The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices / Edition 1

by Elazar Barkan

Overview

How do nations and aggrieved parties, in the wake of heinous crimes and horrible injustices, make amends in a positive way to acknowledge wrongdoings and redefine future interactions? How does the growing practice of making restitution restore a sense of morality and enhance prospects for world peace? Where has restitution worked and where has it not? The Guilt of Nations explores this increasingly important dynamic in world politics today.

Beyond its moral implications, restitution reflects a critical shift in political and economic bargaining over the past fifty years. At the center of this process is a reconfiguration of human rights and international and national politics. While preserving individual rights, restitution also provides a mechanism for victimized groups to receive growing recognition as groups. Elazar Barkan traces instances of historical crimes, such as the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II, the sexual abuse of "comfort women" by Japanese soldiers, and the recent controversy over the financial dealings between Swiss banks and Nazi Germany. He examines how the morally and politically charged acknowledgment of guilt can shake the power balance between two nations, or between a government and an internal minority. Barkan argues that, as countries including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand come to recognize past injustices toward indigenous peoples within their borders, both governments and minority groups are compelled to redress the history of colonialism and redefine national identity. While restitution is not a panacea, this ever-spreading political trend represents a new moral order in world politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801868078
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/28/2001
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elazar Barkan is chair of the Cultural Studies Department and associate professor of history at Claremont Graduate University.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

THE FAUSTIAN PREDICAMENT

German Reparation to Jews

The Jews were killed, but the German people continued to enjoy the fruits of the carnage and plunder.... This much, however, can be demanded: that the German people be required to restore the Jewish property and to pay for the rehabilitation of those who survived.

As long as we are denied our rights, our liberation remains incomplete.... Who gives you the right to tolerate a situation in which the Nazis look down from the windows of our houses and we must stand aside? ... Do not let the bitter thought arise in your hearts: that you would have preferred had we too been destroyed)

After the war these passionate pleas for compensation, made by German Jews to the government of the new state of North Rhine-Westphalia, elicited little response. In the aftermath of the Nazi defeat Jews were still little more than an insignificant and a discriminated-against minority. Although life under the new regime was an immense improvement over Nazi persecution, no official plan to recognize their special suffering was afoot. A case in point: While the government of Westphalia budgeted money to compensate surviving relatives of the SS, it tried to collect property taxes for the years 1935 to 1945 from the Jewish community for a synagogue that was burned down in the infamous November 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht. Following a protest, this demand for back property taxes was rescinded, but there was nothing toindicate that state governments in Germany were going to recognize claims for Jewish compensation.

    Any demand for amending historical crimes requires that exceptional injustices were inflicted and that some of the victims or their heirs survived to return and demand justice. A crucial aspect of this type of restitution—in the wider political, rather than the narrow legal, sense—is determining what can be claimed, as well as who are the rightful claimants (heirs, for example, may include more than what is proscribed by the legal definition). The case of Jewish demands of, and agreements with, Germany profoundly changed how these determinations are constructed. From the thirties through the end of the war the German government confiscated Jewish property through numerous methods and with varying intensity) These included various seizures and taxation, such as the "flight tax" demanded of Jews who tried to emigrate from Germany after 1933 and the billion-marks penalty the government imposed on the Jewish community following Kristallnacht. It continued with the confiscation of all personal and communal property and, finally, with the stripping of bodies in the extermination camps by shaving hair and extracting gold teeth.

    Immediately after the outbreak of war, German Jewish refugees began working with international Jewish groups to formulate claims for lost property that they would present to Germany once it was defeated. Because the full horror of the camps was still unknown publicly or to the outside world, the original demands proposed by the refugees seemed premature, and Jewish leaders around the world ignored them. The work continued, however, particularly in the United States and Palestine, primarily supported by the Zionists? In time those who discussed future compensation agreed that three types of lost property should be claimed: private property—that is, property belonging to victims or their heirs who survived—heirless private property—that is, property belonging to "absentee" and "missing" owners, the legal euphemisms for the murdered populations in which no heirs survived—and communal property, such as synagogues and their contents. These discussions and ideas found their most concrete form among the refugees in Palestine, who took them one step farther and combined demands for reparations with Zionist efforts to build a Jewish homeland. In 1943, when the outcome of the war was still in doubt, one of these refugees, George Lander, was perhaps the first to formulate them as Jewish national claims. This concept of national claims was picked up and elaborated by Siegfried Moses, who transformed the moral into legal claims. Moses articulated the unique and far-reaching concept that the Jews as a nation were the victims, and hence the national Jewish community, which was still under a British mandate struggling for existence in Palestine, was the justified claimant and creditor. The demand for restitution became a profoundly controversial act even among Jews, raising the fear that it debased the memory of the victims. This opposition was voiced throughout the negotiations.

    A new organization grew out of these ideas: the Council for the Protection of Rights and Interests of Jews from Germany. While the victims had little doubt that their claims were just and ethical, a legal question was: How could they transcend the limitations of conventional inheritance law? How could they construct a noncontroversial claim, at least from Jewish perspective, that would substantiate communal Jewish rights to reparation for property confiscated from both the Jewish community and from those absentee and missing owners and would establish the right of Jewish organizations to be the legitimate beneficiaries? These plans, formulated while the war was still raging, presented comprehensive claims for restitution and indemnity for all property no matter how lost (including the loss of profits) and demanded that Jewish restitution be given priority. The World Jewish Congress soon adopted the ideas.

