Senator Robert Taft on 27 May 1948. The Senate the European Political Secretary of the World Jewish Congress. It was
j did not pass the amendment until 1954. after which the moneys in ques­ presented to Lord William Henderson, British Under-Secretary for Foreign
tion were releaSed and handed over to lRSO." Affairs. as the Allies were about to discuss their future relations with

24 The AlDC Files: Reparation 1948. The AlOe Files, Restitution 1946-1959. 25 Vogel. R: The Germ.n Path to Israel, Pl'. 22-26.
1441 14S 1

L~adinB Up to N~80lifJtions

Germany, and was based, on the assumption that the Fedeml Republic
must take upon herself responsibility for ,the deeds of the Third Reich
./ Easterman's memorandum demanded dissemination of knowledge of
what the Nazis bad done. trial and punishment of Nazi criminals and German re-education. Much of the memorandum was taken up with the issue of compensation. Easterman calling allention to the inadequacy of
the relevant laws in Germany. The claims categories they included were in- .;
complete, and moreover, they set arbitrary time limits for presenting
claims. (According to their provisions. only persons who had been in Ger­
many on I January 1947 in the American Zone of Occupation. and on I
January 1948 in the British Zone. were entitled to present claims. This
v disqualified many thousands of claimants)·.
Easterman proposed that in any agreement to be signed belween the
Allies and the Federal Republic concerning the future of Germany. the question of restitution should remain in Allied hands and the German
, Government be required to introduce a uniform compensation law fot all
of Germany, without limits regarding place and time; Jews who had been
expelled or forced to emigrate from Germany be enabled 10 receive com· pensation in their countries of residence for their assets in Germany, and all property benefits they received be exempted from "Equalization of bur­
den" taxation. ("Equalization of bUrden" was a tax imposed by law (14.8, j
1952) on property holders in Germany to alleviate the plight of Germans
expelled from the East into the area of West Germany. )
Personal compensation. however. would not make amends for all the property seized by the Nazis. nor would it in any way eonstitute atone·
ment for murder. for the suffering and hardships inflicted on the Jewish people as a whole. Consequently. Germany bore the additional responsi.
bility. which it was incumbent on her to discharge. of making global reo
paration to the Jewish people. This she musl do in commodities, services and olher means. Compensation must be made 10 world Jewish organiza­ tions endeavoring to rehabilitate the victims of Nazism in the countries to

Jewish Claims'

rael, but only to the Jewish organizations as the prospective recipients 01 ./ reparations.
On several occasions after submitting his memorandum, Easterman met
with Henderson' to explain the Jewish position on the question of com­
pensation, In his reply. in September 1950. Henderson argued that the
proposal regarding reparation must come from Germany herself; the·'
Allies could not oblige her to pay_ This aecurately reflected the Allied position and was restated later in response to Israel approaches on the subject.
As negotiations about concluding the Contractual Agreement between the Federal Republic and the Allies were about to get under way. Easter­ man, on II January 1951. again met with Henderson and presented the Jewish position on reparation, Henderson promised he would do his best to inHuence the Federal Republic to fulfil its obligations to the victims of
the Nazis. and informed Easterman that the Federal Government had al·
ready been advised by the Allies to pass a general claims law, Easterman
insisted that it was in the Allies' power to persuade Germany that shc had ~.
a moral obligation towards the Jews and that she was duty· bound to in· demnify for the harm done. Henderson countered that no amount of
money could compensate, the Jewish people for what bad been done to it.
nor could the German Government make adequate compensation. None­
theless, he asked what sum .would seem adequate as compensation. and
who was to receive it. Easterman spoke of 500 million pounds sterling
which should go in part to the Government of Israel and in part to a
grouping of international Jewish organizations concerned with rehabili·
tation and aid to the victims of Nazism." ~
A number of points,in Easterman's proposals were in fact Inter imple­
mented:
In tbe contractual agreement between the Federal Republic and the Al­
lies. the Federal Republic did undertake to pass a general claims law. Also. the sum mentioned by Easterman for global indemnification. half

 

 

~

which they bad escaped_ Jewish communities throughout the world had
i made very considerable sacrifices 10' Q.<~irt ,,-~d rehabilitate these refugees.
a task which will take many more years, and the Federal Republic must
be asked to shoulder part of the burden."
While van pam and Easterman both affirmed the right to claim global
reparation, Easterman, unlike van Dam. referred not to the State of Is­

a biUion pounds sterling. was the sum later demanded by the Govern-
ment of Israel (1.S billion 'dollars). Though not in his menlorandum of July 1950. Easterman did foresee that global reparation would be de· manded and received partly by the Govermnent of Israel and partly by a general representative Jewish organization.

V'

26 D.l.blins, N: op. cit. PP. 276-280. 27 Sal.bk.in" N: op. cit. pp. 2S;-290. E.steon.n, A: OHO. 19.;.1971. p. 6.

[46J 1471

Leading Up to Negotiation!

During these same months, towards the end of 19SO, the Government of Israel was also discussing the problem of reparation from Germany.
After Ihe Finance Minister received the van Dam memorandum. the Gov­
'emment appointed a Commission to consider Ihe various possibilities for
demanding reparalion from Germany. The Commission submitted a num­
ber of proposals' which were considered at a meeting in 1crusalem on 4

•i

 

 

CHAPTER IV

THE YEAR OF DECISION -

 

 

 

1951

September 19SO between representatives of the Government, the Jewish
Agency and the AJDC. This was the first step towards coordinating in
this sphere between the Government of Israel and the interested Jewish
organizations.
Georg Landauer, director of the Jewis~ Agency Central Bureau for the
settlement of German Jews. reviewed the proposals listed by the Com­
mission: an over-all Jewish center for restitution and indemnification,""­
which should be the only body authorized to deal with Germany, must be
set up jointly by the Government of Israel, the lewish Agency, the AIDC.
the Central British Fund, URO. JRSO, the Jewish Trust Commission and
the French reslilulion organization. Such an organization was essential; it
would prevent duplication among the ditTerent Jewish organizations in contacts with the Germans. and could create and maintain pressure on
Germany to secure the best possible indemnification law. This organiza­
tion would endeavor to reach an overall settlement of all Jewish claims on
Germany (including individual claims) and would ..Iso be in charge of the
transfers of commodilies to be accepted as reparation by Israel . ~
-"Maurice Boukstein. legal adviser 10 Ihe Jewish Agency in Ihe United
Stales, opposed participation by Ihe Israeli Governmenl and non-govern­
mental organizations in one and the same body. He argued Ihat in view
of the difficullies encountered by JRSO unlillhen, the over-all claim pro­

 

In Ihe prolonged and arduous process of formulating claims on Germany. 1951 w~s Ihe year of decision. All the etTorts by thc lewish organizations. the JeWIsh Agency and Ihe Israel Government. beginning during lhe war. all the contacts made and all the soundings taken. came to a head in Ihat
year. Germ~ny acceded 10 Ihe demand Ihal indemnification be paid and /
agreed to d.scuss the subject in direct negoliaHons with the Israel Govern­ menl and the ~orld Jewish organizations.
Initially. the contact with Germany was not direct. Direct contact was
preceded by numerous attempts to gel the Powers 10 pressure Germanv to comply. The fear that Germany would shortly regain its sovereignty and Ihus the Powers would soon be deprived of their in"u.n.e in maltcrs
of restitulion and indemnification brought forth a rush of vigorous ap- c'
peals. The firsl. in 1951. to address Ihe Four Powers was the Isruel Government.
In its NOle of 16 January 1951 to the Four Powers on the subject of
restitution and indemnification. the Israel Government reviewed the laws
and regulations promulgaled 10 date in Germany and the Allies and
declared Ihem inadequate. Israel presented the following demands:'

posed by Landauer had no prospect whatsoever of succeeding. Instead, ",., I) Retention by Ihe Allied Occupation Authorities of control of resti­

the separale contacts with Germany then in progress should be conlinued.
Ihe various bodies concerned coordinaling their .aclivities. Dr. Joseph
Schwartz. the director general of the AJDC. and Dr. Nahum Goldmann,
also inclined 10 this view. The proposal 10 sel up an overall organization
was-rejected and Boukstein's position - separate activilY with coordina­

tution and relention of the Mililary Board of Review or equivalenl non­
German appellale authorities.
2) bnprovemenl of existing indemnificalion laws - in particular. the adop\lon of a General Claims Law for Ihe whole of the Federal Republic
of Germany.

lion was adopled." 3) Imm:dia~e ~~sumption by the Government of Ihe Federal Republic
of finanCIal liabIlity under the indemnification laws. iointly and seyerally
with the Laender. '
4). Acceleration of aelual restitution and paymenl of compensation
claims.
28 The AIDe File., Ilestitution 1946-'1959. 5) The ur~ent solulion of Ihe currency lmnsfer problems.

(481 [491

Y~ar, 01 Decision
Leatling Up to Negotiations
~uir~ property to c1ai~ants outside the country by the currency rest ric- ,­

Israel further argued for her special interest in the transfer problem.
She had taken in the majority of the displaced persons who were in the
camps in Germany at the end of the war and had thereby shoulder¢ a financial burden which would otherwise have fallen on the Occupation
Authorities.1
On 20, 21 and 24 March 1951. the Western Allies replied to the Israel
note in virtually identical terms. The Soviet Union did not reply. They ex­
plained that the delay in the enactment of a Restitution law was a result
of their expectation that a uniform Restitution law for the whole of Ger­
many would be promulgated by the Allied Control Commission. Only af­
ter .they had become convinced that this could not be done were separate
restitution laws promulgated in the different zones. The sluggishness of the restitution procedure. they argued. merely reflected the nature of ju­
dicial proceedings; moreover. many. of the claimants were outside Ger­
many. As for a General Claims law. they were in touch with the Fede­

lions Imposed by the AllIes.
The Ismeli demand for continued Allied supervision '>f restitution and indemnific.luion in Germany had been a concern of Jewish organizations In the UnIted States and Britain from late 1950 to laIc 1951.' and was
discussed in the January 1951 meeting between Easterman and British v
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Henderson. The demand was repeat­
edly made that in any new agreement between Germany and the Allies. the Germa.n Government should be obligated to implement the legislation
~n reslltullon of prope~y. extend indemnification laws enacted by the AI­
hes. and speed up the Implementation process. Supervision of restitution."­
ho~ever. should remain in Allied hands. The fear of surrendering resti­
tutIon to German control was based on the following considerations:
German court decisions were unfavorable and required reversal by the .'
highest Allied court.

.J ral Government on the malter.

.

Several German political parties had openly favoured drastic modification

The problem of money transfers. they explained•. could not be readily .
solved. The extremely. unfavorable German foreign exchange position••
and the continuing need for external financial assistance. made it essential
to maintain the existing currency transfer restrictions in Germany. As long
as Germany was still dependent on external assistance to balance her cur- i
rent budget. capital exports could not be authorized. Until the time when
J the form of future relationships with Germany would be decided. the ques­
tion of how to settle restitution claims must remain in abeyance. Mean­
while, the Allies would stand firm on the implementation of the existing
restitution laws.'
In practice. however. many obstacles were impeding the full implemen­
tation of the restitution laws passed by the Allies in their respective zones.
Germans who held .Jewish property seized or acquired at a token price
were increasingly disinclined to return it. Hopeful that once the occupa­
tion status was replaced by a contractual agreement. property restoration
would cease. pressure groups encouraged every delay' in the implemen­
','J tation of the Restitution law. The authorities for their part. were unwi!·
\ ling to embroil themselves with their own citizens over this matter. They
were also hampered in transferring compensation for seized or illicitly ac-


Israel. Foreign Office: op. cit pp. 13-15.
Ibid. pp. 28-lJ.
t SOl

of the law. and no German voice had been raised in defence of restitution. ./
Germans holding Jewish property had consistently refused to acknow­
ledge their moral and legal liabilities.'
. The demands raised by the Committee of the five US organizations in
Its numerous conta~ts .wit!J.)tat.,?_~epartme!'.t..9fficialSduring these ·months
were summed up m ItS\iiiCmOrnn9_~ 18 April 1~!\Restitution of
property. It w:*, stated, ~ effectcQ()nly- afterendless delays. and
hence the Allied Boards of Review had to be operative until restitution
was co~p~ete. G.erm~ny had to be obliged to honor. implement and ex- ./
pand e"shng legIslatIOn and not to amend it without Allied authorization.
v It was also proposed that the Allies press the Bonn Government to enact
a General Claims law on the model of the law in the American Zone. Th~ German Government would have to provide the funds and personnel to Implement the laws on indemnification. The new settlement with Ger­ many must establish the rights of the Jewish successor organizations. Ger­ many would have to authorize the transfer of money to claimants outside
/ the country. The "Equalization of burden" tax should not be levied on
Jewish property.'

JRSO !.ellen 18.IO.t950. 6.12.1950. JRSO Lelle,. t9.12.l930.
The AJDC Files: Restitutions 1946-19S9.

[ 511


Le~!~~ Up 10 Negotiations' Year of Dt!ddon

These demands met with understanding on the part of the US and. Bri­ tish Governments. On 17 May 1951, the British Foreign Office apP()1O.ted
a three-member Commillee to examine progress in the disposal of claims
under British Mililary Law 59 in the British Zone of Germany and under
ordinance 180 in the British Sector of Berlin. (The British Law of 12 May
J 1949 was based on the American Military Government Law 59 and fol­
lowed it in all essential particulars.) The Committee was instruc~ed 10
, examine whether thc law was being properly cnforced; to asc~rtam ~he
causes of delays; to make recommendations concerning any aellon which
might be taken by Ihe Brilish High Co~missioner. 10 remove or .red.uce
, Ihe causes of delays before relinqulshmg supervISion over reslll~tlon.
Judge D.N. O'Sullivan, u:gal Adviser in the Brilish Zone. was appOinted Chairman of Ihis commillee, ils Olher members being Alexander Easler­
man and Norman Benlwich. The committee's composition and mst~c. lions both reflecled Ihe British Governmenl's readiness 10 acc:de 10 Jewl~h
J demands relaled 10 reslilulion and indemnificalion in Ihe BfltlSh Zone m
Germany.
The Committee sel out for Germany 10 hear evidence, and by 30 June
1951, al Lord Henderson's urgings for expeditiousness, the Com~itlee p,:­
senled its report. The conclusions were pUblished in an offiCial While
; Paper on 24 October 1951.' In ils report, the Committee prese~ted a com·
paralive survey of the implementalion of the restitution laws In the tliree
zones and in Berlin. It appeared that in the French Zone. 60% of the
claims were disposed of. in the US Zone 37%, in the British Zone 14%
and in Berlin oaly 5%. The Committee analyzed the causes of the delay
J in the Britj§/1 Zone and cited !wo ma jar political reasons:
The belief and hope among the Ger~ns that restitution I:gislation will be
abandoned or drastically modified when the occupalIOn statule was
brought to an end; and the creation of associations whose ;expressed ob­
ject was to organize opposition to the restitution laws, Thelf propaganda
was calculated to frustrate amicable selllements and to retard the work of

of Restitution .Authorities, delays in the consideration of claims against the former German Reich. uncertainly as to the application of Ihe pro­ posed Eqilliliziition of Blirdens !..Ali!.
To remedy the situation, the Committee recommended that the British
High Commissioner make 'a statement to the effect that restitution of pra­
perty. in accordance with the existing law, would conlinue. and that a~y
contractual agreement with the Federal Government include an obligation by that Government to preserve and implement the Restitution Law and to execute the orders of the Restitution Authorities. It was further recom­ mended that Allied supervision over Reslitution Tribunals be maintained. that steps be taken to increase the number of judges and office staff in the
Restitution Agencies and Chambers. that the machinery of restitution be , re-examined. and that until a decision be reached on the liabilities of the /
Reich, administrative action be taken to ensure that restitution claims
against the Reich be met. !..Aw 59'was to be amended so that there should
be no doubt that Ihe power to decide Ihe right of succession was vested in the Restitution Authorities, whose orders would be binding on German
aUlhorities. The DMIRM conversion rate for monetary claims should be "
fixed by law, and the Feder~1 Government should be urged to enact a Gen- .'
eral Claims !..Aw. The Committee also suggested that before supervision be
relinquished, a decision be taken concerning exemption from the proposed
"Equalization of Burden" tax on propertieS subject to restitution claims. v'
tbat Law 59 be amended to provide retroactive effect to amicable seUle·
ments affecting restitution, and that the Federal Government be urged to
accept liability for restitution claims against the German Reich and that
the Contractual Agreement with the Federal Government provide for the
continuance of this liability and for specific guarantees for its discharge.
.As for the Jewish Trust Corporation (JTC) it was to be invited to for­
multite an iiggregate claim for each of the wender with a view to an over- v
all settlement and the British autliorities were to initiate negotiations to this end with German authorities. Similar negotiations were to be initiated

the German authority concerned. with the Fedeml Government for the overall settlement of the claims 0:

<I-There were also administrative obstacles: difficulties in proving the right
of su=ssion. difficulties in converting Reichsmark' claims int~ .Deutsche
Mark claims, the absence of a General Claim Law in the BritIsh Zone,
the unwillingness of the German Public Authorities to give effect to orders

The World Jewish Congress: Survey of Policy and Action 1948-t953. The
AJDe Files: Restitution 1946-1959.

