Knesset Sessions 14-15, 4-5.11.1951
Speaker Yosef Sprinzak: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett has the floor.
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: Mr. Speaker, members of the Knesset, in recent weeks and months there have been a few new developments in several of our spheres of activity and interest in the field of foreign policy. In accordance with the cabinet’s decision, I will now deliver a brief review of these developments.
The likelihood of a flow of substantial resources for building our economy, in addition to the American aid grant, could be realized if Israel’s claim for reparations from Germany would be met. The first positive response to the note submitted by the State of Israel to the four occupying powers on March 12, 1951 – the note I had the honor to read in the Knesset – was the statement delivered by the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in the House of Representatives in Bonn on September 27, 1951. This statement, which was unanimously ratified, contained an admission of the horrific acts committed by the Nazi regime against European Jewry in the name of the German people, although an attempt was made to present the majority of the German people as innocent of this charge.
The statement also expressed willingness to impose reparations on the German people for the property plundered and the material damage inflicted, and to this end to enter into negotiations with representatives of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. The government of Israel is presently awaiting real proof of the Bonn government’s readiness to shoulder collective payment for the plunder of Jewish property appropriate to the extent of the plunder, and on the basis of the claim submitted by the State of Israel.
The note submitted to the occupying powers stated: “There can be no atonement or material compensation for a crime of such immense and horrifying magnitude.” It further states: “Any compensation whatsoever, no matter how large, cannot compensate for the loss of human life and cultural values, or serve
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as atonement for the suffering and torture of men, women and children who were slaughtered in every conceivable inhuman manner.”
These phrases were reiterated in the declaration issued by the Conference of Jewish Organizations that took place ten days ago in New York. The conference was convened at the invitation of the Jewish Agency and was attended by some twenty international and national Jewish organizations. The delegates came from the United States, England, Canada, Argentina, South Africa and France. It was, in fact, a comprehensive representation of the major Jewish communities of the free world. The sessions were led by the chairman of the American branch of the Jewish Agency, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Eban, the Ambassador of Israel in Washington, took part. It was declared that all the organizations represented wholeheartedly supported Israel’s reparations claim and demanded that other Jewish claims from Germany, including claims for the restitution of property and the payment of compensation to individuals, heir-organizations and so forth should also be met. This important conference was characterized by a spirit of Jewish unity, political responsibility, and devotion to Israel.
I would like to prevent any misunderstanding. A question was raised in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the reparations claim’s method, whether it necessitates negotiations, what kind of negotiations, and so forth. I replied that in my opinion this question is not relevant at this time. When it becomes relevant, there will be a discussion. In my review at the committee, in view of recent developments I reported several relevant facts regarding our negotiations for reparations. It was not my intention to raise this question for debate. If the question is whether or not to submit a claim for reparations, then the claim was submitted several months ago; if the question is what kind of negotiations should be conducted, the government is not bringing it before the Knesset. When this question is put before the government, it will not take any final or binding decision.
MK Aryeh Ben Eliezer (Herut): The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in the presence of the foreign minister, made a clear decision to the effect that the question of Germany will not be included in today’s political debate but will constitute a separate issue to be discussed by the Knesset.
MK Israel Rokach (General Zionists): Will there be a separate debate?
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: When the time is right.
MK Yitzhak Raphael (Hapoel Hamizrachi): There will certainly be another opportunity, when the time is right, to voice our opinion on the issue that has vexed the entire Jewish people for some time. There is nothing more just than claiming compensation from the nation of murderers. As a people whose place is
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among the victorious nations, and one which suffered more than any other people in the world war, we are entitled and even duty-bound to claim compensation and reparations. We shall assert our claim on the property of our brethren for the purpose of materially assisting our brethren. Vast amounts of Jewish property, public and private, have remained in that country, whose surviving Jews have left it, and the 30,000 Jews who are still there will soon leave it, too. There is no room, nor will there ever be, for negotiation between representatives of the Jewish people and the nation of murderers! The people of the Torah has not forgotten its hatred of the Amalekite – the people of the Torah will not cease thinking, not even for one moment, about the catastrophe brought down upon it by a fiendish nation united by the spirit of defilement which characterized all Germans, from East and West alike, in carrying out the horrifying plan of our people’s annihilation.
The Knesset will have the opportunity to express the horror of the Jewish people residing in Zion towards the Germans, and the profound hatred rooted in its heart towards those unclean people, when the time is right for a debate on this issue, as we have heard today from the foreign minister.
Now we must ask not only for caution at every step taken on this sensitive and delicate matter but also great caution in any statement made in order to obviate a mistaken impression likely to be received by the public. We must ask the government that anything it may do in this regard – and it has much to do so that we may obtain the assets of our brethren to save those brethren waiting in their tens of thousands to be absorbed and rehabilitated – will be done with the approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and in accordance with the Knesset’s decision.