    This unique idea of national claims was the most novel aspect of these restitution demands. By reinforcing the demand for a Jewish state, it dovetailed with Zionist ideology and politics. As World War II was winding down, the national claim for reparation emerged as a dual demand: first, that the Jewish community as a whole be considered the primary victim and, by moral imperative, the rightful beneficiary of compensation for confiscated heirless and communal Jewish property; and second, that restitution be directed toward the building of a Jewish state. This formulation constructed a fundamental connection between all Jews and Zionist ideology, thereby creating a modern national Jewish identity that had not existed previously. Although the Zionist movement had manifested Jewish national aspirations for over the previous half century, most Jews worldwide did not perceive themselves as having a national identity, nor were Jews recognized as a national entity by the world community. The Zionist movement after all had been supported by only a minority of the Jews. By killing off the majority of Jews in Europe, the extermination camps practically nullified such distinctions. For the Nazis, the Jews were a nation, a race, and an identity that had to be annihilated. This seeming affinity between the Zionist and Nazi definition of Jews as a nation/race has led, primarily since the eighties, to extensive and painful historical controversies. Was there affinity, conversion, or even collusion, at least in part, between Zionist and Nazi policies? In what way did such an embroilment contribute to the formation of Israel? But in the immediate period after the war even non-Zionist Jews were more inclined to accept the national definition, and to the rest of the world the Jewish people became precisely that: a people and a nation, not just a religion. The most significant consequence of these events was the international support for the creation of Israel (1948) as a Jewish homeland. Once established, the Israeli government immediately assumed a leading role in representing Jewish interests globally.

    The early demands for compensation within Jewish circles gained momentum during the war and were soon translated into concrete sums. The first Jewish calculation estimated German restitution due to Jews at twelve billion dollars. This can be compared with the total Allied demand at Yalta of twenty billion dollars (half of which was to go to the West and half to the Soviets). The Jewish Agency, which had been established in 1929 as the leading Jewish organization to include Zionists and non-Zionists, presented claims on behalf of victims who had migrated to Palestine or who had been killed with no surviving heirs, as well as for communal property. The Jewish claims made on behalf of victims or their heirs surviving elsewhere were to be presented by other organizations. The Jewish Agency officially presented its demand for eight billion dollars, which were to compensate for everything from real estate to plundered art and lost careers.

    In the immediate aftermath of the war Jewish organizations were still trying to get the Allies to force German restitution to Jewish victims. But Jewish claims did not rank high among the Allied priorities. Jewish suffering was a long way from becoming the symbol for the atrocities of the war that it is at present. The Allies considered all the activities of Jewish groups to be internal and largely ignored them. Jewish representatives were not even invited to the Paris Reparations Conference held late in 1945. It was only through intense lobbying that Jewish organizations received an unofficial status and Jews were awarded minimal restitution. The conference ignored the Jewish groups' calculations and instead called for a small reparation in the amount of a few million dollars to be paid from German property held outside Germany. Later other symbolic acts were made by the Western occupying forces in Germany to initiate legislation for restitution in the various German states, but none of this was leading toward either comprehension of the magnitude of the Holocaust or reevaluation of German-Jewish relations. Actually, from the Jewish perspective, the major result of the Paris conference was counterproductive. By using diplomatic language that referred to the "special consideration" already given to the Jewish claims, it enabled the Allies to dismiss all further Jewish requests. As far as the Western powers were concerned, Jewish claims were settled in Paris. The Jews could be offered sympathy, but any further action was up to the German government.

    At this time Germany was not in a position to act on its own. It was divided into zones that were occupied by the Soviet Union and the Western Allied powers—America, Britain, and France—and all action was subject to the military and civil regulations specific to each zone. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which rejected any responsibility for the Third Reich's crimes and never accepted the concept of reparations. Of the Western powers, prior to the German-Jewish agreement established after the creation of the German Federal Republic in 1949, the most successful "local" reparation occurred in the American zone. In the late forties initial progress was made through the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO), which was designated by the American Military Government as the legal successor to heirless property. The JRSO petitioned more than one hundred thousand claims, about three-quarters of which were settled within a few years. Half of them were settled in one lump sum. Different arrangements were made in the French and British zones. But in all zones controlled by Western powers, in the administrative muddle between military and civil regulations, the future division between federal and state authority, and other various bureaucratic specifics, comparatively little was achieved. The discrepancy between the enormous losses of Jewish property and the small compensation forthcoming from the German states was evidence that neither the Allies nor the Germans were prepared to address the central claims of the Jewish people. As Allied military control receded, Jewish efforts intensified to assure Allied supervision over future restitution obligations of the German government. Jewish concerns were heightened not only because of the extremism of the previous German regime but also because of the generally unsympathetic German courts. Many court decisions had to be reversed by the Allies. Furthermore, the German public did not support restitution, and in general the Germans were unwilling as individuals to display and admit guilt or to acknowledge moral or legal responsibility.

