German Reparations And The Jewish World

German Reparations and the Jewish World" has become a standard reference work since it was first published. Based extensively on archival sources, the author examines the difficult debate within the Jewish world whether it was possible to reach a material settlement with Germany so soon after Auschwitz. Concentrating on how the money was spent in rebuilding Jewish life, he also analyzes how the reparations payments transformed the relations bteween Israel and the diaspora, and between different Jewish political and ideological groups. This revised and expanded edition includes material on sensitive relief programmes from archives that have only recently been opened to researchers. In a new, extensive introductory essay the author reexamines the reparations, restitution and indemnification processes from the perspective of 50 years later.

This book about the reparations issue ("Wiedergutmachung" in German; "shilumim" in Hebrew) brings together selected protocols of all debates held in the Knesset, in its Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, in the Government and in the high councils of the ruling party Mapai, regarding conducting negotiations with the West German Government. This is the first book documenting confidential protocols lately opened to the public. With the elaborate introduction by Yehiam Weitz, this book will serve as a basic textbook for an important chapter not only in Israeli and German history, but also in post-war history in general.

In a landmark process that transformed global reparations after the Holocaust, Germany created the largest sustained redress program in history, amounting to more than $60 billion. When human rights violations are presented primarily in material terms, acknowledging an indemnity claim becomes one way for a victim to be recognized. At the same time, indemnifications provoke a number of difficult questions about how suffering and loss can be measured: How much is an individual life worth? How much or what kind of violence merits compensation? What is "financial pain," and what does it mean to monetize "concentration camp survivor syndrome"? Susan Slyomovics explores this and other compensation programs, both those past and those that might exist in the future, through the lens of anthropological and human rights discourse. How to account for variation in German reparations and French restitution directed solely at Algerian Jewry for Vichy-era losses? Do crimes of colonialism merit reparations? How might reparations models apply to the modern-day conflict in Israel and Palestine? The author points to the examples of her grandmother and mother, Czechoslovakian Jews who survived the Auschwitz, Plaszow, and Markkleeberg camps together but disagreed about applying for the post-World War II Wiedergutmachung ("to make good again") reparation programs. Slyomovics maintains that we can use the legacies of German reparations to reconsider approaches to reparations in the future, and the result is an investigation of practical implications, complicated by the difficult legal, ethnographic, and personal questions that reparations inevitably prompt.

This is a comprehensive study of reparation programmes, containing a blend of case-study analysis, thematic papers and national legislation documents from leading scholars and practitioners.

Finally available in English, this edition of Paying for the Past contains a new preface by the author and an afterword by medical ethicist Erich Loewy which places the ethical issues raised by the West German experiences with reparations into an international context.

Reparations of Nazi Victims in Postwar Europe traces reparations back to their origins in the final years of the Second World War, when victims of Nazi persecution for the first time articulated demands for indemnification en masse. Simultaneous appearance of claims in New York, London, Paris and Tel Aviv exemplified the birth of a new standard in political morality. Across Europe, the demand for compensation to individuals who suffered severe harm gained momentum. Despite vast differences in their experiences of mass victimisation, post-war societies developed similar patterns in addressing victims' claims. Regula Ludi chronicles the history of reparations from a comparative and trans-national perspective. This book explores the significance of reparations as a means to provide victims with a language to express their unspeakable suffering in a politically meaningful way.