Reparations For

Holocaust Victims: TO
NEGOTIATE OR TO NOT
NEGOTIATE?

By: Kelsi Gelle

 STATE OF ISRAEL
▣ More than 500,000 Holocaust victims came to Israel in the late 1940s.
▣ The estimated cost of this resettlement was about $3,000 per immigrant, which was the figure that
Israel originally proposed in its claim to Germany.
▣ In 1951, Israel’s foreign minister Moshe Sharett submitted a note to the four allied governments
that claimed global recompense to the State of Israel for $1.5 billion from the German Federal
Republic (West Germany).
▣ Sharett's claim was based on the financial damper put on Israel from the rehabilitation of Jews
who escaped or survived the Nazi regime.
▣ In January of 1952, the Knesset- the Israeli parliament- assembled to discuss the possibility of a
reparations agreement with West Germany.
 A TURN FOR THE WORST
▣ At the same time as the Knesset’s discussion, the future prime minister of Israel,
Menachem Begin, stood in front of a large crowd and provoked violent reactions among
the Jews of Israel.
▣ The actions ranged from denunciation to assasinatin plots, and there were also several
bomb attempts by Israeli militants.
▣ The conflicts slowly worsened where Begin and the Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
exchanged insults, two hundred civilians and one hundred and forty police officers were
wounded, and nearly four hundred people were arrested (Coates, 70).
▣ The discussion about the negotiation was put on hold.
 A TURN FOR THE WORST
▣ The people who were on the opposing side considered the money to be blood money and felt it
would wash away the horrifying crimes Germany committed.
▣ They believed that reparations could not make up for the murder done by the Nazis and that
Germans would not consider themselves responsible no matter what attempt at reparations they
gave.
▣ Belinda Cooper, a visiting assistant professor of law, wrote German Politics & Society where
she analyzes the negotiation. She writes, “The fact of paying reparations did not in itself
signify German society's acknowledgement of responsibility for the Holocaust” (Cooper, 149).
▣ The statement acknowledges how some people thought that Germans failed to recognize the
moral reasoning behind reparations.
 RECOVERY & REPAIR
▣ After six months of negotiations and outbursts, an ▣ Overall, the psychological and physical effects
agreement on reparations between Israel and West of the Holocaust of victims are the most
Germany was finally signed, where Germany
important factors.
ultimately agreed to pay Israel more than $7 billion in
today’s money.
▣ Justice was served as most of the Nazis got
▣ Israel received several goods and services with the punished in some way.
money which showed the positive repair happening ▣ The survivors received the compensation many
from the negotiation. of them didn’t want but greatly deserved
▣ Israel’s gross national product tripled during the 12 (Israel helped them).
years of the agreement. The Bank of Israel attributed 15
percent of this growth, along with 45,000 jobs, to
investments made with reparations money.
 “
Draft of a Reparations Agreement
By: Dan Pagis
“All right, gentlemen who cry blue murder as always,
and already you will be covered with skin and sinews and you
Nagging miracle makers,
will live,
quiet!
look, you will have your lives back,
Everything will be returned to its place,
sit in the living room, read the evening paper.
paragraph after paragraph.
Here you are. Nothing is too late.
The scream back into the throat.
As to the yellow star: immediately
The gold teeth back to the gums.
it will be torn from your chest
The terror.
and will emigrate
The smoke back to the tin chimney and further on and inside
to the sky.”
back to the hollow of the bones,
 WORKS CITED
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Case For Reparations. Atlantic Media Company, June 2014,
moodle.drury.edu/pluginfile.php/1282539/mod_resource/content/0/%232%20Coates%20Case%20for%20Reparations.pdf.

Cooper, Belinda. German Politics & Society, vol. 19, no. 2 (59), 2001, pp. 148–155. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23740604. Accessed 21 Apr.
2021.

Honig, Frederick. “The Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany.” The American Journal of International Law,
vol. 48, no. 4, 1954, pp. 564–578. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2195023. Accessed 21 Apr. 2021.

Pagis, Dan. “Dan Pagis' Poetry.” Draft of a Reparations Agreement, Https://Www.yadvashem.org/Education/Educational-Materials/Lesson-Plans/

Dan-Pagis.html, 1995.

Weitz, Yechiam. (2020, April 01). The reparations controversy : The Jewish state and German money in the shadow of the Holocaust 1951-195.
Retrieved April 21, 2021, from https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/28248