    In 1951 Jewish groups made one last effort to persuade the Allies to impose reparation on Germany. The Israeli government presented the Allies with a plan to make Germany pay one and one-half billion dollars, a sum representing a "quarter of the property that was seized.... The demand ... has been calculated according to the burden ... [of] financing the rehabilitation and the absorption of a half a million survivors of the Holocaust who have settled or will settle in Israel. Although the head of the occupation forces, General John McCloy, sent a telegram to the German government predicting dire consequences if negotiations failed, the United States mostly monitored the negotiations from the sideline. The Jewish case, as presented to the Allies on March 12, 1951, became the founding text for the proposed agreement. In it Israel declared that German war crimes could never be expiated by material reparations; all that could be done was to assist in the rehabilitation of the survivors. The Allies, however, were not willing to pursue the Jewish case. At most the United States was ready to mediate and encourage German acknowledgment.

    From the German side, before the creation of the Federal Republic, little attention was paid to the claim for compensation of Jewish victims. At the state level certain obligations imposed by the military rule within the separate zones addressed some of the compensation issues, but generally little was accomplished. Though Germany was defeated in the war, efforts by advocate organizations to induce the victorious powers to impose upon it the payment of reparation to Jews failed. But as it moved away from the war, the most significant response to Jewish claims for reparation came from Germany itself, and restitution to Jewish victims became a cornerstone of the newly formed Federal Republic. The process began in the early 1950s, shaped by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and a group of leading German politicians who viewed it as a moral obligation, as well as a pragmatic policy, that would facilitate the acceptance of Germany by the world community. Specifically it would give Germany an improved public image in the United States. Negotiations began between the perpetrators and the victims and continued to unfold for decades: In post-Communist Europe in the 1990s newly discovered victims came forth to claim compensation. Notwithstanding extensive compensation paid by the German government over the following fifty years, these new claims continued to surface and challenge reconciliation between Germany and the Jewish people, as well as the place of Jews and Jewish victimization in the German identity. Restitution became the anvil on which to forge it.

    In 1948 and 1949 both Israel as the Jewish state and the Federal Republic (West Germany) as the federal government of Germany were established. Soon afterward the question of restitution became a subject for negotiation between governments. Given previous failed Jewish demands, if anything were to happen, it would have to come from the German government. Adenauer accepted the challenge and took the initiative. The negotiations were highly emotional and complex, but the two governments were determined to try. They embarked on a process to translate past war crimes into present justice by recognizing German guilt and compensating Jewish victims. Informal negotiations opened in the summer of 1951. On September 27, in a meeting with the new German parliament, the Bundestag, Adenauer formally announced the German restitution policy, and it was approved in a somber debate.

    In order to establish a more powerful position and to expedite an agreement in these negotiations, despite internal political and ideological fragmentation, the myriad Jewish organizations formed the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany as an umbrella body to speak for all (the Claims Conference) . This Jewish perspective represented far more than an administrative decision because it indicated that there existed a Jewish national identity. Prior to the formation of this umbrella body, many Jewish organizations did not see themselves as part of a nation but, rather, as a religion. This united agreement meant that the Zionist view of Jews as a people would be the leading, and probably only, one to represent the Jewish case. This coalition, headed by the president of the World Jewish Congress, who was a German refugee, Nahum Goldman, became crucial both to reaching an expedient agreement and to making Israel the foremost partner in the negotiation. Goldman hurried to form the Claims Conference as a single organization that would deal with the Germans, and by October the Jewish world was speaking with one voice in the matter. By December 1951 Goldman and Adenauer had personally commenced formal negotiations. In January 1952 the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) met in a violent session and voted to authorize the negotiations while protesters, believing that accepting German "blood money" was a betrayal of the concentration camp victims, demonstrated so vehemently that they actually risked the well-being of Knesset members, but the government prevailed. The following spring the first stage of the negotiations failed, but the dialogue resumed in the summer and was brought to a successful conclusion in August 1952. The violent history of the German-Jewish relationship was evident in the negotiations themselves and was accentuated by the personal, almost intimate relationship between these enemies. Such was the case that two of the leading negotiators, one a German and the other a German Jewish refugee now an Israeli citizen, both of whom had gone to the same secondary school, sent a joint postcard to a former teacher from the negotiation site? Across the hellish divide of the Holocaust, the survivors were enmeshed with the perpetrators in more ways than they might have liked.

    Historians debate the magnanimity of Germany in paying restitution. They emphasize the "involuntary" nature of the payments, the little Germany did to encourage the return of Jews to the country, and the supposed Allied pressure on Germany. But since there was little Allied pressure, what would explain the payments? There are those who resort to the fear of world Jewry explanation. This explanation is insufficient and degrading. It denies the German postwar government its due and attributes to it miscalculations and malicious intent. If this had been the case, one would expect that upon realizing that world Jewry had emerged less powerful than had been expected and that Germany had become accepted in the West, the German government would have stopped paying reparation. Instead the restitution only increased with years. We should therefore look for the German meaning of restitution.

