This photograph features the front page of a booklet issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry containing the agreement between the governments of Israel and of the Federal Republic of Germany. The cover includes the emblem of the State of Israel with the words “Israeli Foreign Ministry” below. Beneath the title of the booklet, it is stated that the agreement was signed on September 10, 1952 in Luxemburg. The second image shows the first page of the agreement. The text refers to the “unspeakable criminal acts” against the Jewish people by the Nazi regime and states that the Federal Republic of Germany “make known their determination, within limits of their capacity, to make good the material damage caused by these acts.” Following is a paragraph entailing that the State of Israel has assumed the responsibility of resettling the Holocaust survivors and that Germany will “recompense for the cost of the integration of these refugees.” Article 1 details the amount that Germany will pay to Israel and to the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany. According to the reparation agreements, West Germany pledged to transfer to the State of Israel the sum of three billion marks towards resettling and integrating the European refugees. This money was used by the Israeli government to build the infrastructure of the new State of Israel, the new home of the Jewish people. Germany also promised a permanent monthly payment to Holocaust survivors. These payments were highly controversial. On one hand, the payments were very significant in the efforts to create the infrastructure of the new state. However, many viewed these funds as blood money. Many of the Holocaust survivors, including Menachem Begin, the opposition leader at the time, believed that accepting money from the Germans was equivalent to forgiving them their crimes.
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German Reparations – In 1945, three months after the end of World War II, Chaim Weizmann, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, submitted a request to the Allied Forces for monetary compensation from Germany for its involvement in the Holocaust. In 1951, Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharett submitted a second request for reparations on the behalf of the State of Israel. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer replied that his country was ready to come to an agreement with Israel and the Jewish people. Debates broke out in the Knesset and nationwide over whether or not to accept reparations from Germany. Many believed that money should not and could never atone for the terrible events of the Holocaust. Others stated that while the German reparations couldn’t compensate for the Nazi crimes, the money would be a tremendous contribution to the new State of Israel and would assist in the rehabilitation of the survivors and the Jewish people. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Herut party, was a strong opponent of reparations and led many stormy demonstrations against any kind of compensation and cooperation between Israel and Germany. In 1953 an agreement was ratified, and West Germany agreed to pay $845 million to Israel and to individual Holocaust survivors. Much of the money to Israel was paid in goods such as ships and other German products. Additional payments were agreed on as a result of the later reunification of East and West Germany and individual lawsuits by survivors.
Holocaust – The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide and persecution of European Jewry by the German Nazi regime and its collaborators in Europe and North Africa during World War II. The Holocaust was implemented in stages from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party’s first rise to power. From 1933 anti-Jewish laws were passed in Germany which excluded the Jews from German society. The Nazis also began to create a network of concentration camps where Jews and other “undesirable elements” of society were imprisoned in inhumane conditions. With the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II, which started in 1939, the formal persecution of Jews was implemented in all the occupied countries. Jews were sent to ghettos, made to work in forced labour, and lived in appalling conditions. In 1942 the Nazis held the Wannsee Conference where they decided on the Final Solution which detailed the extermination all the Jews of Europe. Initially, more than one million Jews were exterminated by death squads named Einsatzgruppen, who were assisted by local collaborators. As of 1942 Jews were deported from the ghettos to death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, where millions were murdered in gas chambers on arrival. Jews who were not immediately murdered were sent to force labour, and many died as a result of the harsh conditions, starvation, and disease. Jewish resistance was extremely difficult, but attempts to fight the Nazis were made by Jewish partisans and fighters in uprisings such as, most famously, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Sobibor Uprising. In 1944, as it became clear that the Nazis were losing the war, Nazi camp commanders began to close the camps and forced the survivors to march towards Germany. Already sick and weak from the years of violence, more than 250,000 Jews died on these death marches. The Holocaust came to an end with the defeat of the Nazis in May 1945. Six million Jews, two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were murdered with millions more experiencing tremendous suffering, violence, and loss. In addition to the Jews, millions of Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, and Soviet and Polish prisoners of war were also murdered during the Holocaust.
