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Old January 4th, 2006 #1
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Default West German Reparations to Israel

I have been reading bits from this book. It is old. You could probably find it at a second hand store. I learned the following words/terms...

Shilumim Agreement
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...22&btnG=Search

Bizonia
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Trizonia
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http://www.zundelsite.org/english/re...es_from_books/
Book Title: West German Reparations to Israel
Author: Nicholas Balabkins ©1971 Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN No. 0-8135-0691-3

22 -- Economics of Cash Reparations
The most striking example of cash reparations in the nineteenth century resulted from the Franco-Prussian War, which ended in the defeat of the French. The Treaty of Frankfurt, signed on May 10, 1871, imposed upon her an indemnity of 5 billion francs, cession of territory, and German occupation of certain parts of France until the obligation was paid. It was to be paid within five years in gold, silver, and bills of exchange.
Although the sequestration of Alsace and Lorraine was most humiliating to France, and Bismarck’s demand for an indemnity of 5 billion francs appeared astronomical at the time, in other respects the Germans treated their defeated adversary with respect. The peace treaty, for instance, was not a document of capitulation, but a convention between two powers, “which indicated only a negotiated settlement between two equals.”

24, 25 -- The Treaty of Versailles
The Armistice of November 1918 imposed upon the German government an indemnity for all damages inflicted upon the civilian population in the victorious countries. The Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 which formally ended hostilities was a Diktatfrieden, based on onerous terms, if not impossible conditions.
Versailles required that Germany surrender her entire navy and most of the merchant marine, accept stringent limitations on the production of certain strategic goods, have her army reduced to 100,000 men, and pay “a war indemnity unheard of in the history of any country.” In addition, she was to cede territory with some million inhabitants, 40 per cent of her blast furnaces, 30 per cent of her steel mills, and 28 per cent of her rolling mills. The proposed reparations bill was so huge that, according to Lloyd George, “no civilized nation has ever been forced to shoulder anything comparable.” As a military power, Germany was to be reduced to the level of Greece and, as a naval power, to the level of Argentina.

59 -- Morgenthau Proposal: ‘Crudest Scheme Malevolent Planning Could Devise’
The most far-reaching proposal for the elimination of the war potential of German industry was developed by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the wartime Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. In the view of one observer, it was the “crudest reparation scheme malevolent planning could devise.” Morgenthau felt that so long as Germany had heavy industries there would never be peace in the world. To eliminate Germany as a potential aggressor, the Morgenthau proposal called for the complete destruction of the country’s metallurgical, chemical, and electrical industries within six months after the end of World War II. All factories were either to be blown up or dismantled and sent to the victorious countries as reparations; all coal mines were to be flooded and the entire Ruhr Valley turned into a “ghost territory.” The Ruhr was, in effect, to be “put out of business,” wiped out as an industrial area, regardless of what happened to millions of Germans. Subsequently this proposal was officially accepted in a somewhat modified form by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. Shortly thereafter, however, both Churchill and Roosevelt repudiated the plan. Nevertheless, its basic principles dominated official thinking in Washington for almost six years after the defeat of Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich. Government officials in both America and Great Britain continued to treat Germany in “moralizing categories” and the public-opinion makers remained fixed in the stereotypes established in the “hate the Germans” milieu of the two world wars.

81 -- Before the War Was Even Over: To Claim Or Not To Claim?
The issue of restitution and compensation for European Jewry was raised formally in the United States in the spring of 1940, when the American Jewish Committee appointed a Committee on Peace Studies under Professor Maurice R. Cohen. His charge was to conduct research on the promotion of “a more intelligent understanding of the Jewish situation and aid in the defense of the rights of Jews in the free forum of the world’s conscience, as well as to formulate the necessary plans for its execution.” In March 1941, the Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress was established as a research agency in Jewish war and postwar problems, with Dr. Jacob Robinson in charge. In the same year, Dr. Nahum Goldmann broached this problem at an assembly of the World Jewish Congress in Baltimore.

