Knesset Session 237, 13.3.1951
Speaker Nahum Nir-Rafalkes (Mapam): The foreign minister has the floor for a statement.
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: Mr. Speaker: On January 16, 1951, through its authorized representatives, the government of Israel, submitted to the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France, a note on compensation and restitution of property that Germany is obligated to Jews.
The note addresses the payment and restitution due to Jews as individuals in which regard there are specific laws in the various zones of West Germany. The note also states that meeting all these individual claims does in no way repay the heavy debt imposed upon the German people vis-à-vis the Jewish people.
The government stated that it retains the right to raise, in a special note, an issue not covered by the existing laws – the issue of reparations owed by Germany to the Jewish people in its entirety for the plunder of property and confiscation of assets of masses of Jews throughout Europe – the same Jews who were slaughtered and who have no heirs to claim the restitution of their property or payment of compensation for their damages.
This second note was submitted yesterday to the four great powers, and I am honored to bring its contents to the attention of the Knesset and the general public in Israel and abroad.
This document puts an unprecedented claim onto the international agenda.
In it the government of Israel demands to impose on Germany reparations in the sum of $1.5 billion, only one quarter of the value of plundered Jewish property.
This claim is submitted in the knowledge that the German people in its entirety is responsible for the killing and plunder perpetrated by its previous regime against the Jews of Europe, and that this responsibility must be imposed on both parts of the German people, now divided between West and East.
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These reparations are claimed by the government of Israel, as it sees the State of Israel as holder of the rights of the slaughtered millions, and is fully entitled and bound to demand satisfaction for them in its capacity of being the sole sovereign embodiment of the people who, as a consequence of being Jewish, were annihilated. The reparations claim has been calculated according to the financial burden shouldered by the Israeli people, and Diaspora Jews throughout the world, for the restitution and absorption of the half million Holocaust survivors who have settled or will settle in Israel.
The note reads as follows:
The claim of the Jewish people against Germany is without precedent. In the history of the world there is no mention of an act of slaughter and plunder of such tremendous magnitude as that perpetrated by the German people against European Jewry. In the space of a few short years in a campaign of systematic extermination, entire communities were eradicated, communities that had existed more than a thousand years. More than six million Jews were put to death by torture, starvation, killing and mass suffocation. Many of them were burnt or buried alive. No mercy was shown to young or old. Children were torn from mothers’ arms and thrown into the crematoria. The elderly were hunted down and transported to the death camps. More than four million Jews perished in Poland and the occupied area of Russia alone. From Germany itself and all parts of occupied Europe – Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria – trains packed with Jews were sent to the extermination centers month after month. This slaughter is one of the most horrific episodes in the history of humankind.
In the wake of the murder came the plunder, also of great magnitude. According to a conservative estimate, the Nazis in Germany and other European countries that fell under their rule stole Jewish property worth $6 billion. This sum includes the collective fine of one billion marks imposed on German Jewry following the riots organized by that country’s government in November 1938, and also the fines, confiscations and other discriminatory taxes levied on German Jewry by the Nazi authorities. The Federal Government of Germany has accepted responsibility for this by viewing itself as the inheriting entity of the Third Reich.
This vast campaign of genocide and plunder of property was the climax of the process of persecution and repression that began on the day the Nazis came to power in Germany. The verdict of the principal German war criminals at the Nüremberg Trials defined this campaign as “a consistent and systematic human horror conducted in the greatest magnitude.” The excerpts from the verdict cited here will serve as a description of the persecution of the Jews, from the establishment of the Nazi regime to the end of WW II.
The verdict reads as follows:
“With the Nazis taking power, persecution of the Jews increased. A series of discriminatory laws were enacted which restricted the posts and professions available to Jews; restrictions were imposed on their family life and civil rights. In the autumn of 1938 the Nazi policy on Jews reached a point whereby they were totally excluded from German life. Riots were organized, synagogues were burnt down and destroyed, shops were looted and prominent Jewish businessmen were arrested. A fine of one billion marks was imposed on the Jews, authority was issued for the confiscation of Jewish assets, and ordinances were promulgated restricting the movement of Jews to certain neighborhoods and times. Ghettos were set up
63 throughout the country and on the orders of the security police the Jews were forced to wear a yellow patch on their chest and back. The imposition of the one billion mark fine and the confiscation of Jewish deposits began when arms expenditures led the German treasury into dire straits, so that the government was forced to cut the arms budget.
Persecution of the Jews in Germany, although harsh and repressive, cannot be compared with the policy adopted in the occupied territories during the war. At first this policy was similar to that adopted inside Germany. Jews were required to register, they were forced to live in ghettos, to wear the yellow patch, and were used for forced labor. Then, in the summer of 1941, plans were made for the Final Solution of the Jewish problem throughout Europe. This Final Solution meant extermination of the Jews. As early as the beginning of 1939, Hitler threatened that this would be one of the consequences of the war, should it break out. Then a special Gestapo department was established to implement this policy, one headed by Adolf Eichmann as chief of Department B-4.