MK Aryeh Ben Eliezer (Herut): Even though the government has not yet entered into formal negotiations with the German government on the question of reparations and compensation, the fact is that preliminary contacts have been made and clarifications have already been discussed. These “clarifications” are in fact negotiations, and on this matter I would like to say that neither this House nor any other Israeli state institution has authorized the government to enter negotiations.
MK Shmuel Mikunis (I.C.P.): The foreign minister has elegantly by-passed the question from which the blood of six million Jews is dripping – that of Germany.
In his effort to justify his negotiations with the neo-Nazi Bonn government, he cited the fact that under the direction of a few Jewish agents of the State Department, a conference of Jewish organizations was convened in the USA and “unanimously” supported Adenauer (Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: Who are the people you are calling foreign agents?) – Nahum Goldmann was a British agent and now is an American agent! (Speaker Yosef Sprinzak: In this House it is unacceptable to defame a Jewish and Zionist leader trusted by all of us. I ask MK
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Mikunis to retract his words) – I cannot retract true facts in which I firmly believe.
I am saying that Churchill is a warmonger, that Truman is Hitler’s heir! Am I not allowed to say the truth on this podium? It’s my right! Am I forbidden to criticize Nahum Goldmann who is an American citizen? (MK Yitzhak Rafael: He is a Jew and he is a Zionist! That is what he is!) – He is a Jew? There were Jews also in the Judenrats! Are you going to prohibit me from criticizing them?
Speaker Yosef Sprinzak: Your time is up.
MK Yona Kesse (Mapai): When deliberating the issue of reparations from Germany, we must draw a distinction between the genuine emotions of Jews who recoil from conducting negotiations for compensation with the German government, and others who criticize us not so much out of Jewish-Israeli emotion, but due to other, partisan accounts.
With regard to the Jews, in whose emotions and sensitivities I firmly believe, I would like to say that they are doing a great wrong in this matter to the government and to our national honor if they, through their opposition, create the impression that the reparation claim is linked with forgiveness and atonement for the German people. This is not true. We seek to restore the plunder, the Jewish property that was taken from us, and we do not seek it because we are avaricious but because we do not wish to leave in German hands the vast amount of property taken from our slaughtered brethren, and we seek to make it into a source for the building of the State of Israel: the settlement of its wildernesses, the absorption of immigrants and the development of this country’s natural resources, so that we can advance the nurturing and building of our political independence. We shall not talk of forgiveness and the settling of our historical account with the German people. It cannot be atoned for, and should atonement be asked for, we will not grant it. I am confident that when we hold a special debate on this issue, the Knesset will categorically state that we cannot forgive the acts of slaughter and murder, and that for generations to come the German people must labor long and hard to prove that it has uprooted the forces of defilement and destruction that brought about our great national catastrophe.
We must avoid creating an outward impression that there are those among us who are sensitive and those who are insensitive towards this matter – those who remember the murder of the six million and those who have forgotten it. Why create an impression that we are divided on this tragic and terrible issue?
We obviously fear lest the statement made by the chancellor of the Bonn government is not sincere, and we shall certainly examine to what extent the Bonn government is prepared to restore the plunder. If the German people seek forgiveness, it must first restore all the plunder, and we shall not fall into the trap of some stratagem that will enable the German people and its government in any way to evade, culpability for the grave crimes they perpetrated and their
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condemnation by the Jewish people. But I ask: by what moral right do Mapam and the Communist Party condemn entering into negotiations on compensation with the German government? I have recently learned that a Mapam delegation is soon going to East Berlin to attend the Communist International Trade Union Conference – members of that delegation are going to Berlin, not Bonn. They are going to the city where Hitler and Himmler and the other murderers resided, the city in which the decision to exterminate the Jewish people was taken. Is it permissible to travel to East Germany? Are their hands not stained with the blood of Jews? Is it because Stalin has given them his seal of approval that these Germans are considered better? In this House I have heard the Communist MK Vilner say that for him Otto Grotewohl,1 by virtue of being a Communist, is more important than a Jew who is not a Communist.
I do not know whether or not negotiations with Bonn are possible, but one thing is clear: on our part there is no difference between West and East Germans. Esteemed Mapam and Communist members of the Knesset, I harbor deep suspicions that while you attack us and suspect us of being prepared to compromise with the Nazis – you yourselves will hasten to reconcile with the German people residing in the Soviet sphere of influence. You say that Stalin has uprooted Nazism in East Germany and that the Germans of East Germany would not have done so without him; if so, why do you view them as better than the Germans of West Germany? Please do not speak about Jewish honor and do not accuse us of besmirching that honor. It is you who are willing to worship idols – the idols of Soviet communism – not us.