GERMAN PERSPECTIVES

Following the war, it was the German victims, not the victims of Germany, who occupied public attention. German animosity for the inflicted suffering was initially directed against the Western occupying forces, which, together with the Soviets, were viewed as the villains. With the Cold War the Red Army became the ultimate war criminal entrenched in German experience. In contrast, the Nazi regime and German guilt were ignored and willfully erased from memory. During the fifties and into the seventies, German memory focused on German suffering during the war and its aftermath. As the industry of commemoration flourished, it produced research institutes, volumes of memoirs, movies, and public culture, and it unified the German political system. In the West German political and cultural system Germans were the victims of the war. The campaign to release POWs and the urgent need to provide help to German victims created a political reality that facilitated the formation of a German memory that focused on German suffering and on the crimes of other nations. The terror suffered by the expellees, the validation of the Wehrmacht, and the campaign to release the POWs provided a rallying point for the German public. In contrast, there were hardly any publications or other representations from the fifties to the seventies by, or of, Jewish victims.

    In a way there is nothing exceptional about this; every country privileges its own suffering and minimizes the crimes it has inflicted on others. Yet it is noteworthy for three reasons. First, given the shift in public memory half a century later that focuses on the victims of Germany, we are at the mercy of the historian to remind us how differently the Germans in the 1950s viewed their immediate past. Indeed that guiltless view might have remained the general view. During the eighties, especially surrounding the historians' debate and the eventual defeat of the Holocaust's deniers and normalizers, the scope of the German acceptance of guilt became most apparent. Second, we must remember how extraordinary was Adenauer's action. Last, we must be reminded that the schizophrenic German attitude toward the war has become a permanent feature in German culture and politics? There is no reason to expect that the situation will change any time soon. Guilt and self-righteousness battle each other in the German memory, and there is little chance (or danger) that either will win.

    But the Germans remembered the victims of the Nazi regime, even as they emphasized their own losses. In the effort to construct an "acceptable" German memory of the war and call attention to German victims, especially the POWs and the expellees from Central and Eastern Europe, they compared German suffering with the ultimate suffering endured by the Jews as the victims of the Nazi extermination camps.

    We may mark the beginning of the contemporary German attitude to the Holocaust at German Chancellor Willy Brandt's recognition of the Nazi crimes during his visit to Warsaw (1970), which also marked the first rupture in the Cold War. In 1950 what became known as "Hitler's shadow"—the everpresent specter of Hitler on every German political and cultural act—was yet to be invented. At the time Germany felt neither guilty nor responsible for the victims of Nazism. It is against this background that Adenauer's action was so extraordinary, an exception to, rather than a representation of, the prevailing German opinion. While we recognize that generational attitudes lead to political changes, Adenauer may be said to have anticipated the emotional politics of the next generation.

    In terms of German realpolitik there was, in addition and at the very least, a strong argument that the economic revival of Germany could not sustain substantial reparation payments. The political wisdom was that such restitution both was unpopular and could hinder German economic revival. In 1952, while the reparation negotiations were taking place in Wassenaaer, Netherlands, the Germans were also in the midst of negotiating with the West in London about restructuring their war debts. Their argument at the London discussions was that Germany's economy was unable to produce sufficient surpluses to pay its international obligations. The experience after World War I and the legacy of Versailles loomed large over the negotiations. Any agreement, or even negotiation, over reparation to Jews that could result in a new major German debt was viewed by the leading German negotiators in London as counterproductive to their effort to persuade the West of Germany's poverty. Thus public wisdom viewed the proposed reparation to Jews as conflicting with the essential economic policy and needs of the Federal Republic. The anticipated tangible political gains—primarily better access to the United States—were viewed as a pragmatic argument in favor of compensation but were seen by critics as highly uncertain.

    When Adenauer embarked on the restitution path, he accepted Jewish "preconditions" to admit guilt, recognize a Jewish national identity, and make Israel the major beneficiary of Jewish claims. Moreover, once he had embarked upon the negotiations, there was no turning back. Too much was invested in the moral rehabilitation of Germany through restitution. Adenauer could have retreated and accepted the consequences, but his belief that the soul of Germany depended upon reconciliation made that alternative unacceptable. As he made the formal announcement of Germany's plans to pay restitution, he sold it to the voters and his colleagues in the most mundane and pragmatic of terms, as a realpolitik move that would help Germany convince the Allies to reverse the occupation status. The apparent German repentance was well received by the world press. The realpolitik aim of restitution had an almost instantaneous result.

    The internal German debates over restitution were polemic. The left Social Democrats were unanimous in their support of Jewish restitution and were more forthcoming toward Israel than was the government. On the other side, the coalition parties were divided, with the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and its leader, Franz Joseph Strauss, harboring the strongest "respectable" opposition to restitution. Other sources of opposition were primarily concerned with the amount of the restitution debt and its impact on Germany. The Communists voted against restitution, but the radical rightwing reaction was even more dramatic: The Association for Individuals Harmed by Denazification was formed in January 1952, and among its demands was "financial restitution."

