Reparation Payments to Holocaust Survivors.

Great Debates
1

Germany, through collected taxes and corporate assets has set up a fund through which it distributes payment to the survivors of the Holocaust.

That amount, based on the number of remaining survivors on record, works out to roughly $5,000 per person. I have seen this figure calculated in a back issue of Time Magazine.

I’ve got a few misgivings about the entire business of reparation and it’s ultimate impact.

First of all, even if one could put a monetary value to the suffering and injustice experienced by the Holocaust victims and survivors, I would expect it to be somewhat larger than a mere $5,000 USD. So in a sense, I find that amount to be simply another slap in the face of those who have lost so much more than mere assets.

Secondly, what possible comfort can that amount be to any individual 55 years after the war? Would it not be better to have that money go towards museums, memorials, education and prevention of similar attrocities around the world? Would that not better serve the memory or those who perished?

Thirdly, aren’t we asking that the sons pay for the sins of their fathers. After all, any surviving Nazis are retired and (for the most part) no longer part of Germany’s national tax base. Is it fair to penalize a nation 55 years after the end of it’s aggression.

Finally, what’s the lawyers’ cut of all this?

2

Some of those sons probably sit on the boards of corporations, or own corporations, built by their fathers on the backs of Jewish slave labor.

3

Agreed. But they no longer partake in slave labour nor do they continue to act in an anti-social manner (to the best of my knowledge).

It is equally true that GM, Ford, and large US steel corporations took an active role in helping Hitler, Franco, and Mussolinni build up their war machines. The US gov’t knew damn well of the Nazi politics and intentions but they did not prevent the flow of goods into Nazi hands or the flow of money out of Germany. Why are there no reparations being demanded from these industrial giants. Their culpability is known and undeniable.

Canada’s PM Lyon McKenzie King is documented as saying “One Jew is too many!” Which was in response to a request to allow boats of Jewish refugees, fleeing war torn Europe, to enter Canada. Should not the Canadian gov’t be held financially responsible for sending thousands of Jews to their deaths?

4

No one should be responsible for any but their own sins.

5

My understanding of Germany’s reparation payments to Holocaust survivors and their families were to repay them for property and money seized by the government. When Jews and others were interred, all their belongings were taken. I didn’t think they were trying to compensate for pain and suffering.

But, hey, I’ve been wrong before.

6

This is valid when it comes to individuals, but not to countries or institutions. If it was the German government of a couple of generations ago that committed a particular crime, the responsibility for making amends rests with subsequent German governments. And seeing as most of the individuals who were directly involved will never have to pay for their actions, even if they are still alive, this is even more true.

Whenever the Holocaust is brought up, it always leads to people bringing other genocides or mass murders into the discussion, but this is not a competition to see whose pain is greater. There are ways in which the Holocaust is different to (almost) all other massacres - eg it was continued with a high priority despite its detrimental effect on the overall war effort; demonisation of Jews was institutionalised in every strata of society such as schools curriculums and business - but one relevant way it was unique was its highly beauracratic nature: there was such vast documentation of what was going on, that the normally chaotic aspects of war, such as looting, left paperwork that can now be used as a basis for legal action.

In addition, this sort of thing is useful in that it reminds Germans of their past, and reminds the world that it was not some mythical country called ‘Nazi’ that was behind the Holocaust. The average German today is more willing to accept this than a lot of outsiders.

HenrySpencer.

7

My wife’s 95-year old grandmother (we call her Oma) gets one of those checks. I can’t recall the exact amount, but it’s very little. She’s quite a remarkable lady, by the way.

As far as the sins of the fathers thing goes, that’s silly. The money is being paid by an institution. If the US government owes you money, and the government rolls over in an election, do they still owe you the money? Of course. How about if 50 years go by and everyone in the government has been replaced? Of course. I mean, think about this: if IBM wrongs you, and you sue and win, and then every employee at IBM is replaced, so there are none of the original people, are you still owed the money? Of course you are; the money is owed by the institution. Now, if you die, does the government owe money to your heirs? That’s a different story, and I’d argue that no they don’t.

As far as giving it to a charity, I think if the recipient wants to give it away that’s great. But the money is the recipients to do with as they please, not yours. How would you like it if someone proposed that all car accident restitutions went to a charity instead of the victim?

8

I can see where A Government might owe for the sins of previous administrations, but the current German Gov’t only happens to be located in the same country. Int’l law does not hold a current gov’t responsible for the previous. Now, since the current US gov’t goes back some 200 years, that is different, so the Gov’t might be responsible for the acts of the Gov’t, like we paid reparations for the Japanese internments.

9

Germany was economically devastated after the war. I doubt the slave labor really helped them out in the long run.

