Cabinet Meeting, 28.10.1951
Minister Moshe Sharett: I would now like to report on the Conference of Jewish Organizations in New York, which has ended. You have all read the newspaper dispatches. I have received a telegram from our New York Consul General Arthur Lurie with his first impressions following the conclusion of the conference. He writes: (1) “Matters were dealt with seriously and responsibly, and worthy of note was the absence of demagoguery on issues that might be so exploited.
(2) Following a debate, consensus was finally reached between all the groups, including Agudat Yisrael, and this should be viewed as a laudable achievement.
(3) This was an important step towards the formulation of public opinion and the creation of a framework for a more practical discussion of the details of the issue. (4) The idea of parallel claims is still extant, but there need be no concern that it will be a serious problem, and in any event the precedence of Israel’s claim was accepted without question. (5) All praise is due to the skill with which Nahum Goldmann ran the conference.” (Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: He also displayed this skill at the Zionist Congress1).
We have here a draft resolution that opens with calling the German people to account for their horrific acts. There are a number of clauses taken from our note, for in view of the already formulated document they evidently did not want to rewrite it. It says that there can be no compensation for the destruction of the life of a nation, cultural assets and so on, nothing can atone for the agonies of death. It further states that the elementary principle of justice and human decency obliges the German people to restore at least the plundered Jewish property in order to compensate the victims and their heirs and participate in financing the absorption of the survivors.
In this regard, the conference relied on the note sent to the powers by the government of Israel as well as on the statement made by the West German chancellor on September 27, 1951, ratified by the West German parliament, 1 The 23rd Zionist Congress, August 1951, Jerusalem.
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which admits to the crimes committed and obliges the German people to pay compensation. This statement will be judged by the speed and scope of its implementation. In this regard the conference notes that the East German government has neither recognized such responsibility nor expressed its readiness to atone for the destruction caused. The conference asserts its complete support for the claim submitted by the government of Israel regarding the restoration to health of the victims of Nazi persecution residing in Israel. A second and third clause demand meeting the remainder of the claims and that Germany take legislative and executive steps in this regard.
The conference appointed two ad hoc committees: one to determine policy to be comprised of representatives of all the organizations and the second, an executive committee comprising twelve members appointed on a personal basis.
I am aware the Knesset will convene next week. It faces currently an accumulation of burning foreign policy issues: defense of the Middle East, the [American] aid grant of 1951/52 and 1952/53, reparations, direct or indirect negotiations with Germany, the [UN General] Assembly matters. There will doubtless be a demand for a debate on foreign policy matters, and it is desirable that the cabinet be ready for it.
It was decided:
To request the convening of the Knesset for next Sunday for a statement by the foreign minister on foreign policy problems.
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: Not all the political issues mentioned by the foreign minister are problematical. There are issues on which we have already made a decision. These do not necessitate taking new positions. The matter of reparations is not a problem. Nothing new has happened on the matter of reparations.
Minister Yitzhak-Meir Levin: Regarding reparations from Germany – in my opinion it has not been decided yet to enter negotiations with the German government. This government has not made such a decision and neither did the previous one.
Minister Moshe Sharett: It is true that no decision has been made to enter into direct negotiations with Germany. I do think that such a step calls for a government decision. I am not sure that we have reached the point where we have to decide. I reported that we are clarifying Germany’s intentions, whether it means business or whether it has acquitted itselves with the payment of a paltry sum. We shall not sell this matter for a mess of pottage. One or the other: either nothing will come of it or we shall succeed. In the meantime we have advanced on both internal and external fronts. We have enlisted Jewish forces. We have
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brought Germany to admit its crimes and its readiness for collective payment.
This is an unprecedented undertaking.
However, should something come of it, and I am expressing my personal conviction here, then it could ultimately be accomplished only through direct negotiations for numerous questions will come to the fore. Whom will they pay?
How will they pay? Even after an agreement in principle has been reached on the sum, there is the question of transferring it – what goods, what do we need, how will the goods be transferred? Perhaps it would be worth our while to take certain goods from Germany and sell them to other countries in exchange for goods from those countries. And there are further questions. There is the question of a Jewish delegation that will sit in Germany and determine how we receive the compensation. Any thoughts of it being forbidden to talk with Germany are absurd, not from an ideological standpoint but from a practical one.
The Jewish people are in fact negotiating with Germany. Nothing came of the indirect negotiations. If that is the position, we should not have submitted the reparations claim. We should have waived it. Having submitted the reparations claim, conclusions must be drawn.
I would like to bring another matter to the cabinet’s attention: we are a state!
If indeed we are, we cannot ignore the existence of other states. All Israeli writers publishing articles opposing negotiations with Germany are living in a Diaspora reality, not the reality of statehood. We have attempted to isolate Germany in the international arena – the result was that we isolated ourselves. It had no effect.
While participating in various international bodies we conduct discussions with Germany, we vote together with Germany, we vote against Germany, we act together with them. (Minister Golda Meir: It is still a good thing that we voted against them.) I am not saying that we should not have voted against them.