    Denazification, which started under the occupation, was aimed at removing Nazis from official positions; it did not go far and had no public backing. It was a glaring example of how resistant Germany was to admit any guilt about its Nazi past. After the formation of the Federal Republic, while evoking the horrors of the war, Chancellor Adenauer focused on the German POWs, the non-Jewish refugees (primarily from East Germany), and general civilian suffering. He accepted as a general recognition the need to compensate the Jews, but he did this while distancing the German people from complicity in the crimes of the extermination camps. This was the rationale of the September 27 statement to the Bundestag concerning the "attitudes of the Federal Republic toward the Jews," which was a synthesis of Adenauer's political needs at home and abroad. The crimes, it seemed, just happened; nobody was really responsible. His statement implied that more Germans had risked their lives saving Jews than had participated in persecution and killing. Most of all, guilt had to be secondary to prosperity, and compensation was subject to the ability to pay. As a moral and historical repentance there was much in Adenauer's statement that recognized German obligations, but to Jewish audiences he seemed to present Germany more as a victim than a perpetrator. "The crimes," said Adenauer, "were committed in the name of the German people," but there was not a word about who had committed them. This was in contrast with the extensive details of German suffering in those days in the Bundestag's debates? But if the text of Adenauer's speech was ordinary, its occurrence was extraordinary. Precisely because of the unwillingness to accept guilt, the event of the speech was more significant than its substance. Adenauer's performance in the Bundestag ended with almost all members rising in silence. The somber silence, however, did not necessarily convey repentance. The speech was both commemoration and evasion, and the silence became a prelude for a public repression of German memories of the Holocaust.

    But Adenauer was more forthcoming when his audience was limited to Jews. In a 1949 interview with a Jewish newspaper that preceded the negotiations, he emphasized the need for forthcoming restitution and promised a crackdown on anti-Semitism for pragmatic, as well as humanitarian, reasons. Given his future actions, there is no reason to suspect that he did not mean what he said. But his moral commitments and philo-Semitic sentiments were never pronounced in a similarly strong language to the German people. Adenauer clearly believed he was too far ahead of the German public and would not receive its support for his philo-Semitic views.

     Denazification ended by 1950, and a year later the Bundestag restored benefits and rights to government workers who, following the defeat, had been implicated in National Socialist crimes. Those who had served the Nazi regime were now viewed merely as employees of the previous government. Indeed this view of normal government employment meant that forty years later, when Eastern Europe emerged from communism, "employers" in the Third Reich—those who had participated in the extermination—would receive state benefits while the victims of Nazism would again struggle to receive recognition. For a short period immediately after the defeat, the official view of the Nazi regime was of a criminal and an abnormal period. Denazification had taken place under American supervision, but by 1950 West Germany had normalized its past and included the Third Reich as simply a phase in German history. It would take a generation to question this normalization.

     The discussion about Jewish reparation was also part of the larger major political issue of publicly recognizing war suffering. German politicians focused foremost on German victimization and on validating voters' deprivation, and these did not include Jews. Adenauer projected these public memories, which privileged amnesty for war "excesses" (the euphemism for war crimes) as a more urgent policy than self-examination. The debates in Germany dealt primarily with the "German condition" and included detailing the suffering, the specific cases of expulsion, the Soviet crimes, and the miserable state of the refugees.

     In 1951 the German people generally did not object to Jewish restitution. It may even be said that such restitution enjoyed, by certain measures, widespread support. This, however, fell far short of the endorsement of compensation for non-Jewish Germans who suffered from the war. While support for restitution for war widows and orphans polled at 96 percent, and support of German refugees included nine out of ten people, material help to relatives of those who participated in the anti-Hitler coup enjoyed the support of less than three-quarters of the population (73 percent). Restitution for Jews had an even weaker support but still ran better than three to one (68 percent in favor, 21 percent against). Similar levels of support could be gleaned from the newspapers and magazines that supported or objected to the reparation (Der Spiegel and Der Stern among the opposition) and later, in the Bundestag vote (239 for, 35 against, 86 abstained).

     The public debate and rhetoric about reparation were part of Germany's reconfiguration of its cultural and political attitudes toward Jews and manifested the Federal Republic's ambivalence in assuming the responsibility to do so. German guilt—now widely accepted, only its extent is being debated—was yet to be recognized and internalized by Germany as a nation. The reparation agreement was therefore not a foregone conclusion and, when accomplished, broke and charted new ground in international relations by addressing victims who had no political power to make demands. Despite its tentative beginning, its eventual successful implementation became a precedent and a model for future restitution cases.

     The restitution negotiations took place in the context of Germany's eagerness to repress its guilt and the government's willingness to place a high value on them in the name of future German-Jewish relations. Reparation was an acknowledgment of the "special relationship" to the past, while moving away from guilt. Restitution was conceived by the Germans not as an admission of guilt but as a goodwill measure. Indeed for the first generation after the war there was little evidence of public guilt. At the same time, anti-Semitism was publicly delegitimized, and the government criticized its manifestation as an unnecessary cause for international embarrassment. One can hardly imagine a more radical ideological transformation than that which the Germans were called upon to make in their attitude toward the Jews at the end of World War II. One may compare it with the demands made of the American South during Reconstruction and of postapartheid South Africa, though in both the latter cases these racist regimes had to confront their external critics while they were still in power. Unlike the Nazis, the South African and American governments were authoritarian and not totalitarian and had no absolute control over public discourse. Indeed the Confederacy and the South African government were unable to suppress the antislavery opinion in one case and the antiapartheid in the other, and their critics undermined their racist ideologies. This was not the case in Germany, where under the Nazi banner there was total mobilization and widespread acquiescence. Though for the past fifty years historians have worked hard to locate every conceivable opposition to the Nazis within Germany, there is relatively little to show for it. Despite the relatively short duration of the Nazi regime, the German public had overwhelmingly accepted the anti-Semitic core of Nazi ideology. The disparity between the American situation in the South and the German reconfiguration becomes even more apparent when the failure of the Reconstruction period is compared with the place of anti-Semitism in the early years of the Federal Republic. In the United States, while slavery was defeated, racism remained, and even grew, as an official policy, and the southern view of Reconstruction remained the prevelant historical perspective for almost a hundred more years. In the spring of 1945 not only was Nazi ideological hatred of the Jews still dominant in Germany, but for millions of Germans who had taken part in implementing policies of destruction, the postwar demand for reversal amounted to a rejection of their personal lives. Yet within weeks, as the Nazi policies were reclassified as criminal, so, in principle, were those who had carried them out, as well as was the society that had supported them. Anti-Semitism and extermination had stood as the most defining features of Nazi Germany's structure, and within a few months this defeated ideology became taboo. If Germany was to build itself anew, if it was to strive for global (namely, Allied) acceptance, it had to reject its Nazi past fully. Denazification became law and altogether involved thousands of trials. But the prosecution of Nazis soon ended. Denazification was transformed to mean not rejection but, rather, rehabilitation of those suspected of being Nazis, allowing them to resume their old vocations. By any standard of decency denazification failed.