82 -- In 1944 Jews Were ‘a Nation Without a State’ — Not Subject to International Law
In the fall of 1943, Dr. George Landauer, an influential German Zionist living in Palestine, wrote a memorandum in which he stressed that, after the victory, Jews as a nation should be allowed to press claims against Germany. He was aware that it would be extremely difficult for the victorious powers to recognize a collective demand, but since the Jews and Germans had special accounts to settle the claim had to be made. In fact, he elevated this objective to be the principle goal of the political activity of the Jewish Agency.
In support of Dr. Landauer’s work, Dr. Siegfried Moses, future comptroller of the State of Israel, published a small pamphlet on the subject early in 1944. In it he raised questions of restitution and compensation and made concrete proposals for their implementation. Dr. Moses emphasized that in 1944 the Jews were a nation without a state and thus not subject to international law. Yet, he argued, the Jews had a collective claim against Germany based on a moral justification rather than a legal one. He further insisted that the Jewish community of Palestine should be the creditor of that collective claim. Gillis and Knopf also argued that all the property of the so-called “absent persons” should not be allowed to revert to the successor government of Germany, but instead should go to help build up Palestine, in the form of a collective Jewish claim.

82, 83 -- Reparation Plan a ‘Done Deal’ Eight Years Before Luxembourg Treaty
To insure that Jewish refugees from Germany would have adequate representation in pressing their claims after the war, Dr. Moses was instrumental in setting up in December 1944 the Council for the Protection of Rights and Interests of Jews from Germany. The influence of his work on the terms of the Shilumim Agreement and on West German legislation providing individual compensation was of inestimable importance. Dr. Felix E. Shinnar, first head of the Israel mission in Cologne, said of Dr. Moses’ pamphlet that eight years before the Luxembourg Treaty it had already settled virtually all basic aspects of the German reparation (Wiedergutmachung). According to Shinnar, Dr. Moses’ analysis demonstrated the reality as well as the vision of what was possible, and this paved the way for the success of the Shilumim operation.

83 -- Nahum Goldmann ‘Demands’ Establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth
But regardless of the prevailing legal difficulties, most Western Jews felt that their claims against the successor government of the Third Reich would be based on legal as well as moral grounds. For example, the Swiss Jewish Community, in a memorandum in October 1944, stressed that the Germans would have to make restitution and pay individual as well as collective compensation. The formal inheritance laws were to be disregarded; all Jewish property with “absentee or missing owners” was to be claimed and the proceeds used for “collective Jewish reconstruction work.” At the War Emergency Conference of the World Jewish Conference, in November 1944, Dr. Goldmann demanded that all Jewish property be restored and that a Jewish commonwealth be established.

84 -- Chaim Weizmann Demands Restitution, Indemnification and Compensation
Once the war was over, and with the groundwork laid on the matter of restitution and compensation, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the future first president of Israel, sent a letter to the victorious powers on September 20, 1945. In the name of the Jewish Agency, he demanded restitution, indemnification, and compensation from Germany for the crimes against the Jews. His estimated value for the material losses was $8 billion. Dr. Weizmann requested that all buildings, art treasures and valuables of every kind be restored to their former owners or their heirs. All property for which no heirs could be traced was to be turned over to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, as the official representative of the Jews. Furthermore, since the majority of the survivors of the concentration camps were likely to go to Palestine, he presented a global Jewish claim against Germany, demanding funds to be used for the purpose of compensating the cost of resettling Jewish refugees in Palestine.

190 -- How Much to Date?
The Shilumim obligation has been discharged in full. Nominally it ran for fourteen years, but actually the DM 3.45 billion was paid in twelve years. Individual compensation payments still continue and, according to some estimates, by 1975 the total cost of the Luxembourg Treaty will have been DM 46 billion and by 2000 over DM 62 billion. By the end of 1966, DM 23.2 billion had been transferred abroad and DM 8.1 billion paid to German residents for material damages.