The plan to exterminate the Jews entered its implementation phase a short time after the attack on the Soviet Union. Special squads – Einsatzgruppen – recruited to break down the population’s resistance in the rear of the German armies in the East, were assigned to exterminate the Jews in these areas. The Einsatzgruppen’s efficiency is demonstrated by the fact that in February 1942, Heydrich1 was able to report that Estonia had been completely purged of Jews, while in Riga the number of Jews had been reduced from 29,500 to 2,500.
In total, the Einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied Baltic states killed more than 135,000 Jews in three months. The Einsatzgruppen did in no way act without coordination with the German armed forces. There is clear evidence that their commanders enjoyed the cooperation of military commanders. These horrific acts were a direct consequence of the policy determined in 1942. Part of the Final Solution was to gather Jews from all parts of occupied Europe into concentration camps. Those able to work were put to forced labor in the camps. Those unable to work were put to death in the gas chambers and their corpses incinerated. Certain concentration camps at Treblinka and Auschwitz were designated for this principal objective. Regarding Auschwitz, the court has heard the testimony of Hoess,2 who commanded the camp from May 1, 1940 to December 1, 1943. He estimated that in the Auschwitz camp alone during that period, 2,500,000 souls were exterminated and a further 500,000 died of sickness and starvation. In his testimony Hoess described the selection of the victims for extermination as follows: ’Those able to work were sent into the camp. Others were immediately sent to the extermination facilities. Young children were exterminated without exception. Women would often hide their children beneath their dresses, but when we discovered them they were, of course, sent for extermination’.
Hoess also described the actual killing process: ’Killing the people in the death rooms lasted from three to fifteen minutes, according to the weather conditions. We knew they were dead when the screaming stopped. We would usually wait for about half-an-hour before opening the doors and removing the bodies. After the bodies had been removed our special squads would remove rings and extract gold teeth from the corpses.’
Blows, starvation, torture and killing were an everyday occurrence. In August 1942 the inmates of Dachau were subjected to cruel experiments. The victims were immersed in 1 Reinhard Heydrich, head of the security forces of the S.S., later head of the Gestapo and the Einsatzgruppen. In 1940 he initiated the Wannsee Conference in which the plan for the Final Solution - annihilation of European Jews - was laid. Assassinated by Czech underground fighters in 1942.
2 Rudolf Höss, a S.S. high-ranking officer. In March 1946 was extradited to Poland, put on trial and sentenced to death.
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cold water until their body temperature dropped to minus 28° centigrade, when they would expire. Experiments were also conducted in pressure chambers to determine the body’s reaction to high altitude, and also to determine how long a human could survive in freezing water, and other experiments with poison pills, contagious diseases, and sterilization of men and women using X-rays and other methods.
Testimony has been heard on how the victims were treated before and after they had been put to death. Testimony was heard on how the women’s hair was shorn before they were killed and the hair sent to Germany for use in mattresses. Clothing, money and valuables of those killed were also sent to the appropriate bureaus for further use. Gold teeth and fillings were extracted from the mouths of the corpses and sent to the Reichsbank. After the corpses had been incinerated, the ashes were used as fertilizer. In some cases, experiments were conducted on the use of body fat for the soap industry. Einsatzgruppen roamed Europe in search of Jews for the Final Solution. German delegations were sent to satellite states such as Hungary and Bulgaria to arrange transports of Jews to the extermination camps. We know that up until the end of 1944, 400,000 Hungarian Jews were executed in Auschwitz. Testimony was taken on the evacuation of 110,000 Jews from part of Romania for extermination. Adolf Eichmann, assigned by Hitler to implement the plan, estimated that this policy brought about the killing of six million Jews, including four million that were killed at the extermination facilities.”
There can be no atonement or material compensation for a crime of such immense and horrifying magnitude. The Jewish people has lost a third of its number. The majority of European Jewry has been destroyed: of every four Jews in Europe, three were murdered.
Any compensation whatsoever, no matter how large, cannot be compensate for the loss of human life and cultural values, or atonement for the suffering and torture of men, women and children slaughtered in every conceivable inhuman manner. When [Karl Hermann]
Frank, one of the principal defendants in the Nüremberg Trials, confessed: “A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will still not have been erased,” all that can be done is to obtain reparations for the heirs of the victims and to provide reparations to the survivors. Jews were killed, but the German people continues to enjoy the spoils of the slaughter and pillage perpetrated by their previous leaders. Of this we can say: “Hast thou killed and also taken possession?” We cannot raise the dead, we cannot ease their suffering, but at least we can demand that the German people be required to restore the plundered Jewish property and pay for the reparations to the Holocaust survivors.