    In contrast with internal revolutions, defeated nations rarely accept the victor's ideology. If in the 1980s Germany was yet to make up its mind about whether the end of the war was a defeat or liberation, in the 1950s it was barely able to ask the question. In this obstinacy it could be compared with the unholy alliance of resilient racism in the United States (in the South after the Civil War), South Africa (following apartheid), and Japanese refusal to assume moral responsibility for their own war crimes (see chapter 3, "Sex Slaves").

    While German anti-Semitism in the immediate postwar years remained high, it encountered internal opposition and also found its manifestation checked by the American occupying forces. At first the shock of defeat and widespread destruction surrounded anti-Semitism with an envelope of silence; Jew hating disappeared from public, though of course not from private discourse. American military authorities invested in reeducating Germans, for example, requiring Germans to watch documentary films of concentration camps as a condition of receiving rations. While the long-term impact of such indoctrination on changing attitudes is hard to evaluate, in its immediate context it delegitimated Nazi policies in no uncertain terms. Anti-Semitism became illegal, and the occupying forces sporadically enforced the policy. Even though political activities were limited under the military occupation, there were still some localized public anti-Semitic eruptions directed at refugees—known as displaced persons—attacks on Jewish cemeteries by "neo-anti-Semites," a brutal repression of a Jewish demonstration by the police, and several other expressions of anti-Semitism. But these were relatively infrequent in the late forties.

    During the Third Reich anti-Semitism had been a German obsession. The Nazis imagined a competition between the Jewish and Aryan races for world domination and determined that Jewish annihilation was their first priority. After the war anti-Semitism quickly became a marginal manifestation and more a question of German guilt. However, although anti-Semitic activity was dramatically contained and the Jewish community in Germany had largely disappeared, Jews and anti-Semitism continued to play a disproportionate role in German self-identity. After having been all but annihilated in Germany but primarily as a result of immigration from the Eastern bloc and the liberation of slave labor, about 200,000 Jews were found in postwar Germany, mostly in displaced persons camps (130,000 soon migrated to Israel). Though not an insignificant number, these Jewish refugees constituted less than 2 percent of the approximately 13 million, primarily Volksdeutsche, refugees expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. That Jews continued to preoccupy the German public was primarily a result of a cultural engagement and not of social circumstances.

    An indication of the extent of postwar anti-Semitism can be gleaned from the results of public opinion research done by the American forces. American opinion against anti-Semitism was well known; therefore, it is reasonable to assume that respondents underreported anti-Semitism. Even so, social research suggests that both for fear of retaliation and as a condemnation of the Nazi policies that led to the disaster, Germans were rejecting the virulent and extremist Nazi anti-Semitism. But as normalization was settling in, neo-anti-Semitism became widespread. By 1952 five times as many Germans were likely to make anti-Semitic comments as philo-Semitic, but perhaps as important, the majority had no strong opinion, and many avoided the subject. This majority who "avoided" the subject willingly subscribed to a host of traditional anti-Semitic prejudices. These included continuously drawing a distinction between German-born Jews, supposedly now part of the German nation (in theory, because only a handful survived), and the "outsiders": the refugees. These displaced persons were the real flesh-and-blood Jewish victims present in Germany who were criticized for the hardships and the disastrous results of the Third Reich.

    As Nazi anti-Semitism was rebuked, a new philo-Semitic legitimacy emerged. This significant shift occurred within a small section of the population. The general public viewed issues of guilt, criminality, and responsibility for the Nazi deeds as secondary to food and housing shortages or unemployment. Yet a leading group believed that the future of the new Germany would be measured by its repentance for past crimes as well as its successful transition to democracy. It believed that for Germany to repent, the Germans had to reject racism officially. This was what world (Western) public opinion demanded of the new Germany, and philo-Semitism was to play a major role in reconstructing this new German identity. Within a short time anti-Semitism moved from being the official ideology and the obvious accepted norm to being rejected as "unbecoming" and soon thereafter to being replaced by official philo-Semitism.