[ 52]

the JTC against the Reich.. Also action was to be taken to remove res­
trictions on the transfer of sums paid into blocked accounts of claimants ,
resident outside Federal Territory and a p'rovision was to be inserted in
the Contmetual Agreement to ensure that the restrictions were not reim­
posed.'

Great Britain, Foreign Office: Report of Ihe O'Sullivan Committee,

[53J

Lcading Up to NC8oliarions

The greater part of the Commillee's recommendations was accepted by
the British Foreign Office. Law 59 was' amended as suggested and steps
J were taken to halt the subversion of the reslitution laws in Germany and
to underseare the imporlance these laws would retain after the Contractual
Agreement was reached. On 27 July 1951, in a leiter which was released to
the press, the British High Commissioner Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick informed the Prime Ministers in the British Zone of Germany of the British Gov­
ernment's determination to see the restitution completed. Moreover, His
Majesty's Government also intended to see to' it that the Contractual
Agreement contain provisions ensuring the retention of the law regulating
restitution' in the British Zone, and the continued implementation of the
restitution program.'
This letter followed upon an earlier (12 June) lettedrom the American
High Commissioner, John McOoy, to the Prime Ministers in the US Zone, which, in aCGOro with the British committee's suggestion, served as its

YeDt ot Decision

As the question of restitution and compensation to individuals was being dealt With, the demand for global reparation by Germany to the Jewish
paople as a whole was also put forward. In its Note of 16 January 1951.
the Israel Government slated Ihat it reserved the right to devote a special
NO.te to a problem not covered by the existing laws concerned witb resti­
tution and indemnification - the problem of the reparation owed by
Germany to tbe Jewisb people in its entirely. The Jewish masses through."
ou~ Europe were murdered and there was no one to present individual
clalm~ for the restitution of their property or payment of compensation.
Th,s demand was later raised in the Israel Government note of 12 March 1951 to the F~ur Powe,rs. a note which is the keystone in the his­
tory of negotiations with Germany. Here for tbe first time tbe global Claim
on Germany was presenled in full detail and with all Ihe supporting ar­ guments. Nine months later it was accepted by Konrad Adenauer as Ihe
b~is. for negotiations betwoen Germany II.nd Israel and the Jewishl orga-.
mzallons. and It served as the basis for the Agreement reached at the close

precedent. As already noted, the personal attitude of McCloy helped spaed of the negotiations in Wassenaar. .

up the enactment of a Restitution Law. But he did not stop at that. After
the law was promulgated, he continued to press for the removal of dif­
ficulties and obstacles impeding its exeCution. In his efforts to. accelerate
reStitution, he dispatched leiters to the relevant German authorities and
inet personally with officials. He also encouraged the conclusion of global
settlements between the Loender of the US Zone and the JRSO, and
secured the restoration of heirless property.
His June 1951 open letter to the Prime Ministers in the US Zone. which
like the British letter was also sent to the press, was intended to remOve al! doubts concerning Allied intentions. After calling attention to letters
and comments that had appeared in the German press, proposals circu­
lated by organizations, and statements attributed to lAender Government
officials, all of whicb appeared to encourage speculation on US policy.with
respecl to restitution of identifiable property. McCloy went on 10 reaffirm
that policy. Persons and organizations deprived of their property as are·
suit of Nazi persecution should either have their property returned or be
compensated therefor. There was no intention to depart from tbese prin­

~e largest part of the Note was taken up with an account of Ihe bis­ toncal background and was Ihe work of Leo Koh~n, then Counsellor ill
the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. David' Horowitz. then Director·
General of the Ministry of Finance, provided tbe figures for calculating tbe
claim. He.advised tbat it be based on the fact that tbe Yisbuv in Palestine ,. and Israel had absorbed half a million Jews, victims of Nazi persecutioll.
and proposed evaluating the cost of absorbing these immigrants at three'
thousand dollars per capita. On a clear, definite and incontestable basis,
he thus reached the total of one and a half billion dollars."
In a slatement to the Knesset on 14 March 1951 on the subject of the
Note sent to the powers. Foreign Minister Mosbe Sbarett declared:
Before the whole world, this document presents the Great·Powers witb
~ claim that has not yet been placed on the International agenda. In
It, the ?overnment of Israel demands the imposition on Germany of
reparation payments to a total of a milliard and a half dollars a' sum
re~resenling no more than a quarter of the property tbat was si~. We

ciples or to annul tbe obligations incumbent on the holders of property ?,,?g for:vard ~his dema~d in the consciousness Ihat the German people

subject to restitution. Officials engaged in the administration of tbe res­ " titution law should be informed that Ihe US policy remains unchanged in
this respect.'
Ibid.
Ibid.

[54]

In Its entlf~ty IS responSJble for the killing and plunder inflicted by tbe
former regime on the House of Israel in Europe and that this respon­ sibility falls on both sectors of Germany. The Government of Israel,

10 Shinn.r. E: &-01 Korah U-Regashol. pp. 16-11.

155J

 

 

 

 

 

!

Leading Up to Negotiations

viewing as it does the State of Israel as the bearer of the rights of the slaughtered millions and as entitled and bound to demand satisfaction
in their name, being the sole sovereign embodiment of a people that
was condemned to death because of its nationality, claims for itself this
sum of reparation payment. The demand for reparation has been cal­
culated according to the burden that the people in Israel and Jewish
organizations throughout the world have taken upon themselves in
financing the rehabilitation and the absorption of a half a million
survivors of the Holocaust who have settled or will seUle in Israel."
The Note to the Powers was trenchantly expressed and gave vent to
Jewish billemess and hostility towards Germany. It opened with a horri· fying recital of the systematic slaughter of six millions in the Gennan campaign to wipe out the Jewish people. It estimated Jewish property
seized at six billion dollars. This sum included the collective fine imposed
on the Jews ~f Germany in November 1938 as well as other discriminatory fines. levies and taxes im·posed by the Nazi authorities. It declared th.t
the Israel Government considered the Federal Government, as the sueces­
sor Government, responsible for the deeds of the Third Reich.
The Note repeatedly stressed that there could be neither atonement nor ; material compensation for the crime of genocide, and all that could be

Year 01 Deci.siolT

not raised earlier, though from the moral point of view these claims were / '
more compelling that those of any other nation. Now, however, Israel could
speak in the name of the Jewish people and demand reparation in its
name.
The sum to be demanded had to bear a relation to the injury suffered
by the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis and at the same time also
to the financial cost involved in rehabilitating thc survivors in Israel. The Israel Government was not in a position to secure and submit detailed
data on seized Jewish property, estimated at six billion dollars. ~
Accordingly it only remained for Israel to base her claim On the sums
needed for the absorption and rehabilitation of the half-million survivors
of Nazism. The sum needed was one and a half billion dollars. This op- /
proximated the value of exports from the Fedcral Republic in 1950. With
the economic recovery of Germany, German exports were likely to in­
crease considerably. If the reparation payments were spread over 0 num- /
ber of years and transferred partly in the form of commodities, they would not be beyond the capacity of the German people. No progress would be
possible towards restoring Germany to her place in the family of nations
as long as this debt of hers remained unpaid.
In his speeeh to the Knesset (which was devoted entirely to the subject
of the note) Sharelt pointed out that payment of the reparation demand­

J done was to secure compensation for the heirs of the victims and rehabi­
litation for those who had remained alive. The Germans were still enjoying the fruits of the slaughter and seizure perpetrated by the Third Reich. The dead could not be brought hack to life, but the lillIe that was possible to
demand was that the German people restore Jewish property and pay for
the rehabilitation of the surviving remnant.
The second part of the Note described Palestine's role in absorbing and rehabilitating those rescued from Nazism from 1933 on. In Ihe eightecn years that had passed, the Yishuv in Palestine had taken in and rehabili­ tated about half a million people. Most of them had arrived possessionless. many as incurable invalids or cripples. Palestine did not possess a deve­ loped economy, and Israel, after its establishment, shaped its economic structure to create possibilities of livelihood for the immigrants. The great­ er part of the outlay involved feU on the people in Israel. Taxes were im­ posed and a regime of austerity introdueed. After the war, when repara­
tion were being claimed from Germany, the Jewish people had no for-
J mal legal status in the family of nations. For this reason its claims were

, I brael., Foreign Office; op. ClL pp. 24-25,

[ 56)

ed by the Israel Government would not release the German Government ./
from its responsibility for payment of individual compensation. It was
merely to serve as a contribution towards closing the account between the
German people and the Jewish people. ...
Sharett expressed the hope that the Four-Power Conference which was
about to meet would deal with the demand for reparation payments and would impose on Germany the duty to make these payments. Since the Conference would deal with the final settlement of the relationship between
the Powers and Gennany, it was inconceivable that Germany should be
permitted to return to the civilized world before she had surrendered her ,/
pillage."
It is worth one's while to dwell on a number of points in this Note and
in Sharett's speech which Were later discussed in the negotiations and in· corporated in the Agreement signed by Israel and the Federal Republic:
Israel here demanded one and a half billion dollars from Germany. She


12 Ibid. pp. 2S-2B.
( 57]


Leadi'!'8 Up to NegmiaJions yeo, of Decision

/ later was to divide the demand between the two sectors of Germany and
to demand one billion dollars from the Federal Republic. The negotiations
were in fact conducted on the basis of this sum and ended with a com­ promise by which Israel received seven hundred million dollars. In the Note it was suggested that part of the payments be made in commodities - as in fact was later done - and also that the payments be spread over a number of years so as to be within Germany's capacity to pay. In his
speech to the Knesset. Sharell also stressed that the global payment would
not free Germany from her duty to pay individual compensation to the survivors of Nazism. Both these subjects were later dealt with in parallel
. negotiations with the Germans and were concluded in two separate decu­
v ments - the global payment was later settled in the Shilumim (Repara­
tion) Agreement with Israel. and the payment of individual compensation and the necessary legislation in Protocol No. I with Ihe Claims Conference.

After the Note was presented to the Powers, David Horowitz visited Washington. London and Paris to seek acceptance of Israel's demands. His first meeting was with the American Secretary of State, Dean Acheson. whose attitude towards Israel was one of extreme reserve. Horowitz des­ cribed the Holocaust 10 Acheson and prescribed Israel's moral and legal claim to reparation payments from Germany. He stressed that the Nazi crimes could not be atoned for. but it was inconceivable that to rehabili­ tale the victims of Nazism Israel should suffer economic hardship while

likely bear the brunt of the Israeli demand. The Treasury representative
was doubtful that Israel's claim could be acceded to. ./
Horowitz repeated his argumenls in a' meeting with Averell Harriman,
an outstanding political figure al that time, who listened. but made no
comment.
After the series of talks ill Washington, Horowitz continued on to Lon­
dOll where. as Byroade suggested, he met the American representalive at
the committee of the occupying Powers. 'This representalive had appa­
rently received instructions to assist Israel in her claim, bul not to assume
any obligation regarding the extent of Ihe reparation payme~ts.. He spoke ,
of the practieal difficulties involved, proposed that a Commission be ap-'"
pointed to consider the problem, pointed to Germany's economic d!fficul­
ties, and suggested United States mediation to bring about contact With the
Germans. Horowitz replied with reserve: Israel wished to secure recog­ nition on principle from Germany of the debl she owed Israel and the Jewish people. but any direct contact 'was extremely difficult in Ihe lighl of
the political and emotional obstacles.
In London. Horowitz also met wilh British Under-Secretary for Fo­
reign Affairs Henderson. While Henderson's general reaction was favou­
rable, he foresaw many .difficulties of an economic nature, and doubted
thai Germany' could be made to consent to settling Israel's claim. ./
In Paris Horowitz ';'et Charpentier of the French Foreign Ministry, ~
who. whil~ also stressing the obstacles, hinted that Israel should remain '

the Germans enjoyed Ihe (ruils of all their pillage. . . persistent. ..

Acheson was impressed by the arguments. bul he was not, he claimed,
in a position to decide the matter and referred Horowitz to Henry By­ 1/ roade, head of the State Departmenl German Desk. They met the follow·
ing day, and Byroade declared thai the arguments and eonsideralions Ho­ rowitz had put before him represented an irrefutable moral claim. He promised to write to Ihe American representative al the committee of the three occupying Powers in London and ·to request him 10 see Horowitz. Byroade himself would nol undertake to say anything on the matters at

The last in Horowitz' series of meetings was with Alexander Parod.. '
also of the French Foreign Ministry. whose inHuence in this sphere was decisive. It was a disappointing meeting. Parodi's attitude was purely Ie· ­
galistic. He declared his support from the mora! point of view but argued
that the State of Israel had no legal standing at all since she had not been "
in existence at the time of the Holocaust"
These reactions encountered by Horowitz later reappeared in the
Weslern Allies' reply to Israel on 5 July 1951. (The U.S.S.R. again did v

issue. claiming tbat he was without inslructions. . not reply.)

Horowitz next mel with a representative ';f Ihe Treasury who curiously
,Ienough was Ihe one 10 lay bare the politieal aspects. The United States.
be indicated, was interested in close relations with Germany and would
not readily pr~ure her in any matler that might not be to her liking. He
also explained that since the American taxpayer bore the main burden of

/ The replies were courteau6, careful and evasive. The Allies expressed
their sympathy for the Jewish people after· what the Nazis had done and agreed with Israel's view thai no material compensation COUld. make up
>' for the killing and the sufferings inHicted on the Jews. The Umted Slates

German economic rehabilitation, it was he who in Ihe final analysis would 13 Horowitz, 0: Ha~Sllilllmim pp. 14-15.