Marc

10

**

It is a government that no longer exist in any way, shape, or form. It was completely destroyed at the end of the war. It isn’t like our country that has had the same government for the past 200 years.

Or it could simply be thought of as rubbing their faces in it.

Marc

11

However, the actual $$ stolen, and put in Swiss accounts by the actual Nazis, THAT must be returned.

12

Look, the collected assets of all the European Jews killed and surviving must have filled the Nazi coffers quite nicely. Now reparations are ordered to the survivors. However many Jews were robbed of their assets between 1933 and 1945, there remains roughly 6 million less of them.

Given the relatively large sum of money, accrued basic interest over some 60 years, plus a much smaller number of survivors, wouldn’t you think that the number would be somewhat greater than $5,000 per person?

This is what irritates me about this entire thing. To my mind justice is not being done at all. Justice is simply being paid lip service. Not only is the amount not reflective of the loss and suffering these people endured (who could put a price on that anyway?). The amount is not even refletive of the pure financial loss these people suffered! It does not take an actuarian to hash the numbers to see that this reparation is simply not reflective of the actual financial losses suffered by the persecuted. Finally, I hear alot of talk about German industries and gov’t commiting their funds but the Swiss banks, which to date have not fully disclosed their WWII records, seem to be skating right through this ordeal relatively unscathed. Why do they continue to be untouchable? Are they not truely the ones who profited most by Nazi ill gotten gains? Who is protecting them and why?

13

Ok, there are two ways to look at this:

  1. The holocaust survivors are being compensated for physical and mental terror.
  2. The holocaust survivors are being compensated, in a uniform, abstract sort of way, for actual monetary/property that was stolen by the Nazis.

My understanding of the situation is that Max Torque above is right, and that the compensations are more along the lines of number 2. The issue that no one ever seems to bring up is that, historically, this is not simply a Jewish problem. The nazis plundered, by treaty and other means, every country they conquered. Conquered nations immediately had the gold and foriegn holdings of their banks appropriated. In addition, there were “occupation costs” that each nation was required to pay Germany. By the end of the war, these had come to 60 billion marks, a majority (31.5 billion) form France. These occupation costs and “credits” that countries were forced to grant to Germany sucked up about two thirds of the national income for both Belgium and the Netherlands. All told, the Germans extracted 104 billion marks in tribute, officially, from conquered nations ($26,000,000,000 if we use the unofficial ratio of 4 marks to the dollar).

Most of their plundered goods, however, were carted off under no official auspices. It has been estimated that, in France, the Germans took (as “levies in kind”) 9 million tons of cereal, 75% of the total production of oats, 80% of oil, 74% of steel, etc. etc., for a total, from the french alone, of 184.5 billion francs. Occupied Russia was raped, but apparently with some difficulty, as the total haul was estimated by the Germans to be only worth about 4 billion marks. In Poland, 700,000 estates comprising 15 million acres were “seized,” and 9,500 estates comprising 6.5 million acres were “confiscated” (no one is quite sure what the difference between the two words here is, but it apparently made little difference to the Poles).

(Note: all of the above figures come from William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, pp. 943-944, some very brief portions of the text are taken verbatim here.)

None of this takes into account the monetary value of slave labor that the Nazis employed. In September of 1944, this amounted to 7 and a half million foriegn civilians and about 2 million P.O.W.'s. (again, from Shirer), mostly Russians and other Slavs (to my understanding, Jews were rarely used in slave labor since the Germans were busy killing them).

So, what’s the point of all this boring, depressing twaddle? The point is that, while the Jews certainly caught the worst of the Nazi terror, they were hardly alone when it came to monetary damages. To have Germany repay only one of the groups it plundered seems hypocritical. To have them pay back everyone they plundered, and their descendants, in full, would probably bankrupt the country (bear in mind, the Nazis never got to hoard their spoils; they were almost uniformily thrown in to war production and thus irrevocably lost). A bankrupted, and therefore radicalized, Germany is what led to the rise of the Nazis in the first place. Best not to go down that path.

14

Oh, absolutely, the nazis stole big bux from the Jews (and others). But there is very little of it left, as the nazis spent nearly all of in in WWII. Certainly the current German Govt has none of it, so why should they pay? What did THEY do? It’s their fault because their country has a similar name, and occupies some of the same ground?

15

Danielinthewolvesden wrote

If you get a paycheck and spend it on crack, do you no longer owe your rent, since the money’s gone? Of course you still owe your debts. You can either a) get a loan, b) dip into savings or c) pull it out of your next paycheck. And those are Germany’s choices as well. This “earmarking” concept doesn’t work.

The recent tobacco company suits: How many people do you think are in the companies today who were there 50 years ago, when their crimes were committed? 5%? 1%? 0%? Are they no longer liable?