    Under these new official policies, discussions about Jews were suddenly subject to a reversed imagery. Extreme vilification, as manifested in the infamous Nazi publication Der Stürmer, was replaced with idealized, enlightened images of Jews as "Nathan the Wise"; the reputed Jewish propensity for financial matters was transformed from "usury" to "a natural ability" that, it was said, would help Germany in its economic reconstruction. Similarly, the Nazi notion of a Jewish "world conspiracy" became "diplomatic connections" that were now seen as especially valuable for their access to the American government. "Jewish science," a favorite lightning rod of Nazi ideology, was replaced by a list of Jewish scientists and luminaries who had "contributed to German culture." Pro-Jewish sentiments were also expressed in public and helped shape "internal" German questions, such as in the controversy around the rehabilitation and "new" role as movie producer in the Federal Republic of Veit Harlan (writer and director of the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss, 1940). Even stronger, though rarer, was the emergence of such philo-Semitic voices as the Peace with Israel movement, which found many of its supporters within the Christian Church, and the phenomenon of young Germans who volunteered to help Israel. These formed the beginning of an "interest group" that advocated reconciliation with Jews, so necessary for its rehabilitation in the world's eyes, as Germany's primary issue. This movement, however, remained small. Not to underestimate the significance of this official philo-Semitic shift, it is important to remember that these attitudes continued to coexist in public discourse alongside a conflicting preponderance of anti-Semitism. But philo-Semitism became a form of "German self-therapy: the attempt to free oneself a bit from the terrible past—a German remedy for a German pain."

    For the average German, philo-Semitism was, perhaps more than anything, politically useful in dealing with the occupying forces. Even more than an internal German need, it was manufactured as an export industry whose immediate target was to earn badly needed hard currency or maintain business as usual. Philo-Semitism became expedient because at the local level during the occupation any Jewish contacts provided an alibi in the process of denazification. That a "corpuscle of Jewish blood was highly prized, while former associations with Jews were invoked as personal recommendations," was particularly macabre. American military files depict a postwar German eagerness to highlight or create a Jewish-related background, that suggests more about the perceived utilitarian value of these connections, associations, or background than about a new attitude.

(Continues...)

Table of Contents

Contents:



Preface: Amending Historical Injustices in International Morality

Part I: Residues of World War II

Chapter 1: The Faustian Predicament: German Reparations to Jews

Chapter 2: American Memory: Japanese Americans Remember the Camps

Chapter 3: Sex Slaves: Comfort Women and Japanese Guilt

Chapter 4: Plunder as Justice: Russian Victims and Glorious Museums

Chapter 5: Nazi Gold and Swiss Solidarity: A New Mechanism for Rewriting Historical Crimes?

Chapter 6: Restitution in East Central Europe: Deserving and Undeserving Victims

Part II: Colonialism and Its Aftermath

Chapter 7: "First Nations" Renaissance: Indigenous Groups and the Pluralistic Model

Chapter 8: Native American Restitution: Land, Human Remains, and Sacred Objects

Chapter 9: Hawaii: The Other Native Americans

Chapter 10: Oceanic Models for Indigenous Groups: Australian Aborigines

Chapter 11: Once Were Warriors: The Limits of Successful Restitution

Chapter 12: Restitution for Slavery: Opportunity or Fantasy?

Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Restitution

Johns Hopkins University Press

Editorial Reviews

A welcome contribution to the literature... Most works focus on one case study or possibly a handful of very similar ones, but rarely attempt comparison across a wide spectrum of historical injustices. The book's comparative framework allows us to see how seemingly different cases engage many similar issues, and how 'reciprocity' and negotiation can take myriad forms. Its clear writing style and even-handed accounts makes The Guilt of Nations an excellent book for graduate and undergraduate courses on large-scale violence.

H-Genocide, H-Net Reviews - Ernesto Verdeja

Barkan's presentation of these cases [for restitution] is comprehensive and interdisciplinary. His knowledge of local cultures, history, sociology, and international law meets the book's high demands. Although there is no doubt that he welcomes the whole process of restitution, his evaluations of the complicated cases are quite well balanced.

American Political Science Review - Waldemar Hanasz

[One of] the most important books of the year... Magisterial... Destined to dominate future discussion... Primed to become a bible for all, from Holocaust survivors to African American activists, who believe reparations for historical wrongdoing are possible.

Philadelphia Inquirer - Carlin Romano

A remarkably lucid and even-handed account... Barkan makes a persuasive case that, despite all the difficulties, the recent vogue for apologies and restitution should be welcomed.

Economist

Tightly focused, highly readable.

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Shashi Tharoor

Both an invaluably detailed catalog of various groups' past and present claims for restitution and a theoretical consideration of the idea's practicality and morality, this book will no doubt take its place as the starting point for a full understanding of these highly complex issues.

Salon - Jonathan Groner

Well-researched and discriminating.

New York Times Book Review - Michael Ignatieff

Barkan's presentation of these cases [for restitution] is comprehensive and interdisciplinary. His knowledge of local cultures, history, sociology, and international law meets the book's high demands. Although there is no doubt that he welcomes the whole process of restitution, his evaluations of the complicated cases are quite well balanced.

— Waldemar Hanasz

American Political Science Review

[One of] the most important books of the year... Magisterial... Destined to dominate future discussion... Primed to become a bible for all, from Holocaust survivors to African American activists, who believe reparations for historical wrongdoing are possible.