[ 581 ( 591

Leading' :UIJ to NcgolioriortS

j and Britain stressed that during the war they themselves had given refuge
to numerous victims of Nazism. They also dwelt at length on what had
been done so for' for Jewish refugees. Reference was made to clause 8 of
the Paris Agreement that had set up a special Fund to help refugees, the
major part of which had gone to help Jews; 350.000 pounds stcrling had
I been given to Israel by Britain (on 30 March 1949), money which Bri·
tain had received ,under the Paris Agreement as Mandatory Palestine's
.share of reparation; the Allies had also contributed to the IRO, which
I paid the cost of transferring refugees from Europe to Palestine.
The Allies further stated that they did not see how they could make the opening of a neW phase in the relations between the Allies and the Federal Republic conditional on the Federal Government's acceptance of respon· sibility to pay reparation to the Government of Israel. Pending a defi· nitive settlement, the date of which could not then be predicted, they were
I precluded by the Paris Agreement from asserting. either on their own be· J half or on behalf of other States. further reparation demands on Germany."
Despite aclcnowledgement of the moral justice of the Jewish claim
once the scale of the Holocaust became more fully known - the attitude
of the Powers, and particularly of the United Slates, was rooted in other
.! notably political, military and economic considerations. In the background
loomed the "Cold War". The United States, through the Marshall Plan,
'was determined to rehabilitate weak and unstable countries in Europe, in
order to prevent their being overwhelmed by Communism. Germany's geographical situation and potential strength could not be ignored, Thus
the Allies' plans for punishing Germany soon gave way to plans for her
, rehabilitation and re-integration: Germany was to be brought closer to
Western Europe and fitted into the economic, political and military orga·
niuttions being set up there.
Hence. the United States, which had not eracted even the reparation
; due it, was not ahout to alienate Germany. an important potential ally,
by pressing her to pay Ii Jarge sum in reparation to another State. Eco· noinic considerations further reinforced this tendency. Germany was still
, being assisted and supported by the Marshall plan. and in the United
States its ability to carry the burden.of reparation was seriously doubted. It was reared tbat in consequence the biJI of payment would ultimately
, be addressed to the American taxpayer.
To secure acceptance of the Jewish claim without having themselves

Year of Decision

to coerce Germany into paying, the Americans were ready to recommend ./
direct negotiations between Germany and Israel. They were prepared to
exert their influence over Germany in the course of the negotiations. but
not to claim the money from Germany for Israel."
The answer Israel received from the Powers pointed to the inelutabiJity
of a change in tactics by Israel and the Jewish organiuttions. For several years, despite the establishm.ent of the Federal Republic, they bad con·
tinued to address their claims to the Allies. The possibility of turning di· ~
reetJy to Germany was not considered. Now they reached the conclusion
that the Allies would not exert themselves to secure reparation for .­
others. In fact, the only positive response to their claim was the German, Direct contact with the Federal Republic soon followed. ."..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IS Rubin, S: OHD 29,).1971, pp, 6-7,

14 Israel. Foreign Office: op. cit. pp. 34-41.
[ 61] 160]


l f 3. g
I 6::. ~
~s-'j
Iq9(
~ I ,
America's Germany

John J. McCloy and the
Federal Republic of Germany .





THOMAS ALAN SCHWARTZ














Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
199J·

176 America's Gennany

gram. Among the most important opponents of America's rapid rap­ prochement with Germany were liberal and Jewish organizations, which echoed the sentiments ofIsrael's Foreign Minister, Moshe Shar­
ett, when he told the United Nations in September 1950, "The people
ofIsraeIand Jews throughout the world view with consternation and
distress the progressive readmission of Germany by the family of
nations, with her revolting record intact, her guilt unexpiated, and her heart unchanged." Despite the Cold War atrriosphere of Washington, such groups had an important voice in the Democratic party and with President Truman, who was himself inclined to believe that Nazism
was an inherent part of the German character. To convince this im­
portant segment of American public (and elite) opinion that the Fed­
eral Republic. was a new Germany, with the desire to make amends
for the crimes of Hider, a generous restitution pOlicy was essential. 36
McCloy's· role in the restitution issue was less direct than his in­
volvement with the war criminals, leading some recent German liter­ ature to express skepticism about his actual influence. McCloy's
influence was important, but he used it in a more careful and more
subde way than he did on some other issues where the American
interest was more immediately apparent. He wanted to avoid the
charge that the United States was either "forcing" the Germans to
provide restitution or that it was "indifferent" to such a gesture. Either
impression would only have increased the unpopularity of Wieder­ gutmachung among the Germans, as well as having a negative effect on public opinion in other countries. The German public, although expressing agreement with the general principle of restitution, placed little priority on assisting the Jews; and a majority actually opposed the treaty with Israel. McCloy also needed to balance his concern for the restitution issue with the other priorities of American policy, such as securing a German defense contribution and promoting Germany's· .
economic recovery. But within these constraints he played a decisive,
role in moving the Adenauer government to follow its better IStlllCO!.':C); w'
overcome its domestic opposition, and take a small first step UI\"V<U'" '.
reconciliation with the Jews.37
From the very beginning of his tenure in office McCloy placed
high priority on Germany's attitude toward its own Jewish
nity. In July 1949 he told a conference of German Jewish delc~galc~
in Heidelberg that "the world will carefully watch the new
German state, and one of the tests by which it will be judged

Dealing with the Past: Moral Integration 177

its attitude towards the Jews and how it treats them." He also em­ phasized "that the moment that Germany has forgotten the Buchen­ walds and the' Auschwitzes, that was the point at which everyone could begin to despair of any progress in Germany." One of his first
actions while still Military Governor was to reverse a previous decision
of General Clay's and approve a General Claims Law for indemnifi­ cation of the victims of Nazism. McCloy's words and actions made it clear to German leaders that the United States would favor initiatives toward restitution, just as he made clear to them the interest of the
United States in Franco-German rapprochement.38
To strengthen this message further, McCloy played a direct role in
assisting the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) in its
activities in Germany. The JRSO, established by American decree, was
declared the legal successor to all heirless Jewish property in the
American-occupied zone. It was empowered to dispose of this prop­
erty and use the proceeds for general Jewish purposes. Under the
leadership of Benjamin Ferencz, a former Nuremberg prosecutor, the
JRSO worked with the individual Linder in the American zone in an attempt to, obtain restitution. Ferencz later recalled that he went to McCloy "dozens of times with problems," and he could not recall "a single time when I went away other thap being completely satisfied with the way (McCloy] handled it." The High Commissioner often assisted the JRSO in pushing the German Lander into action. In April 1950 he told a meeting of the Minister-Presidents that they should work with the JRSO to arrange "some sort ofglobal settlement" which would provide a speedy solution to many of the claims. He pointed
out that this ''would make an excellent impression abroad where a
certain amount of bad feeling and criticism haS been created by the
long delays." After these negotiations for global settlements began,
" the High Commission continued to serve as mediator between the'
Lander and the JRSO, especially when it became clear that "the ......'Ull.1U" do not have enthusiasm for the bulk settlement." As one
UIllem:an official noted, "The Germans profess the view that numerous
claims will turn out to be against innocent third parties or
buyers from former Jewish owners who have not claimed
~lntllltIOifl because they received full value and do not feel themselves
way wronged or aggrieved." During the next two years the
Lander reached agreements on bulk settlements with the
but not without considerable "prodding" by McCloy. Informed

178 America's Germany

of Bremen's settlement with the JRSO, McOoy wrote Minister-Pres­ ident Wilhehn Kaisen that "I know you share my view of the impor­ tance of [restitution] in the development of Germany's future international relations." McCloy also made sure that the JRSO's ad­
ministrative expenses were included in the mandatory occupation costs
and did not require repayment to the German' government.39
,Of even greater significance for the restitution question was the negotiation of the Luxembourg Treaty of 1952 between the Federal
Republic and Israel. The difficult path to this treaty has been described
in detail elsewhere. Despite the importance of Adenauer's desire for
reconciliation, as well as the persistence of the negotiating teams from both nations, foreign inf;luence did playa decisive role in securing the
treaty; Without foreign pressure, opposition to the treaty, consisting
of powerful forces in both countries, might have produced a stalemate. Political leaders in both Germanyahd Israel drew strength from the perception that negotiations resulting in a treaty would find support in "world opinion," by which they meant the United States.
Israeli leaders were very critical of the American-sponsored rehabil­ itation of the Federal Republic. It took serious economic difficulties within Israel to overcome their aversion to negotiating directly with
the Gennans. In January and March 1951 Israel, submitted notes to
the four occupying powers, demanding the payment of reparations in the amount of $1.5 billion. The Soviet Union did not respond, but the Western powers replied that they could not force Gennany to make such a payment and advised Israel to deal directly with Gennany. Although various infonnal and highly secretive contacts had occurred between Germans and Israelis in 1949 and 1950, the first meeting between Adenauer and David Horowitz, governor of the Bank of
Israel, took place in Paris during the final negotiation of the Schuman '
Plan in April 1951. American diplomats helped arrange this secret
meeting, acknowledging the implicit connection between Gennany's . acceptance by the West and its need to make a gesture toward IsraeL.
In September 1951, only a· few days after the Allies had agreed
begin the final phase of negotiating the contractual agreements
the end of occupation, Adenauer spoke movingly in the fiunUClil:"!5,',
expressing a willingness to make amends to the Jewish people for
"unspeakable crimes" committed in "the name of the Gennan
ple."4()
Adenauer's support for restitution stemmed from his religious

Dealing with the Past: Moral Integration . 179

moral convictions, a strong appreciation of the contributions of Ger­ man Jews to German life; and his deep distaste for the vulgarity of anti-Semitism. But although Adenauer's underlying motives were
moral, he never lost sight of the political aspects of the question. The
timing of his September speech was clearly designed to improve the
general atmosphere for his talks with the Allies, and most important,
. to strengthen his standing with American leaders and public opinion. (Schumacher and the SPD also strongly supported Adenauer's posi­
tion on this issue.) The Chancellor: had heard from McCloy that the major U.S. concerns about Germany had to do with the persistence
of Nazi beliefs and the question of whether Germany had really em­ braced democracy. Adenauer also believed that American Jews had a powerful influence· on American policy toward Germany, and he
hoped to reduce their opposition through a program of reparations.
Indeed the positive response of American and world opinion to his
.speech must have confirmed his estimation. The Washington Post called
it "the best thing that [has come) from Germany since before 1933," the Niw York Times termed it "a phase of moral regeneration," and
other newspapers around the United States and in Europe .echoed
these sentiments.4l
In December 1951 on a trip to London Adenauer met secretly with
Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress, and
agreed to set $1 billion (DM 4.3 billion) as a basis for negotiations. Although he had not secured Cabinet approval, Adenauer's unilateral
declaration helped secure an Israeli willingness to negotiate despite
intense popular opposition. In Israel thousands demonstrated outside Parliament on January 9, 1952, as it approved negotiations by avote
of 61 to 52. In Germany opposition was more muted but just as
.significant. The Finance Minister, Fritz Schaffer, vigorously protested . Adenauer's commitment,· arguing that Germany could not afford to
specify any amount until its defense contribution and the question of
.its external debts were resolved. With talks set to begin in London on
settlement of Germany's outstanding debt, Schaffer hoped to delay
'German commitment to IsraeL He found an ally in Hermann
the prominent banker and leader of Germany's delegation to the
talks. Their opposition led Adenauer to back away from his
ornllllitm,ent to Goldmann by instructing his negotiators to bide for
and try to ascertain what the Israelis "really wanted."42
''''l'i,VUclU'\JIll; between the German government and the Israelis be­

180 America's Germany
,
gan in March 1952 at the Hague. The. United States, though not a
direct participant, informed the Israelis that it would "await with
sympathetic interest the outcome of the [Hague] negotiations." The
Americans wanted Adenauer to pursue the talks, but at the same time
they feared any German attempt to shift the responsibility and financial
burdens ofWiedergutmachung to American shoulders. Yet when Abs
asked the United States to suggest postponing the negotiations with Israel, the State Department rejected the notion, fearing the political effects in Israel. McCloy assured Nahum Goldmann, "While I told the Chancellor that I could sympathize with those who had responsibility .~:ver the- extent of commitments covering the military contribution,
the debt settlement, and payments to Israel, I thought it would be
unwise to postpone commencement of the discussions." When Ad- .
enauer told his Cabinet of America's continuing interest in negotia­
tions, one of the Cabinet members noted "the influence ofMcCloy."43
Despite American encouragement the Hague talks still faced enor­
mous difficulties. The Israeli government had set its initial demand at $1 billion, but the Jewish Claims Conference, representing Jews out­
side the Federal Republic and Israel, asked for an additional $500 million. The Germans, however, stressed their "limited ability to pay"
because of. incomplete economic. recovery and the unresolved matter
of foreign debts. They insisted that the London and Hague negotia­
tions were connected, and Abs argued that Germany could not take
on additional obligations without the approval of its foreign creditors.
To the Israelis this argument seemed to betray Adenauer's original
position that Germany's commitment was fu.t1damentaUy moral and not simply another financial obligation with an even lower priority
than Germany's earlier debts, Soonit appeared that the talks would
collapse.44
In this tense situation the Israeli Ambassador in Washington ap­ pealed to Acheson to intervene with the Germans. He stressed the
difficult political situation in Israel which would result if the Germans
attempted to "dovetail Hague and London Conferences." Acheson
responded cautiously, stressing that it was reasonable for the Germans
to consider their other commitments, and that the United States did
not want to "press Germans into commitments which might increase
German dependence on US aid." Yet he also made it clear (and
emphasized this to McCloy) that the "Germans should
unfortunate repercussions which would ensure [sic] ifthey now

