Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany
[3] According to the website of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, "In response to calls from Jewish organizations and the State of Israel, in September 1951 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany addressed his Parliament: "... unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of the German people, calling for moral and material indemnity ...
The Federal Government are prepared, jointly with representatives of Jewry and the State of Israel ... to bring about a solution of the material indemnity problem, thus easing the way to the spiritual settlement of infinite suffering."
[4][5] In 1952, the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion argued that the reparation demand was based on recovering as much Jewish property as possible "so that the murderers do not become the heirs as well".
Due to a variety of factors, it quickly became apparent that West Germany would be the state most willing and able to deal with Israeli claims related to the Holocaust.
In 1951, Israeli authorities made a claim to the four powers occupying post-war Germany regarding compensation and reimbursement, based on the fact that Israel had absorbed and resettled 500,000 Holocaust survivors.
They also figured that six billion dollars worth of Jewish property had been pillaged by the Nazis, but stressed that the Germans could never make up for what they did with any type of material recompense.
These discussions led to a bitter controversy in Israel, as the coalition government, headed by David Ben-Gurion, claimed that reparations were necessary to restore what was stolen from the victims of the Holocaust.
Opposition to the agreement came from both the right (Herut and the General Zionists) and the left (Mapam) of the political spectrum; both sides argued that accepting reparation payments were the equivalent of forgiving the Nazis for their crimes.
On 5 November 1951, Yaakov Hazan of Mapam said in the Knesset: "Nazism is rearing its ugly head again in Germany, and our so-called Western 'friends' are nurturing that Nazism; they are resurrecting Nazi Germany ... Our army, the Israel Defense Forces, will be in the same camp as the Nazi army, and the Nazis will begin infiltrating here not as our most terrible enemies, but rather as our allies ..."[11] At a session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in September 1952, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, then a Mapam MK, stated, "I am not assuming that there are people who believe that Germany will pay a total of three billion marks, over a period of 12 years, and that this is no empty promise ...
The rally, gathered by the agreement's opponents drew 15,000 people and the riots that ensued would be the most significant attempt in Israeli history to overturn a democratically made Knesset decision.
The reparations were paid directly to the headquarters of the Israeli purchase delegation in Cologne, which received the money from the German government in annual installments.
The delegation then bought goods and shipped them to Israel, receiving its orders from a Tel Aviv-based company that had been set up to decide what to purchase and for whom.
A great part of the reparations money went into purchasing equipment and raw materials for companies that were owned by the government, the Jewish Agency, and the Histadrut labor union.
In response, early in 1999, the German government proclaimed the establishment of a fund with money from these companies to help needy Holocaust survivors.
On behalf of US citizens, the US Foreign Claims Settlement Commission reached agreements with the German government in 1998 and 1999 to compensate Holocaust victims who immigrated to the US after the war."
In 2007, Israeli MK Rafi Eitan made suggestions that were interpreted as a claim to reopen the agreement, although he insisted that he merely intended to "establish a German-Israeli work team that would examine how Germany could help the financially struggling survivors".