MK Mordechai Nurock (Hamizrachi): Respected House, The constraints of time compel me to touch upon one issue only, that of our relations with the nation of murderers. Never since the day the sovereign Knesset of the State of Israel was established have we faced such a grave problem. Although we have heard, with great satisfaction, our foreign minister’s statement that the government has not made a decision regarding direct contact with Germany, and that in any event it will present its proposals to do that to the Knesset at a later date, I am deeply concerned lest the New York conference surprise us with a fait accompli, and therefore I am duty-bound to address this problem.
In this very House we decided to have an annual remembrance day for the one-third of our people that was destroyed with extreme cruelty, according to a specific plan set out by the German Amalekites, the perpetrators of anti-Semitism for over hundreds of years – and now we seek to honor the memory of our martyrs by sitting at the same table with their murderers? The entire German people are guilty of murder. Any contact and negotiation with the murderers of our people is, in any event, the beginning of our forgivness. It is a desecration 1 Otto Grotewohl (1894-1964), one of the leaders of the German Communist Party. From
the end of 1949, prime minister of East Germany’s government.
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of the memory of the martyrs, and it constitutes grave harm to the honor and morals of the Jewish people.
We will receive no money at all but become a distributing agent for German goods, goods from which Jewish blood still drips. Reparations will require the establishment of a German legation in our country and of our legation in that unclean land – in effect, marking the termination of the state of war with the murderers and the establishing of diplomatic relations with their country. Consequently, we will open our gates to commerce between Jews and the murderers. What is permissible to the state and the Jewish Agency is also permissible to individuals.
As early as 1948 I demanded here, at the Zionist institutions and at the meetings of the World Jewish Congress that reparations be paid indirectly through international means by the great powers as part of the peace treaty with Germany, by appealing to the Hague International Court or to other important United Nations institutions. At the time, relations between the victorious powers and Germany were completely different. Now they are all trying to purify the unclean and use them as cannon fodder against the East, and this only six months after our country approached the powers – an approach that was made after considerable delay. The feelers sent out two years ago by the Jewish Agency and later by the State of Israel towards Germany through senior Israeli officials have brought down the barrier and caused us both moral and material damage.
Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett: Honorable Rabbi Nurock, are you not aware that the Jewish Agency has a permanent delegation in Germany which is constantly negotiating with the German authorities regarding the restitution of Jewish property? And not only the Jewish Agency, but other Jewish organizations are operating there, too? A whole gamut of Jewish organizations is engaged in this activity. Is this a secret to you? Are you not aware of this? Why have you not raised your voice against it?
MK Mordechai Nurock (Hamizrachi): From a moral standpoint, this is a national disaster, a great and unprecedented spiritual-moral catastrophe for the Jewish people. The murderers exterminated one-third of the nation’s body, they plundered everything from us but not our honor, and now we ourselves are offering them the honor of Israel and the soul of the nation.
When the Jews were expelled from Spain they were permitted to leave unharmed, yet no Jewish foot trod the soil of that country for centuries. All the more so after the extermination and torture of our times that has no precedent in either the annals of nations or in the annals of the Jewish people which are soaked with blood and tears. In the Middle Ages the ancestors of the accursed Nazis, the
“robber barons,” attacked travelers, killed them and stole their possessions, and then obtained from the Church, in return for payment, documents of expiation
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and forgiveness. Now the Jewish people are handing documents of expiation to the murderers of its parents, brothers and sons! The Yiddish poet Leivik Halpern quite rightly asked: “What is the price to be paid for a Jewish child who was burned and for a mother who was burned?” I totally reject any denial that reparations through direct contact are not leading to expiation.
There is no comparison here with the “transfer” agreement of 1933 when we faced the question of saving the Jews of Germany and bringing them to Palestine, and that was before the murder. Incidentally, then too, in 1933, it was decided at a conference prior to the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, following the initiative I forwarded together with Dr. Stephen Wise, to announce a boycott of Germany, and that was before the brutal murder during the war. We extol the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters who saved Jewish honor through their heroism and showed the human beasts that the Jewish people will not be led like lambs to the slaughter and can die an honorable death. Is it in the spirit of our heroes that only six years after the slaughter we are prepared to sit at the same table with the murderers?
The Bonn chancellor’s declaration is pure hypocrisy needed for external use with regard to Adenauer’s visit to the United States. “Reparations within the
The Bonn chancellor’s declaration is pure hypocrisy needed for external use with regard to Adenauer’s visit to the United States. “Reparations within the