Wikipedia Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was United States Solicitor General (1938-1940), United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954). He is the only person in United States history to have held all three of those offices. He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. A "county-seat lawyer", he remains the last Supreme Court justice appointed who did not graduate from any law school (though Justice Stanley Reed who served from 1938 to 1957 was the last such justice to serve on the court), although he did attend Albany Law School in Albany, New York for one year. He is remembered for his famous advice that "any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances"[1] and for his aphorism describing the Supreme Court, "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."[2] Many lawyers revere Justice Jackson as one of the best writers on the court, and one of the most committed to due process protections from overreaching federal agencies. Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 U.S. Federal appointments and politics, 1934–1940 3 U.S. Attorney General, 1940–1941 4 U.S. Supreme Court, 1941–1954 4.1 Feud with Hugo Black 4.2 Jackson and Dennis v. United States 4.2.1 The "clear and present danger" test 4.2.2 Dennis v. United States 4.2.2.1 Background 4.2.2.2 Jackson's concurrence 4.2.2.3 Conclusion 4.3 Justice Jackson and Brown v. Board of Education 4.4 Justice Jackson and procedural due process 5 International Military Tribunal, 1945–1946 6 Death and Legacy 7 Portrayal in popular culture 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links Early life[edit] Born on a family farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania and raised in Frewsburg, New York, Jackson graduated from Frewsburg High School in 1909 and spent the next year as a post-graduate student attending Jamestown High School in Jamestown, New York. Jackson did not attend college. At age 18, he went to work as an apprentice in a two-lawyer Jamestown law office, then attended Albany Law School, in Albany, New York during 1911–12. Although Jackson completed the second year of the School's two-year program, it denied him a law degree because he was under age twenty-one. During the summer of 1912, Jackson returned to Jamestown. He apprenticed again for the next year. He passed the New York bar examination in 1913 and joined a law practice in Jamestown, New York. In 1916, he married Irene Alice Gerhardt in Albany. In 1917, Jackson was recruited to practice law in Buffalo, New York. He worked for Penney, Killeen & Nye, a leading Buffalo law firm located in the Ellicott Square building, primarily defending the International Railway Company in trials and appeals. In Buffalo, the Jacksons lived at 49 Johnson Park (the Lyndhaven apartment building). In late 1918, Jackson was recruited back to Jamestown to serve as the city's corporation counsel. Over the next 15 years, he built a very successful private law practice, becoming a leading lawyer in New York State and, through practice and bar association activities, a prominent young lawyer nationally. In 1930, Jackson was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. In 1933, Jackson was elected chairman of the American Bar Association's Conference of Bar Association Delegates (a predecessor to today's ABA House of Delegates). U.S. Federal appointments and politics, 1934–1940[edit] Jackson was appointed to federal office by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934. Jackson served initially as general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue (today's Internal Revenue Service). In 1936, Jackson became Assistant Attorney General heading the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, and in 1937 he became Assistant Attorney General heading the Antitrust Division. In 1938, Jackson became United States Solicitor General, serving until January 1940 as the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court. Jackson was a supporter of the New Deal, litigating against corporations and utilities holding companies.[3] He participated in the 1934 prosecution of Samuel Insull,[4] the 1935 income tax case against Andrew Mellon,[5][6][7] and the 1937 anti-trust case against Alcoa, in which the Mellon family held an important interest.[8] President Roosevelt regarded him as a potential heir, and in 1937 considered having him run for Governor of New York. Jackson was a fellow Democrat, fellow country squire, and fellow Dutch-American.[3] U.S. Attorney General, 1940–1941[edit] Jackson was appointed Attorney General by Roosevelt in 1940, replacing Frank Murphy. As Attorney General, Jackson supported a bill introduced by Sam Hobbs that would have legalized wiretapping by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or any other government agency, if it was suspected that a felony was occurring.[9] The bill was opposed by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman James Lawrence Fly, and did not pass.[10] When Harlan Fiske Stone replaced the retiring Charles Evans Hughes as Chief Justice in 1941, Roosevelt appointed Jackson to the resulting vacant Associate's seat. U.S. Supreme Court, 1941–1954[edit] In 1943, Jackson wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, which overturned a public school regulation making it mandatory to salute the flag and imposing penalties of expulsion and prosecution upon students who failed to comply. Jackson's stirring language in Barnette concerning individual rights is widely quoted. Jackson's concurring opinion in 1952's Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (forbidding President Harry Truman's seizure of steel mills during the Korean War to avert a strike), where Jackson formulated a three-tier test for evaluating claims of presidential power, remains one of the most widely cited opinions in Supreme Court history (it was quoted repeatedly by Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito during their confirmation hearings). Feud with Hugo Black[edit] Justices Jackson and Hugo Black had profound professional and personal disagreements dating back to October 1941, the first term in which they served together on the Supreme Court. According to Dennis Hutchinson, editor of The Supreme Court Review, Jackson objected to Black’s practice of importing his personal preferences into his jurisprudence.[11] Hutchinson quotes Jackson as having remarked, “With few exceptions, we all knew which side of a case Black would vote on when he read the names of the parties.”[12] While Hutchinson points out that Jackson objected to Black's style of jurisprudence in such cases as Minersville v. Gobitis (1940) and United States v. Bethlehem Steel (1942), Black’s involvement in the Jewell Ridge case struck Jackson as especially injudicious. In Jewell Ridge Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers (1945), the Supreme Court faced the issue of whether to grant the coal company’s petition for rehearing on the grounds that the victorious miners were, in a previous matter, represented by Crampton P. Harris, who was Justice Black’s former law partner and personal lawyer. Despite this apparent conflict of interest, Black lobbied the Court for a per curiam denial of the petition. Justice Jackson objected, with the result that Jackson filed a concurrence disassociating himself from the ruling and, by implication, criticizing Black for not addressing the conflict of interest. Jackson also strongly objected to Black’s judicial conduct in Jewell Ridge for another reason. As Jackson later alleged, while Justice Murphy was preparing his opinion, Black urged that the court hand down its decision without waiting for the opinion and dissent. In Jackson’s eyes, the "only apparent reason behind this proposal was to announce the decision in time to influence the contract negotiations during the coal strike" between the coal company and the miners, which were taking place at the time.[13] Jackson probably regarded Black’s conduct as unbecoming of a Supreme Court Justice in another related matter. On April 3, 1945, The Southern Conference for Human Welfare held a dinner, at which it honored Justice Black as the 1945 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award. Fred M. Vinson, interestingly, spoke at the dinner. While Jackson declined an invitation to the event, citing a conflict arising out of the fact that a number of leading sponsors of the dinner were then litigants before the Supreme Court, Black attended the dinner and received his award. Crampton Harris, counsel in two pending cases, Jewell Ridge and CIO v. McAdory (1945), was one of the sponsors.[14] Jackson would later take these grievances public in two public cables from Nuremberg. Jackson had informally been promised the Chief Justiceship by Roosevelt; however, the seat came open while Jackson was in Germany, and FDR was no longer alive. President Harry S. Truman was faced with two factions, one recommending Jackson for the seat, the other advocating Hugo Black. In an attempt to avoid controversy, Truman appointed Fred M. Vinson. Jackson blamed machinations by Black for his being passed over for the seat and publicly exposed some of Black's controversial behavior and feuding within the Court. The controversy was heavily covered in the press and cast the New Deal Court in a negative light and had the effect of tarnishing Jackson's reputation in the years that followed. On June 8, 1946, Jackson sent a cable to President Truman. Jackson’s cable to Truman began with an insincere offer of congratulations to the President for his appointment of Vinson. But, the cable then quickly addressed the rumor, which Jackson had gotten wind of in Nuremberg, that Truman had appointed Fred Vinson in part to avert a resignation on the part of Justice Black. Rumors had been circulating in Washington that Black would resign in the event that Truman chose Jackson as Chief Justice Stone’s successor. "I would be loathe to believe that you would concede to any man a veto over court appointments."[15] Jackson closed his cable by stating that he could not continue his service as an Associate Justice under Vinson if an associate "had something on [him]", which would disqualify him from serving, or if he, Truman, regarded Jackson’s opinion in the Jewell Ridge case as a "gratuitous insult" to Justice Black.[16] After receiving a response from Truman in which he denied having given consideration to, or having even heard of, the rumor of Black’s threatened resignation, Jackson rashly fired off a second cable to Congress on June 10. This cable stated Jackson's reasons for his belief that Justice Black faced a conflict of interest in Jewell Ridge, from which he wrongfully, at least, in Jackson's eyes, did not recuse himself, and ended with Jackson's threat that if such a practice "is ever repeated while I am on the bench I will make my Jewell Ridge opinion look like a letter of recommendation by comparison."[17] Jackson and Dennis v. United States[edit] The "clear and present danger" test[edit] In order to understand Jackson’s concurrence in Dennis v. United States, a basic understanding of the origin of the clear and present danger test is helpful. In 1919, the Supreme Court decided Schenck v. United States.[18] In Schenck, the petitioners, members of the Socialist Party, were convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for printing and distributing circulars asserting that American citizens had a right to oppose the draft during World War I because, among other things, it violated the United States Constitution.[19] The Schenck decision promulgated the clear and present danger test which provided the standard for sustaining a conviction when speech is relied upon as evidence that an offense has been committed.[20] Justice Holmes, writing for a unanimous court, affirmed the convictions of the lower court positing: “We admit that, in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. . . . The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.”[21] Dennis v. United States[edit] Background[edit] In 1951, the Supreme Court decided Dennis v. United States.[22] In Dennis, the petitioners were zealous Communists who organized for the purpose of teaching the “Marxist-Leninist Doctrine”.[23] The principal texts used to teach the doctrine were: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Foundations of Leninism by Stalin; The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels; and State and Revolution by Lenin.[16] The Petitioners were convicted for violating §2 and §3 of the Smith Act which, among other things, made it unlawful to conspire to organize a group which advocates the overthrow of the United States government by force or violence.[24] The issue before the Supreme Court was “[w]hether either §2 or §3 of the Smith Act, inherently or as construed and applied in the instant case, violates the First Amendment and other provisions of the Bill of Rights...”[25] Jackson's concurrence[edit] In Dennis, Jackson concludes that the clear and present danger test (the “Test”) should not be applied.[26] To this end, Jackson analyzed: the effect communism had outside the United States; the nature of communists; and the problems with applying the Test. Jackson’s analysis can be summarized as follows: On the effect communists historically had on foreign countries, Jackson analyzed their effect on Czechoslovakia.[27] In Czechoslovakia, a communist organization disguised as a competing political faction secretly established its roots in key control positions “of police and information services”.[16] During a period of national crisis a clandestine Communist organization appeared and overthrew the Czechoslovakian government.[16] Establishing control of mass communication and industry, the communist organization’s rule was one of “oppression and terror”.[16] Ironically, as Jackson points out, the communist organization suppressed the very freedoms which made its conspiracy possible.[16] On the nature of communists, Jackson characterizes them as an extraordinarily dedicated and highly selective group disciplined and indoctrinated by communist policy.[28] The goal of Party members is to secretly infiltrate key positions of government, industry, and unions and to leverage their power once in such positions.[16] Jackson goes on to say that although “Communist[s] have no scruples against sabotage, terrorism, assassination, or mob disorder ...” they “advocate[] force only when prudent” which “may never be necessary, because infiltration and deception may be enough.”[29] On the problems with applying the Test in Dennis, Jackson deems significant that the Test was authored “before the era of World War II revealed the subtlety and efficacy of modernized revolutionary technique used by totalitarian parties.”[30] Jackson believed that the application of the test should be limited to cases bearing strong enough likeness to those for which it was originally crafted—i.e. “criminality of hot-headed speech on a street corner, or parading by some zealots behind a red flag, or refusal of a handful of Jehovah Witness school children to salute our flag ...”[16] Expressing strong concern that the expansive construction the Court had recently given the Test in Bridges v. State of California,[31] Jackson asserted that the Test provided communists with “unprecedented immunities” while “Government is captive in a judge-made verbal trap.”[30] Jackson goes on to describe the application of the Test to communists when determining the constitutionality of the Smith Act facially or as applied as one of “apprais[ing] imponderables, including international and national phenomena which baffle the best informed foreign offices and our most experienced politicians.”[32] Jackson concludes his First Amendment analysis in Dennis by asserting that: “The authors of the clear and present danger test never applied it to a case like this, nor would I. If applied as it is proposed here, it means that the Communist plotting is protected during its period of incubation; its preliminary stages of organization and preparation are immune from the law; the Government can move only after imminent action is manifest, when it would, of course, be too late.”[16] Conclusion[edit] In the end the Court applied its own version of the clear and present danger test in Dennis[33] essentially disregarding the analytical elements of probability and temporality which had previously appeared to be requirements of the doctrine.[34] Jackson, however, as one commentator put it, expressed in Dennis (at least with regards to Communists) that “when used as part of a conspiracy to act illegally, speech loses its First Amendment protection.”[35] Jackson’s hardened stance on the First Amendment in Dennis may be attributed to strong anti-Communist sentiment which had a grip on Americans during the time of the decision.[36] In William Wiecek’s article discussing the history of anticommunism in the United States, he asserts that: “[T]he manufactured image of the domestic Communist, cultivated and propagated by [J. Edgar] Hoover, the Catholic Church, the American Legion, and political opportunists, made of Communists something less than full humans, full citizens, fully rights-endowed. Even sophisticated jurists like ... Robert Jackson were captives of that image, anesthetizing [his] sensitivity to deprivation of rights.[37] In Dennis and other Communist cases between 1950 and 1956, the Supreme Court overcame the problem of facts not supporting the results it was determined to reach by accepting a generic ‘proof’ of Communism’s seditious nature. Disregarding all evidence of both the Party’s and individual members’ renunciation of violence, the Court substituted literary evidence from outdated classics of Marxism-Leninism, most written by Europeans of an earlier era, and refused to consider whether the living people before them actually subscribed to those doctrines...”[38] Justice Jackson and Brown v. Board of Education[edit] One of Jackson's law clerks during 1952–53, William H. Rehnquist, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1971 and became Chief Justice in 1986. In December 1971, after Rehnquist's nomination had been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and was pending before the full Senate, a 1952 memorandum came to light that he had written as Jackson's law clerk in connection with the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education that argued in favor of affirming the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist wrote a brief letter attributing the views to Jackson and was confirmed. In his 1986 hearing he was questioned about the matter. His explanation of the memorandum was disputed in both 1971 and 1986 by Jackson's former secretary, and scholars have questioned its plausibility. However, the papers of Justices Douglas and Frankfurter indicate that Justice Jackson voted for Brown in 1954 only after changing his mind.[39] The ultimate views of Justice Jackson about Brown can be found in his 1954 unpublished draft concurrence.[40][41][42] The “Memorandum by Mr. Justice Jackson, March 15, 1954”, is available with Jackson’s papers in the Library of Congress but did not become publicly available until after Rehnquist’s 1986 hearing for Chief Justice of the United States. Jackson’s draft concurrence in Brown, divided into four parts, shows how he struggled with how to write an effective opinion to strike down segregation. In Part 1 of Jackson’s draft concurrence in Brown, he wrote that he went to school where “Negro pupils were very few” and that he was “predisposed to the conclusion that segregation elsewhere has outlived whatever justification it may have had.” Despite his own opinions regarding desegregation, Jackson acknowledged the inability of the Court to "eradicate" the "fears, prides and prejudices" that made segregation an important social practice in the South. Jackson thus concluded that the Northerners on the court should be sensitive to the conditions that brought segregation to the South. In Part 2 of the draft memorandum, Justice Jackson described the legal framework for forbidding segregation in “DOES EXISTING LAW CONDEMN SEGREGATION?”. Jackson notes the difficulty for the court that was "supposed not to make new law but only to declare existing law," to overturn a decision of such longevity as Plessy. Looking at the doctrine of original intent with regard to the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Jackson found no evidence that segregation was prohibited, particularly since states that ratified the Fourteenth Amendment had segregated schools at the time. Jackson concluded, "I simply cannot find in the conventional material of constitutional interpretation any justification for saying" that segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. In Part 3 of the draft memorandum titled “ENFORCEMENT POWER LIMITS” describes enforcement by Congress of the Fourteenth Amendment. Jackson addressed the possibility of leaving enforcement to Congress, particularly because the “courts have no power to enforce general declarations of law." Jackson noted that while segregation was already fading in some states, it would be difficult to overcome in those states where segregation was firmly established. While Jackson recognized the difficulties in the Supreme Court enforcing its judgment, he did not want the task to be left to the lower courts as suggested by the Government. Jackson concluded that the court must act because “our representative system has failed” and even though this “premise is not a sound basis for judicial action." Finally, in Part 4 of the draft memorandum “CHANGED CONDITIONS” Jackson began by stating that prior to Brown, segregation was legal. According to Jackson, the premise for overruling Plessy was the now erroneous "factual assumption" that "there were differences between the Negro and the white races, viewed as a whole." The draft asserted that the "spectacular" progress of African-Americans, under adverse circumstances, "enabled [them] to outgrow the system and to overcome the presumptions on which it was based." Jackson emphasized that the changed conditions along with the importance of a public education required the court to strike down separate but equal in public education. While Jackson could not justify the decision in Brown in law, he did so on the basis of a political and social imperative. It is unknown if Jackson ever intended to publish this concurrence. Justice Jackson was in the hospital from March 30 to May 17, 1954. It is reported that Chief Justice Warren visited Jackson in the hospital several times and discussed both Jackson’s draft opinion and Warren’s drafts. One suggestion that Warren took from Jackson was adding “Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences as well as in the business and professional world.”[40] This quote is tied to the arguments in Part 4 of Jackson’s draft opinion. On May 17, 1954, Jackson went to the Court from the hospital so he could be there the day the Brown decision was handed down. When the Brown decision was handed down, a full court was present to emphasize the unanimity of the decision. Robert H. Jackson died on October 8, 1954, and so there was not enough time between Brown and the death of Jackson to fully explore his views on desegregation. Justice Jackson and procedural due process[edit] Justice Jackson was one of the great defenders (along with Justice Frankfurter) of procedural due process, for the rule of law that protects members of the public from overreaching by government agencies. One of his hymns to due process is often quoted:[43] Procedural fairness, if not all that originally was meant by due process of law, is at least what it most uncompromisingly requires. Procedural due process is more elemental and less flexible than substantive due process. It yields less to the times, varies less with conditions, and defers much less to legislative judgment. Insofar as it is technical law, it must be a specialized responsibility within the competence of the judiciary on which they do not bend before political branches of the Government, as they should on matters of policy which compromise substantive law. If it be conceded that in some way [that the agency could take the action it did], does it matter what the procedure is? Only the untaught layman or the charlatan lawyer can answer that procedure matters not. Procedural fairness and regularity are of the indispensable essence of liberty. Severe substantive laws can be endured if they are fairly and impartially applied. Indeed, if put to the choice, one might well prefer to live under Soviet substantive law applied in good faith by our common-law procedures than under our substantive law enforced by Soviet procedural practices. Let it not be overlooked that due process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best insurance for the Government itself against those blunders which leave lasting stains on a system of justice but which are bound to occur on ex parte consideration. International Military Tribunal, 1945–1946[edit] Main article: Nuremberg Trials Wikisource has original text related to this article: Opening address for the United States In 1945, President Truman appointed Jackson, who took a leave of absence from the Supreme Court, to serve as U.S. chief of counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. He helped draft the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which created the legal basis for the Nuremberg Trials. He then served in Nuremberg, Germany, as United States chief prosecutor at the international Nuremberg trial. Jackson pursued his prosecutorial role with a great deal of vigor (for instance, referring in arguments to Hermann Göring as being "half militarist, half gangster"). His opening and closing arguments before the Nuremberg court are widely considered among the best speeches of the 20th century. In the words of defendant Albert Speer: “ The trial began with the grand, devastating opening address by the chief American prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson. But I took comfort from one sentence in it which accused the defendants of guilt for the regime's crimes, but not the German people.[44] ” However, his cross-examination skills were generally considered weak, and it was British prosecutor David Maxwell-Fyfe who got the better of Göring in cross-examination rather than Jackson, who was rebuked by the Tribunal for losing his temper and being repeatedly baited by Göring during the proceedings.[45] Death and Legacy[edit] Jackson died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 62, of a myocardial infarct. After funeral services in Washington's National Cathedral, and later in Jamestown's St. Luke's Church, he was interred near his boyhood home in Frewsburg, New York. An extensive collection of Jackson's personal and judicial papers is archived at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and open for research. Smaller collections are available at several other repositories. Portrayal in popular culture[edit] Robert H. Jackson has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theater productions;[46] Andrzej Łapicki in the 1970 Polish T.V. production Epilog norymberski by Jerzy Antczak Henderson Forsythe in the 1991 telefilm Separate but Equal Alec Baldwin in the 2000 Canadian/U.S. T.V. production Nuremberg Edmund Dehn in the 2005 German T.V. miniseries Speer und Er Colin Stinton in the 2006 British television docudrama Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial

