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What does justice look like for victims and their families in the aftermath of genocide? What reparations are just, and who should receive them?
When people have been victims of genocide or mass violence; when lives have been lost, and land and possessions have been taken, justice demands that some form of reparations is given to those who suffered, or perhaps to their loved ones. But the issue is complex and there are no easy answers or processes for such an undertaking. This reading looks at one of the processes developed by the Allies for Germany’s victims following the Holocaust. |
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After the war, the Allies had to deal not only with questions of guilt and innocence but also with questions of restitution. What claims did the victims have on the perpetrators? On Germany itself?
The Allied Military Government in Germany tried to answer those questions by requiring that all property seized by the Nazis or transferred to them by force be returned to its rightful owners. If the rightful owner had died and left no heir, the property was to be used to aid survivors of Nazi persecution. Then in 1949, disagreements among the Allies led to the division of Germany. France, the United States, and Britain combined their zones into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). The Soviet Union turned its zone of occupation into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) at about the same time. Although both Germanies tried former Nazis for war crimes, only West Germany tried to make restitution for wrongs committed during the war.
In 1951, West Germany declared that “unspeakable crimes had been committed in the name of the German people which entails an obligation to make moral and material amends” and promised to make reparations to both the state of Israel and various Jewish organizations involved in the resettlement and rehabilitation of survivors. In 1953, West Germany also set up a special program to compensate all those who suffered injury or discrimination “because of their opposition to National Socialism or because of their race, creed, or ideology.” The program is known in German as Wiedergutmachung, which means “to make good again.”
To be eligible, an individual had to prove that he or she had been persecuted for racial, religious, or ideological reasons and suffered injuries that were not only disabling but also the direct result of persecution. These requirements excluded thousands who had suffered from Nazi brutality but could not meet the burden of proof. It also excluded the 350,000 people who had undergone forced sterilization and families that lost loved ones as a result of the “euthanasia” program. Their applications were routinely turned down “because sterilization was not a form of persecution but was performed purely for medical reasons” and “the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases was not unconstitutional as such.” Gays were denied compensation on similar grounds.
The Sinti and Roma were also excluded. On January 7, 1956, a West German court ruled that the deportation of twenty-five hundred “Gypsies” from Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Duesseldorf, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt in May 1940 was not a result of racial discrimination but a “security measure.” Other rulings argued that “Gypsies” were not targeted because of race but because they were “work shy” or “asocial.”
Dietrich Goldschmidt, a minister in the Confessing Church who was imprisoned at Dachau, said of Wiedergutmachung:
I hate the expression. What can one make good again? Absolutely nothing. One can pay damages...
I find it a particular scandal that an entire group of special cases have not yet
received damages... whether it’s the Mengele twins [the twins on whom Josef
Mengele experimented] or the socially persecuted, whether it’s the gypsies or the
Jews in Israel, who according to the regional principle, haven’t received anything —the Polish Jews who were in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt receive no reparations...
One can best compare reparations for the war victims with the pensions of former
career soldiers. The pensions of former career soldiers, including the SS increase very
regularly, just as all pensions increase.1
A German who took part in the resistance and later worked in the reparations office
confirmed Goldschmidt’s charges. Helene Jacobs told an interviewer, “I stood fairly
alone among my colleagues. I tried to do everything for the benefit of the persecuted. The
tendency was more to reject all claims—that was also easier, according to the law, and
they wanted to act only according to the law.”2
Many of Jacobs’s co-workers had served in the Third Reich. Soon after its
establishment, West Germany passed a law guaranteeing employment to any member of
the Nazi civil service who applied. The few who were ineligible often received generous
pensions. For example, although Franz Schlegelberger, an undersecretary in the Nazis’
ministry of justice was sentenced to life in prison after the war, he won his freedom in
1951. Soon after, he was awarded a large pension and received back pay for time spent in
prison. In Hitler’s Justice, Ingo Mueller tells of a Nazi judge who “was named presiding
judge of a board in Hamburg to hear the cases of war victims claiming damages; here he
decided claims filed by the survivors of his own earlier trials, and by the relatives of
those he had sentenced to death.”3
Connections for the Classroom...
- The word reparations refers to the process of making amends. Why do you think it often
involves a financial payment? Was West Germany right to make reparations? Can a
nation be guilty of crimes? Can a nation be held responsible for the crimes its leaders
commit?
- What does Wiedergutmachung suggest about the difficulty of erasing Nazi influences in
government? Should the government have refused to hire former Nazi officials?
- After the United States declared war against Japan, 120,000 Japanese Americans who
lived on the West Coast were shipped to detention camps. Many lost homes and
businesses. Yet no Japanese American was ever found guilty of sabotage or treason.
When Japanese Americans challenged the legality of the camps, the Supreme Court ruled
in 1944 that it was a valid use of the nation’s war powers. It would take forty years before
the United States government agreed to make reparations. Why do you think it took so
long? How was the American response to Japanese Americans similar to that of the
Germans to Jews, “Gypsies,” and other victims of discrimination? What differences seem
most striking?
*This reading is taken from Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Brookline, Massachusetts) 1994, pp. 443- 445.
1 For the Soul of the People by Victoria Barnett (Oxford University Press), 1992, p. 231.
By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Source.
2 Ibid., p. 232.
3 Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich
by Ingo Müller (Harvard University Press), 1992.
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