I would like to ask you, Rabbi Levin: we have a consul general in Switzerland who has just been elected doyen of the consular corps. As doyen he has to protect the interests of all the consuls in Zurich, including the German. Let us assume that the German consul approaches him seeking protection. Will he not protect his interests? If not, then he should not be doyen of the consular corps for that is why he was elected.
We are now approaching the final stages during which we can put a price on our reconciliation with Germany’s return into the community of nations. We could, at the very least, make it conditional upon receiving millions and millions of dollars for the plundered Jewish property. Or we could be a party to the process of Germany’s return into the community of nations without it paying us even one penny.
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: I would ask the cabinet members not to argue about reparations from Germany. We have nothing actually new before us;
on the other hand, other political matters demand immediate attention.
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Minister Peretz Naphtali: I somewhat disagree with the opinion that the question of Germany and the reparations is not urgent. In a certain sense it is because we must do everything to accelerate contact and settlement since any delay, in my view, is to the German government’s advantage and not to ours.
Minister David Zvi Pinkas: With regard to the reparations – I think that Minister Naftali is right when he says that the matter is urgent for us. I know the government’s position, and I want to say just one thing: these talks must be held somewhere, but certainly not in Israel. We will not invite Germans here for political talks, and they cannot be held in Germany either, but in a neutral location, let’s say Paris.
Minister Moshe Sharett: That is the intention, either Paris or Switzerland, but it is not yet time to decide where the talks will be held since we do not know if they will be held.
Minister Moshe Shapira: I recall that we received information before Adenauer’s statement in which it was said that we are talking about a specific sum. I would like to say that as long as we do not clearly hear from the people close to him what that sum approximately is, there is no room for a meeting even in Paris.
Minister Moshe Sharett: That there is no room for negotiations is clear. There might only be a meeting to clarify the sum.
Minister Moshe Shapira: We must know this in advance. We should not compare America with Israel. Let us not forget that in Israel there are 500,000 Jews from countries ruled by Hitler. They have gone through the Holocaust. There are not only emotions, of course. There is also the accounting. We must explain to the public that we must act according to the principle of “Hast thou killed and also taken possession?” We must obtain the plundered inheritance of the victims. By making an intensive effort we shall succeed in explaining this to our public, but it is unthinkable that we enter negotiations and later discover that the Germans are talking about five or ten million dollars a year. First of all we must know what sum they are talking about (Minister Moshe Sharett: Certainly.) Regarding our basic problems, it would seem that the State of Israel was born into hard times (Minister Eliezer Kaplan: The Jewish people were always in a difficult situation.); (Minister Moshe Sharett: We chose an uncomfortable place and an inconvenient time.) Minister Golda Meir: A word about the reparations. I know it is not relevant at the moment, but even so, before negotiations start we must know that we cannot and should not relinquish what is due to the Jewish people. But is it so difficult to understand that there are Jews who are repelled by the very thought of contact with the Germans?
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: I do not believe that there are more than a few.
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Minister Moshe Sharett: Let us assume that we did not have only one small Jewish brigade in the Second World War, but that we participated in the war in great force and were part of the army that occupied Germany. We would have had
“our own McCloy” there – would he not have negotiated with the Germans every day? Would anybody have said that a Jewish army should not be an occupying army in Germany?
Minister Golda Meir: That links up exactly with what I wanted to say. I said I realize that we must enter direct negotiations. Yet one still feels a sting of pain. Everyone knows that that this feeling comes from a pure heart, and just as Minister Sharett said – in different circumstances we could have been there in the occupying army. I asked for the floor to say that we must be careful in our manner of speech with them. In my opinion, the manner of speech is very important when we come to negotiate with them. If we do negotiate, then in my opinion the Foreign Ministry must ensure, and it knows how, that whoever speaks with any of the Germans, his manner of speech should not be that used when meeting with friendly countries, and that they should feel it.
Minister Levi Eshkol: What if they nominate people [for the negotiations] who were decent all the time? The Almighty is capable of everything.
Minister Golda Meir: It is immaterial. A German is a German.
Minister Ben-Zion Dinur: I would like to say a word about the reparations.
This is a very important matter. This is, at long last, the first time in the history of the Jewish people that reparations are being paid to Jews. We must also look at it from that viewpoint. It is a fact. Why not mention it? Jews have been killed throughout the generations. The murderers never paid. There never was any compensation – they killed and also plundered.
Minister David Z. Pinkas: When we were independent we received reparations.
At the time of King Saul’s wars we received quite a lot of reparations.
Minister Ben-Zion Dinur: If there were no State of Israel we would not have received a single penny. Nobody would have entered negotiations with us as a stateless people. They might have given us alms. It is only because there is a State of Israel that we will possibly reach negotiations on reparations. When presenting the issue we must stress that there is another matter here, not that we are forgiving them. There is a different historic situation: there is a State of Israel, and it demands compensation. We must explain this unique fact to the general public, and this explanation is highly important because this issue is fraught with emotions. In my opinion, this explanation is vital.
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