Wikipedia Conrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛʁman ˈjoːzɛf ˈaːdənaʊɐ]; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As the first post-war Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemies France, Great Britain and the United States.[1] During his years in power Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity ("Wirtschaftswunder", German for "economic miracle").[2] He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a Christian Democratic party that under his leadership became, and has since usually been, the most powerful party in the country. Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old man"), the oldest democratically elected leader in world history,[3] belied his age by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of market-based liberal democracy and anti-communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe, presiding over the German Economic Miracle. He founded the Bundeswehr in 1955 and came to terms with France, which made possible the economic unification of Western Europe. Adenauer opposed rival East Germany and made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States. A devout Roman Catholic, he was a leading Centre Party politician in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council (1922–1933). The 1968–1969 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. ....

The Cologne years[edit] Early life and education[edit] Konrad Adenauer was born as the third of five children of Johann Konrad Adenauer (1833–1906) and his wife Helene (née Scharfenberg; 1849–1919) in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, on 5 January 1876.[4] His siblings were August (1872–1952), Johannes (1873–1937), Lilli (1879–1950) and Elisabeth, who died shortly after birth in c. 1880. One of the formative influences of Adenauer's youth was the Kulturkampf, an experience that as related to him by his parents left him with a lifelong dislike for "Prussianism", and led him like many other Catholic Rhinelanders of the 19th century to deeply resent the Rhineland's inclusion in Prussia.[5] At the Gymnasium that Adenauer attended, one of Adenauer's close friends, Heinrich Lehmann recalled about their social circle that: "At the Gymnasium I had a circle of friends who, for the most part came from staunch Catholic families which had — at the very least — a critical approach to Bismarck and the Prussianisation of Germany. After history lessons pupils would engage in debates in which the idealisation of Frederick the Great was criticized, with references to Onno Klopp and other historians, and Bismarck's cultural policy was vehemently condemned ... I did not detect any real sympathy for Prussia among my Cologne-born fellow pupils from Catholic families and this, for the first time, made me aware of the differences among the German tribes. I can still vividly the day one of my schoolmates told me: "We Rhinelanders are the true Germans. The Prussians are Obotrites, Wends, Slavs and the like who put together their state by theft and violence.""[6] Adenauer's biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz argued that given that Adenauer was a member of the social circle from "staunch Catholic families" described by Lehmann, and in view of the marked anti-Prussian views that he was later to display, that it is quite likely that he shared the anti-Prussian views held by the social circle described by Lehmann.[6] In 1894, he completed his Abitur and started to study law and politics at the universities of Freiburg, Munich and Bonn. He was a member of several Roman Catholic students' associations under the K.St.V. Arminia Bonn in Bonn. He graduated in 1900[4] and afterwards worked as a lawyer at the court in Cologne. Adenauer had ill health as a young man, had been rejected for military service at age 20 because of his lungs. He was greatly interested in the use of medicinal herbs, according to famous French herbalist Maurice Messugue, whom he met and befriended. Adenauer credited his strong health in older age to the use of an infusion of barley water taken at night, but also maize stigma, mallow, sage, and yellow roses, which he used for coughs he was prone to. These were his favourite medicinal plants according to Messugue, though he had extensive knowledge of a wide range of plants. He agreed with MM that plants had to be free of sprays and not grown too artificially. He told Messugue that he owed his good health to "the plants, to nature." Adenauer found relaxation and great enjoyment in the Italian game of bocce and spent a great deal of his post political career playing this game. His favorite holiday place to do this was in Cadenabbia, Italy, in a rented villa overlooking Lake Como, which has since been acquired as a conference centre by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the political foundation established by Adenauer's political party Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Leader in Cologne[edit] Cöln Notgeld Banknote 10 Pfennig 1918, signed by Mayor Konrad Adenauer, on the reverse the historical town hall of Cologne (Rathaus). In Wilhelmshaven in 1928, when a new cruiser was given the name of Adenauer's (centre, with left hand visible) town Köln As a devout Catholic, he joined the Centre Party in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne, an industrial metropolis with a population of 635,000 in 1914. Avoiding the extreme political movements that attracted so many of his generation, Adenauer was committed to bourgeois common-sense, diligence, order, Christian morals and values, and was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality and political immorality.[7] From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne and became qua office a member of the Prussian House of Lords. Heinrich Hoerle: Zeitgenossen (contemporaries). An expressionist painting with mayor Adenauer (in grey) together with artists and a boxer. Adenauer headed Cologne during World War I, working closely with the army to maximize the city's role as a rear base of supply and transportation for the Western Front. He paid special attention to the civilian food supply, as the city financed large warehouses of food that enabled the residents to avoid the worst of the severe shortages that beset most German cities during 1918–1919. He set up giant kitchens in working-class districts to supply 200,000 rations per day.[8] In the face of the collapse of the old regime and the threat of revolution and widespread disorder in late 1918, Adenauer maintained control in Cologne using his good working relationship with the Social Democrats. As a Catholic Rhinelander who deeply disliked Prussia, in a speech on 1 February 1919 Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia, and for the Prussian Rhineland to become a new Land (state) in the Reich.[9] Adenauer made it clear that he expected the new Land to be an autonomous state with very wide-ranging powers, and argued that the Reich government would accept this under the grounds that this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland (at the time the Paris peace conference was still in session, and many believed that the French would demand the annexation of the Rhineland as one of the peace terms).[9] Both the Reich and Prussian governments were totally against Adenauer's plans for breaking up Prussia.[10] When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were presented to Germany in June 1919, Adenauer again suggested to Berlin his plan for an autonomous Rhineland state, arguing that if Berlin agreed to this, then perhaps the Allies might modify the terms of the Versailles treaty, and again his plans were rejected by the Reich government.[11] He was mayor during the postwar British occupation. He established a good working relationship with the British military authorities, using them to neutralize the workers' and soldiers' council that had become an alternative base of power for the city's left wing.[12] During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat) from 1921 to 1933, which was the representation of the provinces of Prussia in its legislation. Since the early 20th century, a major debate within the Zentrum concerned the question if the Zentrum should "leave the tower" (i.e. allow Protestants to join to become a multi-faith party) or "stay in the tower" (i.e. continue to be a Catholic only party). The debate had been started in 1906 when the Catholic journalist and Cologne politician Julius Bachem wrote a widely publicized article under the title "We Must Come Out Of The Tower!", which had sparked much debate within the Zentrum.[13] Adenauer was one of the leading advocates of "leaving the tower", which led to a dramatic clash between him and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber at the 1922 Katholikentag, where the Cardinal publicly admonished Adenauer for wanting to take the Zentrum "out of the tower".[14] Adenauer flirted with Rhenish separatism (a Rhenish state as part of Germany, but outside Prussia). Adenauer's relations with France and the Rhinish separatist movement in 1923 was to be the source of considerable controversy both at the time and later in his career with many accusing Adenauer of treason while Adenauer's defenders have argued that he was a loyal German who merely was coping with very difficult conditions caused by the hyper-inflation of 1923 that had destroyed the German economy.[15] In October–November 1923, Adenauer was involved in talks with the French and the Reich government under what terms might an autonomous Rhineland state be created, arguing that this was the only way to save the economy.[16] This was especially the case when in mid-October 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann announced that Berlin would cease all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentemark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark would not circulate in the Rhineland, a policy that would in effect economically sever the Rhineland from the rest of Germany by forcing the Rhinelanders to use the worthless mark while the rest of Germany was using the new Rentemark.[17] On 24–25 October 1923, Adenauer met with Stresemann to discuss the ramifications of the new currency policy with Adenauer arguing that Stresemann had abandoned the Rhineland, and if this continued, then he would have no other choice, but to reach an accommodation with the French to save the Rhineland economy and Stresemann telling Adenauer that in effect that he could not care less about the Rhineland, and that the Rhinelanders have to do whatever necessary to survive.[18][clarification needed] From Stresemann's viewpoint, his first priority was to save the German economy, and the Rhineland would to be written off for the moment with the additional caveat that the Rhinelanders would have to engage in talks with the French that could be disallowed if Stresemann disapproved of their direction that they were going.[19] Adenauer for his part remained loyal to Germany, but at the same time his first priority was in rescuing the Rhineland economy from the effects of the hyper-inflation by working out whatever arrangement necessary with the French to save the Rhineland economy.[20] Faced with this situation, Adenauer opened talks with the French in late October 1923 for a Rhinish republic, using Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte as his middle-men to arrange talks with the French High Commissioner Paul Tirard.[21] During his talks with Tirard, Adenauer showed himself to be one of the few German politicians who were sensitive to French concerns about sécurité ("security" i.e. the French fear if Versailles were to be undone, then that Germany's greater population and larger economy would allow Germany to destroy a France gravely weakened by the war), and argued for a "grand design" which would achieve Franco-German reconciliation.[21] Adenauer maintained to Tirard that to sever the Rhineland from Germany as opposed to Prussia would end any possibility of Franco-German reconciliation and that the best way of achieving that reconciliation would was a Rhineland republic which would be in a sort of economic union with France.[21] At the same time, Adenauer clung to the hope that the Rentemark might still circulate in the Rhineland. Adenauer protested furiously against the new currency policy at a Cabinet meeting in Berlin that he was allowed to attend on 13 November 1923, arguing to the Reich Finance Minister Hans Luther had abandoned the Rhineland, stating that: "the Rhineland must be worth more than one or two or even three new currencies. But if the Reich Finance Minister wants to save the new currency, his ulterior motive is to abandon the Rhineland in order to rid of reparations".[22][clarification needed] The meeting ended with Stresemann telling Adenauer again that the Rentemark would not circulate in the Rhineland, and that the Rhinelanders were on their own for the time being, a policy that encouraged Adenauer to expand upon his talks with Tirard.[22] Adenauer's plans came to nought when Stresemann, who was resolutely opposed to Adenauer's "grand design", which he viewed as borderline treason and who seems to have regretted his advice to Adenauer to work out an arrangement with the French when he learned how far he was prepared to go, was able to negotiate an end to the crisis on his own.[21] The fear that Adenauer might be able to successfully negotiate his "grand design" with the French, which Stresemann believed would set in motion not only the dissolution of Prussia, but also the Reich played a major role in motivating Stresemann to reach his own settlement with the French.[21] In 1926, the Zentrum suggested that Adenauer become Chancellor, an offer that he was interested in, but in the end he rejected when the German People's Party insisted that one of the conditions for entering into a coalition under Adenauer's leadership was that Gustav Stresemann stay on as Foreign Minister.[23] Adenauer who disliked Stresemann as "too Prussian" rejected that condition, which marked the end of his chance of becoming Chancellor in 1926.[24] Years under the Nazi government[edit] Adenauer in 1951, reading in his house in Rhöndorf he built in 1937. It is now a museum. Election gains of Nazi Party candidates in municipal, state and national elections in 1930 and 1932 were significant. Adenauer, as mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian State Council, still believed that improvements in the national economy would make his strategy work: ignore the Nazis and concentrate on the Communist threat. He was "surprisingly slow in his reaction" to the Nazi electoral successes,[25] and even when he was already the target of intense personal attacks, he thought that the Nazis should be part of the Prussian and Reich governments based on election returns. Political manoeuvrings around the aging President Hindenburg then brought the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933. By early February Adenauer finally realized that all talk and all attempts at compromise with the Nazis were futile. Cologne's city council and the Prussian parliament had been dissolved; on 4 April 1933, he was officially dismissed as mayor and his bank accounts frozen. "He had no money, no home and no job."[26] After arranging for the safety of his family, he appealed to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Maria Laach for a stay of several months. His stay at this abbey, which lengthened to a full year, was cited by the abbot after the war when the monastery was accused by Heinrich Böll and others of collaboration with the Nazis. According to Albert Speer in his book Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his civic projects, the building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer concluded that Adenauer's political views and principles made it impossible for him to play any role in Nazi Germany. Adenauer was imprisoned for two days after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, but already on 10 August 1934, manoeuvring for his pension, he wrote a 10-page letter to Hermann Göring (the Prussian interior minister) stating among other things that as Mayor he had even violated Prussian laws in order to allow NSDAP events in public buildings and Nazi flags to be flown from city flagpoles, and added that in 1932 he had declared publicly that the Nazis should join the Reich government in a leading role.[27][28] Indeed at the end of 1932, Adenauer had demanded a joint government by his Zentrum party and the Nazis for Prussia.[29] And on 29 June 1933, i.e., several months after Hitler was made Chancellor and the Nazis were given full police power over Germany, and while the Nazis were still busy terrorizing and murdering Communists, Social Democrats, and Labor Union officials, Adenauer wrote in a letter: "In my opinion the only salvation is a monarch, a Hohenzollern[...], even Hitler in my opinion, a lifetime Reichpresident [...]".[30] During the next two years, Adenauer changed residences often for fear of reprisals against him, while living on the benevolence of friends. With the help of lawyers in August 1937 he was successful in claiming a pension; he received a cash settlement for his house, which had been taken over by the city of Cologne; his unpaid mortgage, penalties and taxes were waived. With reasonable financial security he managed to live in seclusion for some years. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, he was imprisoned for a second time as an opponent of the regime. He fell ill and credited Eugen Zander, a former municipal worker in Cologne and communist, with saving his life. Zander, then a section Kapo of a labor camp near Bonn discovered Adenauer's name on a deportation list to the East and managed to get him admitted to a hospital. Adenauer was subsequently rearrested (and so was his wife), but in the absence of any evidence against him was released from prison at Brauweiler in November 1944. After World War II and the founding of the CDU[edit] Shortly after the war ended, the American occupation forces once again installed him as mayor of Cologne, which had been heavily bombed. After the city was transferred into the British zone of occupation, however, the Director of its military government, General Gerald Templer, dismissed Adenauer for incompetence in December 1945.[31] In dismissing Adenauer from his position as mayor the British advised him not to "pursue, either directly or indirectly, any political activity whatsoever".[32] As mayor, Adenauer had clashed with the British military government a number of times in the summer and fall of 1945, and a speech lamenting the devastation of Cologne by Allied bombing was seen as implicitly anti-British since it was British bombers that had wrought the devastation that Adenauer bemoaned.[33] Adenauer always believed that the Labour government in Britain had favored their fellow socialists in the SPD in their zone of occupation in Germany, and that he was sacked by the British to improve the SPD's odds.[34] Adenauer's biographer Hans Peter Schwarz stated that this was unlikely given there is no evidence that the British were favoring the SPD over the CDU in their zone, and that in several cities of the Ruhr the British had installed CDU politicians as mayors.[34] Rather, it is more likely that Adenauer assumed that in 1945 that the Germans held the same position as they had under the Treaty of Versailles, namely defeated, but still more or less equal to the Allies. In May 1945, the Allies had abolished the German state, and as such the Germans were very much the inferiors of the occupying Allies, something that Adenauer did not appreciate, and was the most probable reason for his sacking. In a 1962 television interview, Adenauer commented that his sacking was a blessing in disguise, and that he would never have become Chancellor if he had not been sacked.[35] Adenauer's sacking by the British military government gave him a reputation as a man who would stand up to the Allies, and contributed much to his subsequent political success and allowed him to pursue a policy of alliance with the West in the 1950s without facing charges of being a "sell-out". Adenauer never forgave the British for firing him, and in the 1950s–1960s, many British officials believed that Adenauer's unfriendly attitude towards them was due to his resentment of the humiliation of being ordered out of the Lord Mayor's office by British officers.[36] After his dismissal as Mayor of Cologne, Adenauer devoted himself to building a new political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he hoped would embrace both Protestants and Roman Catholics in a single party, and thereby achieve his long-standing goal of bringing the Zentrum "out of the tower". In January 1946, Adenauer initiated a political meeting of the future CDU in the British zone in his role as doyen (the oldest man in attendance, Alterspräsident) and was informally confirmed as its leader. Adenauer had become a leader almost by default. During the Weimar Republic, Adenauer had often been considered a future Chancellor and after 1945, his claims for leadership were even stronger.[37] Of the other surviving leaders of the Zentrum Wilhelm Marx was too old and in bad health; Joseph Wirth was considered to be too left-wing; Heinrich Brüning's austerity policies during his time as Chancellor in 1930–32 had earned him the moniker the "Hunger Chancellor" and had made him into one of Germany's most hated men; and Andreas Hermes lacked Adenauer's national reputation, and had begun his post-war political career in the Soviet zone, which led many people to see him as a Soviet "collaborator".[38] Since the core of the new CDU was formed by men who served in the Zentrum, it was considered essential to have a Catholic leader, which ruled out Protestant conservatives such as Robert Lehr and Hans Schlange-Schöningen who had belonged to the German National People's Party.[39] Reflecting his background as a Catholic Rhinelander who had long chafed under Prussian rule, Adenauer believed that Prussianism was the root cause of National Socialism, and that only by driving out Prussianism could Germany become a democracy.[40] In a December 1946 letter, Adenauer wrote that the Prussian state in the early 19th century had become an "almost God-like entity" that valued state power over the rights of individuals.[40] Adenauer continued that after German unification was unfortunately achieved by Prussia in 1871, the Prussian-German state had become an inhuman "sovereign machine" that cared nothing for "Christian natural law" and freely tramped over the rights of individuals.[40] Adenauer concluded that "National Socialism was nothing, but a logical further development of Prussian statism".[40] In a September 1948 speech, Adenauer said "Prussia is identical to centralism, and centralization is identical to depersonalization."[40] In December 1945, Adenauer told the British historian Noel Annan that the greatest mistake Britain had done with Germany was "at the Congress of Vienna, when you foolishly put Prussia on the Rhine as a safeguard against France and another Napoleon".