Institutions are not people. The fact that different people are in the German government today is irrelevant.

16

But it is not the SAME German Government. It just has a similar name. Would you be responsible for somebodies debts if he had the same name & lived in the same city? Your analogy about spending the paycheck on crack would be right is somebody else, with a similar name, stole your paycheck from your company, and spent it on drugs. Then, NO, you would not be responsible, and would want to get repaid.

As far as the Tobacco co go, they are the same incorperated enities. Those who have gone defunct, cannot be sued, nor can you sue the baby food company who bought the factory at the recievorship sale. That would be a good analogy: “Kofinails tobacco co.” goes bankrupt, and Acme tobacco buys their assets at the bankruptcy liquidation sale. You can not sue “Acme” for what Kofinails co did, even if Acme also sells tobacco. You may sue Acme for what Acme did only.

I do agree that the fact that there are different people is not relevant, but the fact it is a different Company, er Government is relevant.

17

Hmmm, I just glanced back at the OP, which states that the German government is setting up this fund itself. My previous criticisms were largely directed at the idea that Germany should be expected or even forced to offer reparations. If, however, the German government (and, presumably, the German people) want to do this, then more power to them.

BillH: I don’t think your analogy works. The German state of today is an entirely seperate entity from the German state of 1933-45. The instrument of government, to say nothing of the people populating the government, is no longer the same. The tobacco companies, though controlled mostly by different people, are still the same institutions that they were in 1950. (And besides, those companies’ “crimes” continue at least in to the 1980’s, or as long as they continued to deny that cigarettes were harmful or addictive.) The German government simply is not the same institution as the institution set up by the Nazis.

18

I’m not so sure the German gov’t or the German people “want” to pay this retribution to the Jews or anyone else for that matter. The Germain corporations sure as hell don’t either. It was the mounting pressure by international judicial bodies that essentially forced the latest round or reparations. Needless to say there is a huge amount of guilt felt by many Germans who, as has been pointed out, had nothing to do with past crimes commited. Their only association seems to be that they are the children and grandchildren of men and women, most of whom were in some way responsible for the rise of Nazi aggression. Not only that, most Germans are vehemently opposed to any future acts of aggression. Never the less, their national collective guilt has been capitalized upon. No German multinational corporation wants to be viewed as a denier of their past. No German gov’t official (well, almost none) want to be classified as a fascist in this day and age. It would be political and marketing suicide for either to appear unappologetic.

So the question still stands - Why insist on penalizing what has proven to be an essentially peaceful nation (for the past 50 years) when it is clear that no amount of money is going to compensate for the losses suffered by the victims of the Axis forces? Why persist with token payments which seem to serve merely as a marketing ploy? Is that not simply adding insult to injury when you send a cheque to a survivor who has lost his/her entire family to the Nazi war machine? How can a mere few thousand dollars even begin to compensate these surviving victims for their losses?

And if you are looking for an analogy to this - Suppose a man stole from you. He spent what he stole and could not repay it. The court ordered that his wages be garnished to repay his debt but he dies before he can make restitution. He has no estate or insurance money from which to repay his debts and his family is left to fend for themselves. Is it morally/legally right to appeal to the courts to have the wages of his children garnished to repay their father’s debt? Are the children responsible for their father’s crime, despite the fact that they were underaged at the time the crime took place and had nothing to do with it?

19

For that matter, we helped rebuild Germany and most of Europe through the Marshall plan, to keep them from falling into the commie sphere.

Mississippi, during it’s years in the CSA, issued millions in war bonds, some bought by wealthy Englishmen. Those bonds were never repaid, or canceled. In the early 90’s, one guy bought some at a flea market or the like, and tried to sue Mississippi for 1.5 million or so based on the fact that those bonds had been issued but not paid off. The case went to court and the courts had a few things to say.

  1. The CSA ceased to exist in April of 1865.
  2. If any part of the CSA owed you money, too bad. It didn’t exist anymore.
  3. Since Mississippi was a part of the CSA, the bonds were not vaild anymore.

I would imagine if Germany wanted to stick to it’s guns, it could rationalize it like that. The fact that they are “voluntarily” making payments indicates that they are at least trying to feel sorry for their past.

20

It is a bit off topic, but did the US govt. ever make an effort to repay France (for the loan of approx. 7 million dollars) made by the government of King Louis XVI in 1778? As I recall, Benjamin Franklin (US Ambassador to France) negotiated this loan, but since Louis lost his head in the French revolution, I don’t ever recall seeing that the loan was ever repaid.
Of course, the French have never gotten around paying their WWI debt to the USA…nor have the British…is there some kind of statute of limitations on debts of these types…or are nations allowed to be deadbeats forever?