— Carlin Romano

Philadelphia Inquirer

Tightly focused, highly readable.

— Shashi Tharoor

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Both an invaluably detailed catalog of various groups' past and present claims for restitution and a theoretical consideration of the idea's practicality and morality, this book will no doubt take its place as the starting point for a full understanding of these highly complex issues.

— Jonathan Groner

Salon

Well-researched and discriminating.

— Michael Ignatieff

New York Times Book Review

Well-researched and discriminating. —New York Times Book Review

Michael Ignatieff

Both an invaluably detailed catalog of various groups' past and present claims for restitution and a theoretical consideration of the idea's practicality and morality, this book will no doubt take its place as the starting point for a full understanding of these highly complex issues. —Salon

Jonathan Groner

Tightly focused, highly readable. —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Shashi Tharoor

The negotiations over Holocaust restitution that have made headlines during the past few years make this philosophical inquiry into the issue a timely monograph. As the author writes, "world morality--not to say, human nature--changed in March 1997," when the Swiss announced they were creating a humanitarian fund for victims of the Holocaust because of profits made from Nazi-looted gold. Indeed, questions of reparations for victims of atrocities erupted all over the globe in the past decade--and Barkan, who teaches history and cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University, takes a chapter-by chapter tour of these questions, covering such topics as Japanese restitution for enslaving Korean "comfort women" during WWII, Australian compensation for Aborigines, even the possibility of U.S. reparations for slavery. This work yields comparative nuggets--e.g., that the Japanese, unlike the Germans, do not feel a strong sense of collective guilt--and any reader who wades through this dense work will become educated about the weights and balances involved in restitution issues. The author also shows how restitution can bring two peoples together. In the case of the Germans and the Jews, restitution enabled "mourning to serve as a way to deal with melancholy, victimization, national repression and self- hate." Although Barkan favors restitution, because "alternative potential resolutions are too often frustrating and less effective," he covers these topics thoroughly and dispassionately. But the author's strength is also a weakness. His mild stance makes this book feel like a fruit that is difficult to open and, once opened, not as sweet as one would like. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Beneath a layer of academic jargon, this is a novel and thought-provoking work. Barkan (historical and cultural studies, Claremont Graduate Univ.) explores the increasingly widespread practice by which nation-states, impelled by "liberal guilt." Strive to make restitution for past injustices. Tragic episodes, such as the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, fuel this guilt, and Barkan attributes the impulse to atone for historical wrongs to an emerging "neo-Enlightenment morality" that augments the classical liberal conception of individual rights with a vaguely defined set of group rights. To redress historical wrongs, the perpetrators (or their descendants) negotiate terms of restitution with aggrieved minorities. Restitution may include an apology, reparations, or the return of cultural treasures. The author suggests that by negotiating an agreed interpretation of history, the parties can transcend festering animosities and ultimately attain true conflict resolution. Recommended for libraries specializing in public policy.-James R. Holmes, Ph.D. candidate, Fletcher Sch. of Law & Diplomacy, Belmont, MA

Library Journal

Is restitution hegemony or reclaimed rights? Barkan (cultural studies, Claremont Graduate U.) raises the question but doesn't answer it in his examination of a number of attempts to amend historical injustices through official apologies and financial payments. Separate chapters analyze the political, economic, and moral dynamics behind restitution movements related to the European Jews slaughtered by the Nazis; the Japanese traffic of sex slaves; the Russian plunder of Germany as restitution for German plunder; Native American claims on land, human remains, and sacred objects; Hawaiian claims of self determination; the treatment of Australian Aborigines; and the legacy of the slavery of Africans in America. He argues that discourses of restitution are deeply wedded to notions of identity and that restitution can sometimes lock people into seeing themselves as victims. Restitution, although sometimes appropriate, "orders injustices and attempts to rewrite specific wrongs, leaving other social discriminations and prejudices intact." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

A timely examination of how guilt, victimization, and restitution have become pervasive in the dialogue of global politics. Defying the traditions of realpolitik, Barkan (Cultural Studies/Claremont Graduate Univ.) argues that more and more nations are acknowledging and reacting to historical injustices. This trend began with German reparations to Jews in the 1950s and continues to manifest itself in national and international arenas. Barka views the cases for restitution brought forward by victims of WWII and by indigenous peoples of North America and Oceania, as well as efforts by the newly democratic states in Eastern Europe to return property confiscated under Communist rule. Barkan explores the complexity of restitution, concluding that, in the more successful cases (such as reparations paid by the American government to Japanese citizens for internment during WWII), the reward was not found in the material compensation itself but in the galvanization of victimized communities, which led to increased political clout. Restitution is a process, writes Barkan, "not a specific solution or standard." There are some questions that the author leaves unanswered, however. While he makes a clear case that "principles of moral economy" are a growing force in current politics, he does not explain why this is so and why it is a post-WWII phenomenon. And whether the very concept of restitution is itself a product or an agent of the late 20th century is not clear, either. In the tradition of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, Barkan's study illustrates that religious and ethnic identities are increasingly pitted against the nation-state. This is an importantandvery necessary addition to post-Cold War political discourse.. . .

Kirkus Reviews