[41] Though he did not use the term Sonderweg, Adenauer, like most of the other Zentrum veterans who formed the core of the CDU, believed in a Sonderweg version of German history, where the Reformation had led to the Protestant areas of Germany to diverge from Western civilization (seen here as identical with Catholicism), and that in its turn Lutheranism led to the oppressive Prussian state with its materialist, state-worshipping ideology of Prussianism and the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf, and Prussianism in its turn culminated in National Socialism.[42] Adenauer's dislike of Prussia led him to oppose Berlin as a future capital because, as he wrote in 1946: "We in the West reject much of what generally is called the Prussian spirit. Our former war enemies have no reason to handle us particularly kindly. It is up to us to slowly destroy that mistrust. As soon as Berlin becomes the capital again, that distrust abroad will be inextinguishable. Whoever makes Berlin the new head creates spiritually a new Prussia".[43] The term Sonderweg in Germany originally had the positive meaning in that the Prussian-German state was neither of the West or of the East. In Germany, there traditionally had been a sharp distinction between the Abendland (Evening Land) of the West, which included the United States and all of the European nations except Russia, and "the West", which did not include Germany.[44] In Germany, the term "Western civilization" meant countries like the U.S., Britain and France, whose people were supposedly materialist and soulless; Germany by contrast was on a Sonderweg (Special Way) because Germany had a special, mystical, spiritually enriching Kultur (culture) which made it completely superior to and separate from the corrupt "Western civilization".[45] Starting in 1914, under the influence of the Spirit of 1914, much of the German intelligentsia had published works praising German kultur often using extremely racist language as superior to the degenerate "Western civilization" with democracy being ridiculed as mere mobocracy.[46] Prussianism with its glorification of war and an authoritarian state was portrayed as the core of the special, mystical, life-improving Kultur; the best form of government according to this viewpoint was an elite of gifted individuals whom should be entrusted with absolute power to govern the nation.[46] Thus, Germany was seen as a Western nation in that it was part of the Abendland, but Germany was definitely not seen as part of "Western civilization" or "the West".[44] This is also explains how Germany was portrayed in both world wars as supposedly defending the Western Abendland from the "Asiatic hordes" from Russia while at the same time "Western civilization" was denounced as "Roman-French leveling universalism".[44] Adenauer believed that the Sonderweg had pushed Germany off the right path into a process that led to National Socialism, and it was necessary to end the distinction between the Abendland and the West".[47] Significantly, Adenauer often praised "Western civilization" in his speeches, which was a rather brave thing given that for most Germans at the time the term "Western civilization" had a negative meaning.[48] Adenauer in his early post-war speeches often spoke of the need to "eliminate Germany's special position" and to restore unity to the Abendland by making the Abendland and "the West" one and the same.[49] Adenauer's Sonderweg view of German history, with National Socialism as a natural outgrowth out of Prussianism, sharply contrasted with the views of the Social Democratic leader Kurt Schumacher, who saw National Socialism as a natural outgrowth of capitalism.[50] These two radically differing views of recent German history led Adenauer and Schumacher in turn to recommend very different solutions for a better future. For Schumacher, to banish National Socialism meant replacing the capitalist system with a Marxist socialist system, whereas, for Adenauer, banishing National Socialism meant purging Prussianism. In a speech attacking Schumacher's view of the Nazis as a creation of big business, Adenauer stated: "Big capital did not create National Socialism. National Socialism was not its invention. This can be clearly demonstrated. From the beginning, National Socialism was sharply directed against the Jews. However, Jews were important in the circles of big capital. Does anyone believe that these influential Jewish gentlemen would help their deadly enemies, the National Socialists, to attain political power? No, that powerfully underestimates the cleverness and intelligence of these men."[51] Instead, Adenauer argued contra Schumacher that it was the German military, which had been the "inventor" of National Socialism.[52] Referring to the obsession of the military with creating a totalitarian Wehrstaat (Defense State) from the time of the First World War onwards and that Hitler had begun his political career in 1919 as a Reichswehr political lecturer, Adenauer argued that the military saw the power of the words National and Socialism for many Germans, "and created a new kind of socialism, National Socialism".[53] Adenauer thus "sharply condemned" the viewpoint that "socialism meant salvation for the German people" or that capitalism had led to National Socialism.[53] Instead, Germans needed a break with the traditional Prussian militarism, which saw the state as supreme with the duty of all being to serve the state in whatever it was doing.[53] Adenauer commented that the traditional Prussian state worship mixed with materialism and a xenophobic, militaristic ultra-nationalism had created the ideology of "the total state and the mass without a will. It viewed one's own race the master race, one's own people as the master nation, other peoples as inferior, in part worthy of annihilation, and justified the annihilation of the political enemy in one's own race and in one's own people at any price".[54] Adenauer called National Socialism as "nothing other than the consequence driven to the point of criminality of the idolization of power and the dismissal-yes, contempt for-the value of the individual person of the materialist worldview".[54] Despite Adenauer's dislike of Protestantism, he was determined to build a new Zentrum that would be "out of the tower", and allow Protestants in to form a new political party that would represent all Christians in Germany, not just Catholics. Adenauer took the view that the decision to keep the Zentrum "in the tower" before 1933 had been a huge mistake, and to revive the Zentrum within "the tower" again would inevitably lead to German politics being dominated again by the Social Democrats, the Communists or the Nazis.[55] Adenauer argued that only a party that united conservative Catholics and Protestants would stop these possible outcomes.[56] The need for a cross-confessional right-of-the-center party was the more pressing in Adenauer's viewpoint because most of the conservative German Protestants had been National Socialists, and even those who were not were still followers of the ideology of Prussianism.[56] As such, what was needed was a party led by Catholic politicians such as himself which would save conservative Protestants from themselves by weaning them away from Prussianism.[56] Furthermore, it was understood by Adenauer that only a party that won the vote of the millions who were National Socialists or the Mitläufer who went along with the regime would win a majority in post-war elections, and that to bring back Zentrum "within the tower" would leave right-wing Protestant voters open to the appeal of National Socialism or an ideology like it.[56] Adenauer argued that it was better to integrate right-wing Protestant voters into a "responsible Christian party" in order to have a better future without much thought as to whom these voters had supported in the past.[56] Adenauer's determination to integrate the right-wing nationalists who supported the Nazis into the CDU and thus into an acceptance of democracy explains much of the apparent paradox between his dislike of National Socialism and his willingness to accept men who had been very active in supporting the National Socialist dictatorship.[57] Adenauer viewed the most important battle in the post-war world as between the forces of Christianity and Marxism, especially Communism, writing in August 1945 that Germany needed a Christian alliance to provide: "strong resistance against the state system and ideology from the East-Russia-and a thoughtful and cultural and with that also a foreign policy alliance with the Western Europe. Only a planned integration of all Christian and democratic forces can protect us from the dangers threatening from the East."[58] In Germany during this period, the term Marxism described both the Communists and the Social Democrats as the latter were officially a Marxist party until the Bad Godesberg conference of 1959 when the SPD repudiated its commitment to achieving a Marxist society. In May 1946, Adenauer wrote that "great battle between Christianity and materialistic Marxism" meant all Christians needed to join forces to fight for the "freedom and dignity of the individual".[59] The same anti-Marxist viewpoints led Adenauer to denounce the Social Democrats as the heirs to Prussianism and National Socialism. In a speech, Adenauer declared: "As a German, I can only with the greatest regret establish that the old Prussian spirit, that ruthless undemocratic aspiration to exclusive power, speaks through the official announcements of the SPD in a way in which it has, up until now, only obsessed Prussian Junkerdom".[59] Adenauer worked diligently at building up contacts and support in the CDU over the next years, and he sought with varying success to impose his particular ideology on the party. His was an ideology at odds with many in the CDU, who wished to unite socialism and Christianity; Adenauer preferred to stress the dignity of the individual, and he considered both communism and Nazism materialist world views that violated human dignity.[60] Adenauer's leading role in the CDU of the British zone won him a position at the Parliamentary Council of 1948, called into existence by the Western Allies to draft a constitution for the three western zones of Germany. He was the chairman of this constitutional convention and vaulted from this position to being chosen as the first head of government once the new "Basic Law" had been promulgated in May 1949. Chancellor of West Germany[edit] First government[edit] Election poster, 1949: "With Adenauer for peace, freedom and unity of Germany, therefore CDU" Adenauer speaking in the Bundestag, 1955. The first election to the Bundestag of West Germany was held on 15 August 1949, with the Christian Democrats emerging as the strongest party. During the 1949 election, Adenauer—who was something of an Anglophobe—charged that the British government was backing the Social Democrats because a socialist government would ruin Germany economically, and thus eliminate a potential British economic rival.[61] There were two clashing visions of a future Germany held by Adenauer and his main rival, the Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher. Adenauer looked towards the West, and favored integrating the Federal Republic with other Western states, especially France and the United States in order to fight the Cold War, even if the price of this was the continued division of Germany. Schumacher by contrast, though an anti-Communist, was in favor of neutrality in the Cold War, and wanted to see a united, socialist and neutral Germany. As such, Adenauer was in favor of joining NATO, something that Schumacher was adamantly opposed to. The British historian Frederick Taylor wrote that Adenauer's and Schumacher's visions of a future Germany were so radically different that the 1949 election was the most important post-war German election because if Schumacher had won, the Federal Republic would gone in a totally different direction from the course it took under Adenauer.[62] The Free Democrat Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Adenauer was elected Chancellor (head of government) on 15 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union, the liberal Free Democratic Party, and the right-wing German Party. It was said that Adenauer was elected Chancellor by the new German parliament by "a majority of one vote - his own".[32] At age 73,[63] it was initially thought that he would only be a caretaker Chancellor. However, he would go on to hold this post for 14 years, a period spanning most of the preliminary phase of the Cold War. During this period, the post-war division of Germany was consolidated with the establishment of two separate German states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). As part of his politics of integration, where those who had supported the Nazis were to be integrated into the democratic system, Adenauer's first important speech as Chancellor occurred on 20 September 1949, where he denounced the entire denazification process pursued by the Allied military governments between 1945–49.[64] Adenauer attacked the "much misfortune and mischief" that he argued had been caused by denazification.[65] Adenauer stated that those "truly guilty" of crimes during the National Socialist era deserved to be punished, but he argued that denazification was morally and practically wrong as it sought to punish the millions of Germans who supported the Nazi regime, which Adenauer claimed was unjust and unworkable.[65] Adenauer ended his speech with the remark that it was time for the distinction between "two classes of human beings in Germany", namely the "politically objectionable" because they had supported the Nazi regime and the "politically unobjectionable" because they had opposed the Nazi regime, to "vanish as fast as possible".[65] Despite his claim that he believed in punishing those guilty of crimes, Adenauer announced in the same speech that he was planning to bring in an amnesty law for the Nazi war criminals and he planned to apply to "the High Commissioners for a corresponding amnesty for punishments imposed by the Allied military courts".[65] Adenauer's speech caused some controversy outside of Germany because his sole reference to the Holocaust in his entire two hour speech was to the "anti-Semitic endeavors manifest here and there", a statement that many felt trivialized the genocide waged by the National Socialist regime.[66] One of Adenauer's central projects as Chancellor, though rarely described publicly was a redefinition of German conservatism in order to put an end to the Sonderweg by anchoring Germany firmly into the West.[67] A central feature of the original, positive version of Sonderweg theory put forward by followers of Prussianism in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was the idea that the Prussian-German national state as the great Central European power neither of the West nor of the East. Instead Germany's "mission" was to offer in the form of reactionary modernism a superior "Third Position" between capitalist, liberal Western democracy and Russian autocracy/Soviet communism. Adenauer argued that there were two sorts of German conservatism; the brutal, militarist, statist, authoritarian Prussian conservatism, which Adenauer loathed and another sort which Adenauer associated with the cosmopolitan, cultured and peaceful middle classes of the Rhineland, which Adenauer himself belonged to.[68] Adenauer argued that Prussianism by glorifying war as the highest achievement in humanity, and by preaching mindless obedience to the state as the highest virtue had made the National Socialist dictatorship possible, and only by ending the Prussian type of conservatism and replacing it with the Rhineland conservatism could the future of German democracy be secured.[68] Adenauer argued in a speech that the purpose of education was not to foster "a readiness to let oneself be controlled and led" as had traditionally been the case, but rather should be to encourage "the will and ability to incorporate oneself as a free individual aware of one's responsibility into the whole".[68] The American historian Jeffrey Herf argued that what Adenauer was trying to create was an "anti-authoritarian right" which would defend the rights of the individual against the state in place of the traditional Prussianist right which had defended the state against the rights of the individual.[68] To redefine German conservatism by purging Prussianism out of German life required the CDU to win the votes of those who once supported the Nazis in order to lead them away from their former beliefs to an acceptance of democracy.[69] Thus, Adenauer frequently made it clear that the rank and file of those who supported the NSDAP were more than welcome in the CDU provided that they were willing to accept democracy.[69] Adenauer made it clear those who been part of the leadership cadre of the NSDAP together those who continued to believe in National Socialism were not welcome in the CDU, but for those Nazis or Mitläufer "who did not oppress others, who did not enrich themselves and broke no laws should be left in peace", a frequent remark that always drew applause from German audiences when Adenauer made it.[69] For this reason, Adenauer was opposed to denazification arguing that it would "foster a growing and extreme nationalism" as the millions who supported the Nazi regime would find themselves excluded from German life forever.[69] For Adenauer, the key word governing all his policies was integration.[70] In foreign policy, integration meant integrating Germany firmly into the Western institutions and alliances to end the Sonderweg, which Adenauer argued had caused two world wars while in domestic policy integration meant persuading those who supported the Nazis into supporting democracy.[71] What Adenauer wanted in foreign policy was to lock the Federal Republic so firmly into Western institutions such as NATO and the European Coal and Steel Community that it would be impossible for a future German leader to act against the West, and German foreign policy initiatives could only come in conjunction with the other Western powers.[72] The policies of Western integration were thus meant to end the Sonderweg forever by integrating and embedding Germany so firmly into the West that it would be impossible for Germany to go to war with the Western nations as had happened in 1914 and again in 1939.[73] Also, to integrate Germany into Western institutions would require Germany to be an acceptable alliance partner for the Western states, which of course mean following the democratic norms of the West. Adenauer believed that as long Germany was not locked into the West, then the Sonderweg would continue in one form or another and inevitably another war would occur.[73] This is a major reason why Adenauer objected so strongly to Schumacher's idea of a neutral Germany in the Cold War as opening the door to another world war.[74] In domestic policy, Adenauer claimed that treating Nazis like "second class persons" would only ensure the continuation of National Socialism while a strategy of integration of Nazis would ensure the success of democracy.[75] As part of strategy of integration, Adenauer always took a nationalist line on everything, always stressing his great pride in being German and sometimes went out of his way to annoy his Western allies in various petty ways just to prove that he was not the "Chancellor of the Allies" in order to win over nationalist voters to the CDU.[76] Adenauer wanted to win people over to his sort of nationalism which emphasized values such as justice and freedom as things that all Germans should cherish.[76] A major part of his strategy of integration led Adenauer to make paradoxical and contradictory arguments about German history.[77] On one hand, Adenauer argued that the Prussian-German state and its values had led straight to National Socialism while on the other hand in his attempt to win votes for the CDU, Adenauer portrayed the Nazi regime as a gang of few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society, who somehow managed to dupe millions of good Germans into following them.[77] For electoral purposes, Adenauer liked to promote the idea of the National Socialist regime as a small criminal gang with the vast majority of their supporters being people who Hitler had tricked into following him, and who done nothing wrong under the Third Reich.[78] In marked contrast to the collective guilt theories popular in some quarters in the Allied countries where all Germans were considered equally guilty of National Socialist crimes, Adenauer went to the other extreme of collective exoneration where all living Germans were equally innocent of National Socialist crimes with his thesis that all of the Nazi crimes were the work of a small clique of men who were conveniently all dead.[79] Such a version of the past not only absolved almost all Germans of any responsibility for what had happened in the years 1933–45, but also allowed the story of the Third Reich to be presented as first and foremost as a story of German victimization at the hands of both their own regime and at the Allies rather than a story of Germans victimizing others.[78] Adenauer's repeated statements that Hitler had deceived and tricked people into following him suggested that the Nazis themselves were in a certain sense victims of Hitler.[78] For this reason, Adenauer insisted that a memorial day could be set aside for the victims of National Socialism as long as one included all of the Germans killed by Allied bombing or fighting in the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS as being equally victims of National Socialism as those who died in the concentration camps or killed in the death camps.[78] Adenauer's proposed memorial day was vetoed by the Allied High Commissioners as an act of unacceptable moral equivalence, who stated that those Germans killed in the Wehrmacht/Waffen SS fighting for the Nazi regime were victims of National Socialism, but were not victims of National Socialism in the same way as those were killed in the death camps were.[78] For Adenauer a painful confrontation with the Nazi past was out of the question as it would cause feelings of shame and disgust amongst the Germans, which he believed would cause a nationalist backlash, and what was needed was a version of the past that would inspire pride in being German.[79] Herf wrote that for Adenauer neither memory nor justice mattered much in the pursuit of integration, and all that he cared about was that he achieve his aims.[71] In the controversial selection for a "provisional capital" of the Federal Republic of Germany, Adenauer championed Bonn over Frankfurt am Main. The British had agreed to detach Bonn from their zone of occupation and convert the area to an autonomous region wholly under German sovereignty; the Americans were not prepared to grant the same for Frankfurt.[80] At the Petersberg Agreement in November 1949 he achieved some of the first concessions granted by the Allies, such as a decrease in the number of factories to be dismantled, but in particular his agreement to join the International Authority for the Ruhr led to heavy criticism. In the following debate in parliament Adenauer stated: The Allies have told me that dismantling would be stopped only if I satisfy the Allied desire for security, does the Socialist Party want dismantling to go on to the bitter end?[81][82] The opposition leader Kurt Schumacher responded by labeling Adenauer "Chancellor of the Allies", accusing Adenauer of putting good relations with the West for the sake of the Cold War ahead of German national interests.