From the outset, Israel has played a dominant role in the absorption and rehabilitation of the survivors. With the outbreak of Nazi persecution in 1938, the Jews of what was then Palestine came to the aid of German Jewry. An incessant flow of German Jews – a flow that increased with the fall of Austria and Czechoslovakia and when the Jews of those countries joined the flight – found its way to Palestine. In the interim between the establishment of the Nazi regime and the outbreak of WW II, more than 75,000 refugees from the countries under that regime in Central Europe settled in Palestine. During the war years too, despite the restrictions imposed by the British Mandate authorities, immigration of Jews from Europe did not cease. Heroic efforts were made to rescue Jews from the countries that fell under the tidal wave of Nazi occupation or from countries threatened by that danger. At the end of the war the Jews of Palestine risked their lives and future to bring the survivors of the great slaughter to a safe haven. When the State of Israel was finally established, its first act was to open its gates to the survivors from the countries of killing and destruction.
Between 1939 and 1950, close to 380,000 Jews were brought to Palestine, later Israel, from the territories of the Nazi regime and occupation. Together with the Jews who immigrated
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65 from Central Europe during the prewar years of Nazi persecution, this figure rises to 450,000 souls. The majority of survivors came with only their exhausted bodies. Their property had long since been looted. Many of them were incurably crippled – human beings whose health had been irreparably damaged. Israel alone was prepared to offer them refuge.
Unlike other countries in which immigrants are easily absorbed into a developed economy, Israel has been compelled to make special efforts and devote huge public funds for investment and maintenance in order to create living possibilities for its immigrants. The economic structure of the young state was dedicated at the outset to serving this vital objective.
Although great assistance has been received from Jews abroad, most of the expenditure bound up in receiving and absorbing the immigrants was shouldered by the people of Israel.
Heavy taxation has been imposed and a regimen of strict austerity has been introduced;
the people accepted all this with love in order to provide a roof and subsistence for the new settlers. It is no exaggeration to demand that the German people, which is responsible for this calamity and which holds as before the economic assets taken from Jews living and dead, be required to pay for reparations for the benefit of the survivors.
At the end of the war, when the triumphant Allies convened to allocate the compensation due from Germany, the Jewish people did not yet possess legal status in the family of sovereign nations. Therefore, although from a moral standpoint its claims were stronger than those of any other nation that suffered under the Nazis, at the time it had no voice.
The time has come to rectify this wrong.
Israel is the only country authorized to speak in the name of the Jewish people – six million Jews were murdered solely because they belonged to that same people. The State of Israel was initially established to provide a home for all persecuted and expelled Jews.
This responsibility has always been furfilled by the people of Israel, body and soul. In the war against Nazi Germany, sons and daughters of the Jewish community in Palestine fought in national units that were part of the Allied forces. The Jewish Fighting Brigade of the British Army, manned by Palestinian Jews, played a part in the final defeat of the enemy on the Italian front, and after the war ended played an active role in supplying aid and succor to Jewish survivors in various parts of Europe.3 The recognition by the United Nations of the Jewish people’s right to re-establish its state was reparation for all the evil acts perpetrated against this people through the ages which reached their climax in the Nazi campaign of annihilation. When the State of Israel was founded it immediately took upon itself the burden of absorbing and rehabilitating the Holocaust survivors. For all 3 The Jewish Fighting Brigade, formed out of the three infantry battalions manned by Palestinian Jews who volunteered to serve in the British army, fought the German army in WW II on the Italian front. Following the end of the war, the Brigade was stationed in northern Italy and later in Holland and Belgium from where its soldiers took upon themselves, without permission of the British High Command, to take care of the Holocaust survivors residing in the displaced persons’ camps in Austria and Germany.
Units of the Jewish Brigade were instrumental in organizing and in illegally transporting tens of thousand of Jewish Holocaust survivors to several ports on the southern coasts of Italy and France from where they illegally sailed to Palestine on ships purchased and commanded by the Haganah (the clandestine military organization of the Yishuv). This vast enterprise, encompassing several European countries, would not have been realized without the Jewish Brigade’s presence in Europe. As the head of Jewish Agency’s Political Department in 1933-1948, Moshe Sharett was instrumental in enlisting of Palestinian Jews into the British army and in prodding of the British High Command first to form the three Palestinian infantry battalions and then to establish the Jewish Brigade.
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these reasons the State of Israel views itself as entitled to claim reparations from Germany as compensation for the Jewish people.
On the one hand, the sum to be claimed must relate to the damages inflicted on the Jewish people by the Germans, and on the other, to the expenses incurred in the resturation in Israel of those who escaped the Nazi actions or survived them. The government of Israel is unable to obtain accurate details of the Jewish property confiscated or plundered by the Germans which, as aforementioned, is authoritatively estimated at six billion dollars. The government of Israel can only base its claim on the sums already expended and which will be expended on the settlement and absorption of Jewish immigrants from countries that were under the Nazi
On the one hand, the sum to be claimed must relate to the damages inflicted on the Jewish people by the Germans, and on the other, to the expenses incurred in the resturation in Israel of those who escaped the Nazi actions or survived them. The government of Israel is unable to obtain accurate details of the Jewish property confiscated or plundered by the Germans which, as aforementioned, is authoritatively estimated at six billion dollars. The government of Israel can only base its claim on the sums already expended and which will be expended on the settlement and absorption of Jewish immigrants from countries that were under the Nazi