274, 281 -- (Appendix A) World Jewish Congress ‘Suggestions’
The World Jewish Congress summarizes in the following points some of those measures which the German Government should be obliged to carry out in fulfillment of the rightful claims of the Jews.

5. Restitution

The measures promulgated by the Allied authorities in Germany since the end of the war to restore to the rightful owners or their successors properties and assets confiscated and otherwise wrongfully appropriated by reason of the oppressive enactments of the Third Reich directed against Jews have either not yet been fully carried out or have proved defective by reason of inadequate procedure. ...

There is danger that the existing laxity on the part of German authorities and the pressure exercised upon them by groups directly involved are likely to result in a serious curtailment of the implementation of the restitution measures in existence if and when Allied control is suspended or relaxed.

It is essential, therefore, that restitution remains a matter of Allied concern within the terms of any revised Occupation Statute. It is urged also that, in any new instrument between the Allied Powers and the German Federal Republic, the German Government should undertake to respect and to implement the restitution legislation enacted by the Allied Powers and that the procedure for implementation should be speeded up and improved in order that the properties of the victims of Nazi persecution should be restored to the legitimate owners, without delay and without undue cost to them.

6. Compensation

Legislation designed to restore to the true owners the properties of victims of Nazi persecution covers an important part of the economic losses suffered by them. Such legislation cannot, by virtue of its limited nature, make good the damage and injury by way of loss of life, health, liberty and possessions no longer recoverable. These losses, so far as their material consequences are concerned, must be made good by adequate measures for payment of compensation. ...

It is submitted, therefore, that under any revised Occupation Statute the matter of compensation should be reserved to Allied control, and that any new instrument between the Allied Powers and the German Federal Republic should contain a provision obliging the German Government to adopt for the whole of Western Germany a General Claims Law of compensation for the victims of Nazi persecution irrespective of their presence in Germany or not, and without relation to the date of such residence.

7. Position of absentees

In consequence of the persecutory acts of the Nazi Government there are in Germany today only about 25,000 Jews, compared with 580,00 in 1933. The problems of restitution and compensation must, therefore, be considered largely from the viewpoint of owners of property and claimants now living in foreign countries. It has to be emphasized that as far as restitutable property is concerned, “foreign” ownership did not come about by someone abroad acquiring property in Germany, with full knowledge of the risks involved. It was the result of the forced emigration of the owners who at the time of acquisition were residents of Germany and were, in most cases, citizens thereof. It is now submitted that any new settlement with Germany would be incomplete, if, in respect to restitution, no guarantees were included therein to guard against the possibility of discriminatory treatment by German authorities to the disadvantage of the absent owners of these assets, whether as regards taxes or other levies or the holding and administering of such property. ...

Compensation payments also, if made in local currency, would be of little advantage to beneficiaries living abroad, unless there is adequate machinery to enable them to use these payments in the country of their present residence. ...

It is submitted, therefore, that the German Republic should be obliged to facilitate such transfers within reasonable limits.

8. Collective Jewish claims against Germany

Even if the before-mentioned measures of individual restitution or compensation were to be fully implemented, only a comparatively small number of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution — those who resided or had property in Germany or happened to be liberated on German soil — would receive partial indemnification; but not more than a fraction of the losses inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Germans during the era of Nazi domination of the European Continent would thus be made good. No one can bring back to life the six million Jewish men, women and children who were starved, tortured, shot or gassed to death by orders of the Third Reich. ...

These crimes have created a responsibility on the part of the German people, which the German Government must discharge on a collective basis, as a measure of indemnification to the Jewish people. The German Federal Republic should, therefore, assume an obligation in an instrument of agreement with the Allied Powers, to indemnify the Jewish people by material compensation in goods, services or otherwise, ...

This task will continue for years to come ands will require very considerable funds. Justice demands that this burden be shared by Germany and the Federal republic be made to assume a clear and unequivocal obligation to this effect.
 
Old January 15th, 2006 #2
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West Germany also supplied advanced weaponry including several Submarines to Israel as 'reparations'.
 
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