 
Quotes from famous books on the Reparations Racket

http://www.zundelsite.org/reparation...oks/index.html


German Reparations & Restitution



The Seventh Million 

Author: Tom Segev ©1993 by Haim Watzman Publisher: Hill and Wang . ISBN 0-8090-1570-6 104 -- Talk of Reparations Even in 1942
  • It is uncertain who was the first to suggest that the Germans would have to pay reparations for the property they had expropriated from Jews and for the suffering they had caused. The idea seems to have been in the air from the time the war started, apparently sparked by the punitive reparations imposed on Germany at the end of World War I. Ben-Gurion received a memorandum on the subject as early as 1940. Berl Katznelson spoke of it publicly toward the end of that year. By December 1942, there was already a private organization in Tel Aviv called Justicia that offered to help Nazi victims draft compensation demands.
195 -- Germany Will Want to Negotiate to Pay Reparations
  • [Michael Amir wrote:] I don’t support establishing relations for their own sake. I assume that Germany, in order to atone for the crimes of Hitler’s regime, is interested in entering negotiations with us over a declaration that condemns the injustice done in the name of the German people to the Jewish people as a whole and that assesses the material and moral responsibility of the German people for the atrocities its leaders committed against the Jewish people. Germany will want, on the basis of this declaration, to conduct negotiations for comprehensive reparations.
196 -- Reparations Idea Examined Already in 1941
  • Jewish organizations in the United States had begun examining, as early as 1941, the legal and political ramifications of claiming reparations and compensation from Germany. At the end of the war, the leaders of the Jewish Agency also began giving the subject attention. They reviewed proposals, memorandums, and position papers they had received over the years from jurists and economists, most of them of German origin; some had specialized in the 1930s in the haavara agreements. A few wrote in German, and one introduced, while the war was going on, the conciliatory and irksome legal term Wiedergutmachung — literally, “to make good again,” to right the wrong, to rectify.
216 -- Rabble Rouser Begin Incites Crowd from Hotel Balcony
  • Menahem Begin, in the meantime, left the Knesset and made his way to the balcony of the Aviv Hotel overlooking Zion Square. Thousands had gathered there People had come from all over the country by chartered bus. They wore yellow Stars of David, like the ones Jews in the ghettos had been forced to wear; under the word Jude were the words “Remember what Amalek did unto thee.” Begin told them about the drowning of his father, adding: “They say that a new German government has arisen with whom we can talk, conduct negotiations, and sign an agreement. Before Hitler came to power, the German people voted for him. Twelve million Germans served in the Nazi army. there is not one German who has not murdered our fathers. Every German is a Nazi. Every German is a murderer. Adenauer is a murderer. . . All his assistants are murderers. When he reached the halfway point in his speech, he suddenly waved a piece of paper, as if it had only then been handed to him. he had just been informed, he said, that the policemen stationed around the square were equipped with tear-gas grenades — made in Germany. He shrieked: “The same gases that asphyxiated our parents!” He told the people to protest by not paying taxes and promised that the opponents of reparations would not be frightened even by the “torture chambers.” He termed the struggle “a war to the death.”
222, 223 -- Reparations Debate Continues — Where Will You Get 6 Million More Jews?
  • In March 1952, just days before the negotiations with Germany began, Yohanan Bader said: “Suppose they pay you for six million Jews, but when the reparations period is over, . . . where will you get six million more Jews so that you can get more money?” This comment completed the question that Arieh Ben-Eliezer had presented to Mapei a few months before, when it became known that Germany was going to pay Israel not in cash but in the form of goods. “Will these German products include soap produced from human bodies?” Ben-Eliezer asked. Haim Landau called out in Yiddish to Shmuel Dayan (Mapei): “A glik hot unz getrofen (lucky us!) — six million Jews were murdered and we can get some money.
229, 230 -- Goldmann versus Adenauer
  • The reparations and compensation agreements with Germany were largely the fruit of Goldmann’s ability to impress Konrad Adenauer. ... The fact that, after so many years and the innumerable meetings he had since held with Goldmann, the German chancellor still believed that the Jewish leader had tried to mislead him says something about the relations between them. In another context, Adenauer noted in his memoirs that he knew better than to underestimate the ability of “Jewish banking circles” to bring his country harm. Goldmann, a tireless dissembler, exploited his image as one of “the elders of Zion,” sometimes to the point of making threats bordering on extortion. A file in his archives contains information on the Nazi backgrounds of key members of Adenauer’s government. Some in Bonn believed that Goldmann had the power to destroy them unless they could ensure his silence about their past.
425 -- Yad Vashem’s List — Less Than Three Million
  • By the fall of 1990 fewer than three million names were on file. Somewhere in the minutes of a board meeting one can find Nahum Goldmann’s contention that such a list should not even be started, since it could never contain a full six million names and so would give neo-Nazis cause to argue that six million were not murdered. Such an outcome would cause great embarrassment, the president of the World Jewish Congress warned the Yad Vashem board, since the six million figure served as the basis for the reparations and compensation agreements with Germany.
West German Reparations to Israel Author: Nicholas Balabkins ©1971 Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN No. 0-8135-0691-3 22 -- Economics of Cash Reparations
  • The most striking example of cash reparations in the nineteenth century resulted from the Franco-Prussian War, which ended in the defeat of the French. The Treaty of Frankfurt, signed on May 10, 1871, imposed upon her an indemnity of 5 billion francs, cession of territory, and German occupation of certain parts of France until the obligation was paid. It was to be paid within five years in gold, silver, and bills of exchange. Although the sequestration of Alsace and Lorraine was most humiliating to France, and Bismarck’s demand for an indemnity of 5 billion francs appeared astronomical at the time, in other respects the Germans treated their defeated adversary with respect. The peace treaty, for instance, was not a document of capitulation, but a convention between two powers, “which indicated only a negotiated settlement between two equals.”
24, 25 -- The Treaty of Versailles
  • The Armistice of November 1918 imposed upon the German government an indemnity for all damages inflicted upon the civilian population in the victorious countries. The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 which formally ended hostilities was a Diktatfrieden, based on onerous terms, if not impossible conditions. Versailles required that Germany surrender her entire navy and most of the merchant marine, accept stringent limitations on the production of certain strategic goods, have her army reduced to 100,000 men, and pay “a war indemnity unheard of in the history of any country.” In addition, she was to cede territory with some million inhabitants, 40 per cent of her blast furnaces, 30 per cent of her steel mills, and 28 per cent of her rolling mills. The proposed reparations bill was so huge that, according to Lloyd George, “no civilized nation has ever been forced to shoulder anything comparable.” As a military power, Germany was to be reduced to the level of Greece and, as a naval power, to the level of Argentina.
59 -- Morgenthau Proposal: ‘Crudest Scheme Malevolent Planning Could Devise’
  • The most far-reaching proposal for the elimination of the war potential of German industry was developed by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the wartime Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. In the view of one observer, it was the “crudest reparation scheme malevolent planning could devise.” Morgenthau felt that so long as Germany had heavy industries there would never be peace in the world. To eliminate Germany as a potential aggressor, the Morgenthau proposal called for the complete destruction of the country’s metallurgical, chemical, and electrical industries within six months after the end of World War II. All factories were either to be blown up or dismantled and sent to the victorious countries as reparations; all coal mines were to be flooded and the entire Ruhr Valley turned into a “ghost territory.” The Ruhr was, in effect, to be “put out of business,” wiped out as an industrial area, regardless of what happened to millions of Germans. Subsequently this proposal was officially accepted in a somewhat modified form by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. Shortly thereafter, however, both Churchill and Roosevelt repudiated the plan. Nevertheless, its basic principles dominated official thinking in Washington for almost six years after the defeat of Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich. Government officials in both America and Great Britain continued to treat Germany in “moralizing categories” and the public-opinion makers remained fixed in the stereotypes established in the “hate the Germans” milieu of the two world wars.
81 -- Before the War Was Even Over: To Claim Or Not To Claim?
  • The issue of restitution and compensation for European Jewry was raised formally in the United States in the spring of 1940, when the American Jewish Committee appointed a Committee on Peace Studies under Professor Maurice R. Cohen. His charge was to conduct research on the promotion of “a more intelligent understanding of the Jewish situation and aid in the defense of the rights of Jews in the free forum of the world’s conscience, as well as to formulate the necessary plans for its execution.” In March 1941, the Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress was established as a research agency in Jewish war and postwar problems, with Dr. Jacob Robinson in charge. In the same year, Dr. Nahum Goldmann broached this problem at an assembly of the World Jewish Congress in Baltimore.
82 -- In 1944 Jews Were ‘a Nation Without a State’ — Not Subject to International Law
  • In the fall of 1943, Dr. George Landauer, an influential German Zionist living in Palestine, wrote a memorandum in which he stressed that, after the victory, Jews as a nation should be allowed to press claims against Germany. He was aware that it would be extremely difficult for the victorious powers to recognize a collective demand, but since the Jews and Germans had special accounts to settle the claim had to be made. In fact, he elevated this objective to be the principle goal of the political activity of the Jewish Agency. In support of Dr. Landauer’s work, Dr. Siegfried Moses, future comptroller of the State of Israel, published a small pamphlet on the subject early in 1944. In it he raised questions of restitution and compensation and made concrete proposals for their implementation. Dr. Moses emphasized that in 1944 the Jews were a nation without a state and thus not subject to international law. Yet, he argued, the Jews had a collective claim against Germany based on a moral justification rather than a legal one. He further insisted that the Jewish community of Palestine should be the creditor of that collective claim. Gillis and Knopf also argued that all the property of the so-called “absent persons” should not be allowed to revert to the successor government of Germany, but instead should go to help build up Palestine, in the form of a collective Jewish claim.
82, 83 -- Reparation Plan a ‘Done Deal’ Eight Years Before Luxembourg Treaty
  • To insure that Jewish refugees from Germany would have adequate representation in pressing their claims after the war, Dr. Moses was instrumental in setting up in December 1944 the Council for the Protection of Rights and Interests of Jews from Germany. The influence of his work on the terms of the Shilumim Agreement and on West German legislation providing individual compensation was of inestimable importance. Dr. Felix E. Shinnar, first head of the Israel mission in Cologne, said of Dr. Moses’ pamphlet that eight years before the Luxembourg Treaty it had already settled virtually all basic aspects of the German reparation (Wiedergutmachung). According to Shinnar, Dr. Moses’ analysis demonstrated the reality as well as the vision of what was possible, and this paved the way for the success of the Shilumim operation.
83 -- Nahum Goldmann ‘Demands’ Establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth
  • But regardless of the prevailing legal difficulties, most Western Jews felt that their claims against the successor government of the Third Reich would be based on legal as well as moral grounds. For example, the Swiss Jewish Community, in a memorandum in October 1944, stressed that the Germans would have to make restitution and pay individual as well as collective compensation. The formal inheritance laws were to be disregarded; all Jewish property with “absentee or missing owners” was to be claimed and the proceeds used for “collective Jewish reconstruction work.” At the War Emergency Conference of the World Jewish Conference, in November 1944, Dr. Goldmann demanded that all Jewish property be restored and that a Jewish commonwealth be established.
84 -- Chaim Weizmann Demands Restitution, Indemnification and Compensation
  • Once the war was over, and with the groundwork laid on the matter of restitution and compensation, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the future first president of Israel, sent a letter to the victorious powers on September 20, 1945. In the name of the Jewish Agency, he demanded restitution, indemnification, and compensation from Germany for the crimes against the Jews. His estimated value for the material losses was $8 billion. Dr. Weizmann requested that all buildings, art treasures and valuables of every kind be restored to their former owners or their heirs. All property for which no heirs could be traced was to be turned over to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, as the official representative of the Jews. Furthermore, since the majority of the survivors of the concentration camps were likely to go to Palestine, he presented a global Jewish claim against Germany, demanding funds to be used for the purpose of compensating the cost of resettling Jewish refugees in Palestine.
190 -- How Much to Date?
  • The Shilumim obligation has been discharged in full. Nominally it ran for fourteen years, but actually the DM 3.45 billion was paid in twelve years. Individual compensation payments still continue and, according to some estimates, by 1975 the total cost of the Luxembourg Treaty will have been DM 46 billion and by 2000 over DM 62 billion. By the end of 1966, DM 23.2 billion had been transferred abroad and DM 8.1 billion paid to German residents for material damages.
274, 281 -- (Appendix A) World Jewish Congress ‘Suggestions’
  • The World Jewish Congress summarizes in the following points some of those measures which the German Government should be obliged to carry out in fulfillment of the rightful claims of the Jews.
5. Restitution
  • The measures promulgated by the Allied authorities in Germany since the end of the war to restore to the rightful owners or their successors properties and assets confiscated and otherwise wrongfully appropriated by reason of the oppressive enactments of the Third Reich directed against Jews have either not yet been fully carried out or have proved defective by reason of inadequate procedure. ...
    There is danger that the existing laxity on the part of German authorities and the pressure exercised upon them by groups directly involved are likely to result in a serious curtailment of the implementation of the restitution measures in existence if and when Allied control is suspended or relaxed.
    It is essential, therefore, that restitution remains a matter of Allied concern within the terms of any revised Occupation Statute. It is urged also that, in any new instrument between the Allied Powers and the German Federal Republic, the German Government should undertake to respect and to implement the restitution legislation enacted by the Allied Powers and that the procedure for implementation should be speeded up and improved in order that the properties of the victims of Nazi persecution should be restored to the legitimate owners, without delay and without undue cost to them.
6. Compensation
  • Legislation designed to restore to the true owners the properties of victims of Nazi persecution covers an important part of the economic losses suffered by them. Such legislation cannot, by virtue of its limited nature, make good the damage and injury by way of loss of life, health, liberty and possessions no longer recoverable. These losses, so far as their material consequences are concerned, must be made good by adequate measures for payment of compensation. ...
    It is submitted, therefore, that under any revised Occupation Statute the matter of compensation should be reserved to Allied control, and that any new instrument between the Allied Powers and the German Federal Republic should contain a provision obliging the German Government to adopt for the whole of Western Germany a General Claims Law of compensation for the victims of Nazi persecution irrespective of their presence in Germany or not, and without relation to the date of such residence.
7. Position of absentees
  • In consequence of the persecutory acts of the Nazi Government there are in Germany today only about 25,000 Jews, compared with 580,00 in 1933. The problems of restitution and compensation must, therefore, be considered largely from the viewpoint of owners of property and claimants now living in foreign countries. It has to be emphasized that as far as restitutable property is concerned, “foreign” ownership did not come about by someone abroad acquiring property in Germany, with full knowledge of the risks involved. It was the result of the forced emigration of the owners who at the time of acquisition were residents of Germany and were, in most cases, citizens thereof. It is now submitted that any new settlement with Germany would be incomplete, if, in respect to restitution, no guarantees were included therein to guard against the possibility of discriminatory treatment by German authorities to the disadvantage of the absent owners of these assets, whether as regards taxes or other levies or the holding and administering of such property. ...
    Compensation payments also, if made in local currency, would be of little advantage to beneficiaries living abroad, unless there is adequate machinery to enable them to use these payments in the country of their present residence. ...
    It is submitted, therefore, that the German Republic should be obliged to facilitate such transfers within reasonable limits.
8. Collective Jewish claims against Germany
  • Even if the before-mentioned measures of individual restitution or compensation were to be fully implemented, only a comparatively small number of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution — those who resided or had property in Germany or happened to be liberated on German soil — would receive partial indemnification; but not more than a fraction of the losses inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Germans during the era of Nazi domination of the European Continent would thus be made good. No one can bring back to life the six million Jewish men, women and children who were starved, tortured, shot or gassed to death by orders of the Third Reich. ...
    These crimes have created a responsibility on the part of the German people, which the German Government must discharge on a collective basis, as a measure of indemnification to the Jewish people. The German Federal Republic should, therefore, assume an obligation in an instrument of agreement with the Allied Powers, to indemnify the Jewish people by material compensation in goods, services or otherwise, ...
    This task will continue for years to come ands will require very considerable funds. Justice demands that this burden be shared by Germany and the Federal republic be made to assume a clear and unequivocal obligation to this effect.

What Price Israel? Author: Alfred M. Lilienthal ©1953 Publisher: Henry Regnery Co. ISBN No. N/A 241 - Israel Should Compensate Arabs From German Reparations Fund
  • No nation has ever been under a greater moral obligation to alleviate the plight of refugees than the State of Israel. Not only did Israel’s political acts create that plight for the Arabs of Palestine, but the international rationale for the very existence of Israel was the world’s desire to save refugees. Who, then, if not Israel must fully honor the right of displaced persons to return home in peace? And, just as clearly, full compensation must be granted to those Arab refugees whose return is not feasible. A United Nations Commission should supervise the assessment of their sequestered Palestine properties and enable these refugees to find permanent reintegration in Arab lands. If need be, Israel should finance that restitution out of the reparation funds she is receiving from Germany.
The Warburgs: the story of a family Author: David Farrer ©1994 Publisher: Stein and Day ISBN No. 0-8128-1866-0 25 -- Warburg Progress
  • But the real progress of M. M. Warburg & Co. during the middle years of the nineteenth century is best illustrated by their participation, through the good offices of the Rothschild firm, in the French loan that Rothschilds issued for the payment of reparations imposed on her by Bismarck after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. This, according to Edward Rosenbaum, was a landmark “in the international movement of merchandise, precious metals. commercial and financial bills and all sorts of foreign investments.”

The Jewish Paradox Author: Nahum Goldmann Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap, 73 -- Jews Do Not Live By Bread Alone
  • The institutions I am concerned with have been trying to encourage a new awareness on the cultural level. The most important of them, the Memorial Foundation, has been able to draw upon sizable amounts in connection with German reparations. The Claims Conference and the Memorial Foundation have made contributions to the creation of Jewish schools and community centers, something like the French maisons des jeunes and maisons de la culture, which have big attendances everywhere. After the war our aim was to rebuild the cultural and religious life of the Jewish people. Adenauer supported us. Some German ministers wanted the reparations money to be spent only on the victims of Nazism and on philanthropic works. Adenauer told the supporters of that argument: ‘The Bible says that man does not live by bread alone. we must help to revive Jewish cultural life; it is no less important than feeding the poor.’ So it is thanks to that money that we were able to put up buildings and then to establish scholarship funds for Jewish writers and scholars working on Jewish subjects, as well as creating departments of Judaism in the great universities and so on.
122, 123 -- Reparations Termed ‘An Extraordinary Innovation’
  • Apart from my encounter with the survivors of the concentration camps after the liberation, I only returned officially to Germany in order to meet Chancellor Adenauer and open negotiations about reparations. These reparations constitute an extraordinary innovation in terms of international law. Until then, when a country lost a war it paid damages to the victor, but it was a matter between states, between governments. Now for the first time a nation was to give reparations either to ordinary individuals or to Israel, which did not legally exist at the time of Hitler’s crimes. All the same I must admit that the idea did not come from me. During the war the WJC had created an Institute of Jewish Affairs in New York (its headquarters are now in London). The directors were two great Lithuanian Jewish jurists, Jacob and Nehemiah Robinson. Thanks to them, the Institute worked out two completely revolutionary ideas: the Nuremberg tribunal and German reparations. The importance of the tribunal which sat at Nuremberg has not been reckoned at its true worth. According to international law it was in fact impossible to punish soldiers who had been obeying orders. It was Jacob Robinson who had this extravagant, sensational idea. When he began to canvas it among the jurists of the American Supreme Court they took him for a fool. ‘What did these Nazi officers do that was so unprecedented?’ they asked. ‘You can imagine Hitler standing trial, or maybe even Goering, but these are simple soldiers who carried out their orders and behaved as loyal soldiers.’ We therefore had the utmost trouble in persuading the Allies; the British were fairly opposed, the French barely interested, and although they took part later they did not play any great part. The success came from Robinson managing to convince the Supreme Court judge, Robert Jackson. The Institute’s other idea was that Nazi Germany ought to pay after its defeat. That still required belief in the defeat, at a time when it seemed likely that the war in Europe was lost for the Allies, but like Churchill and de Gaulle I kept my faith. I never doubted for a moment, because I knew that Hitler would never manage to moderate himself and that his excesses would draw the Allies into the conflict. According to the Institute’s conclusions, the German reparations would first have to be paid to people who had lost their belongings through the Nazis. Further, if, as we hoped, the Jewish state was created, the Germans would pay compensation to enable the survivors to settle there. The first time this idea was expressed was during the war, in the course of a conference in Baltimore. Once the Nuremberg trials were over, this reparations problem received further consideration. Several Jewish leaders then attempted to establish relations with Adenauer, but their proposals were often ridiculous. One organization suggested a payment of twenty million Deutschmarks — and at the conclusion of the agreement I obtained, the Germans will have paid out a total of eighty billion! Our ‘contacts’ were Walter Hallstein, then an under-secretary of state, and later president of the EEC, and the diplomat Herbert Blankenhorn, director of the political department of the German Foreign Ministry and Adenauer’s right-hand man. These two have remained close friends of mine.
125 -- Israel is German!
  • Without the German reparations that started coming through during its first ten years as a state, Israel would not have half of its present infrastructure: all the trains in Israel are German, the ships are German, and the same goes for electrical installations and a great deal of Israel’s industry ... and that is setting aside the individual pensions paid to survivors. Israel today received hundreds of millions of dollars in German currency each year. When Pinhas Sapir made a great speech in my defence to the WJC, he said: ‘Goldmann has brought Israel eight billion dollars.’ In some years the sums of money received by Israel from Germany have been as much as double or treble the contribution made by collections from international Jewry. Nowadays, there is no longer any opposition to the principle — even some members of Herut draw reparations.
135, 136 Many Israelis’ Living Provided By German Payments
  • Before leaving this reparations question, it is worth recalling that even today the Germans spend one billion two hundred million marks under that heading. The public thinks that the greater proportion goes to the State of Israel, but it’s the other way round: Israel has officially received the equivalent of three billion marks, although the real value is higher because the prices of the products concerned were fixed at a time when the world rates were at rock bottom. But the individual Jewish victims have received twenty times as much. Obviously, because hundreds of thousands of survivors have settled in Israel, a considerable fraction of these individual payments reverts indirectly to the state: there are thousands of Israelis whose living is provided by the German payments.
136 Adenauer Asked to Pay East Germany’s Share
  • Still, the negotiations are not over yet: the Russians have never replied to our requests, and there has been no reaction from East Germany. Of all the Communist states, the GDR is certainly the most hostile to Israel, and its press is ferocious. Eventually this led to my telling Adenauer: ‘You claim that you represent the whole of Germany and you do not recognize the GDR. In that case, be consistent and pay its share!’ After months of negotiations he accepted, and now a Jew from Leipzig receives the same pension as a Jew from Frankfurt. We have therefore lost our main ground for asking East Germany for individual reparations. Only the GFR could ask for its contribution to be repaid, but that is its own business. Of course there is the question of communal assets nationalized by the GDR, but it must be admitted that the returns are paid to the Jewish community. This has three thousand members and a satisfactory budget, which explains why I have never been very active about East Germany. Nevertheless, a state which wanted to be respected all over the world might make a gesture by helping the thousands of victims of Nazism who have not received their full entitlement of reparations. As a matter of fact I have been told through a mutual friend that Erich Honecker, the Secretary General of the East German Communist Party, would like to meet me. I would be happy to meet him, but I have heard nothing from him as yet, and I am doubtful whether he has the will to do anything worthwhile. Yet in my opinion a gesture of that sort would be of far greater benefit morally to the GDR than financially to the East-German-born Jewish victims of Nazism.

 

 

 

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