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When the British army
liberated Bergen-Belsen

I was amongst the dead.
I was a skeleton.

So they dumped me on the truck

to be taken care of.

And in the last minute,

one of the officers passed by,

he pulled my leg that was
hanging out,

took my pulse.

And he said,
“That skeleton is still alive.”

At the end of the war,

the whole camp was
full of corpses.

The Nazis, they didn't know
who was alive, who was dead.

If they thought that you
were alive, they'd shoot you.

My mother, she hid me with a corpse.

As she covered me up she said,
"You're not going to move."

"And you're going to
breathe into the floor," she said.

My job was to get into the camps
as quickly as they were liberated.

I had peered into hell.

They unlocked the gates

and then they took pictures of us.

I have a pretty good picture
with my number showing.

The survivors,

they'd walked away
with only a tattoo on their arm,

everything they had
owned was gone

including their families.

Where was the money to come from?

To heal them,

to house them,

to allow them to
begin their new lives.

The needs of the survivors were
as great as they were urgent.

This was the declaration
that my grandfather

delivered in the German Parliament,
the Bundestag.

He declared that he was willing

to enter into negotiations for reparations.

Two states who go to war,

the state that wins exacts reparations

from the state that loses.

Reparations have existed
since time immemorial.

But the idea of compensation to
individuals was unprecedented.

How is Germany going to pay for this?

We had bombed the hell out of Germany.

In 1952, the German population was
the same population that committed

that what happened during the war.

When I went to school
in the 1950s

the Holocaust

was practically never mentioned.

We don’t want German money!

For the Israelis,

it was really a dramatic change
to begin a conversation

with representatives of Germany.

It was for them like
negotiating with the devil.

Blood money.

I always called it blood money.

There was this bomb being
sent to the German Chancellor.

And there were other bombs being
sent to the delegations in Wassenaar.

There was a terrorist group which was
out to kill me and kill all the others

who dares to sit with the Germans

to talk about how much
they owe for my parents.

I don't know what happened
to my parents and my sister.

And every night
when I go to sleep, I say

Muti, Papa.
Where are you? Where are you?

Where is my family?
Why am I alone?

I don't have anybody.

I'm still a child.

One Jewish negotiator said he
felt the souls

of six million Jews
in the room with him that day.

At Weimar, all citizens were ordered
to visit the concentration camp.

They were forced to see
with their own eyes

crimes whose existence
they had indignantly denied.

They tell you now that they knew
nothing of what was going on,

or could do anything
even if they knew.

The Germans had for 12 years
been indoctrinated

that the Jews were
a danger to their existence.

They didn't really understand
why they had to pay compensation.

One has to see that everybody,
even those who had been

on the other side against the Nazis,

they were not willing
to deal with the crimes.

Everybody was rejecting the
notion of collective guilt.

People were still living in ruins

the country had to be rebuilt.

They just thought it was a war

that was bad for all sides.

But the fact that the
Germans had inflicted

so much pain on the Jewish people

probably wasn’t on their minds.

The Allies conducted a number of polls
amongst the Germans.

Who did they consider to be
the main victims of the war?

Jews always ranked at the bottom.

They were so preoccupied
with building up their lives.

Only 11% of the German population

supported compensation talks.

In the name of the German people

unspeakable crimes have been committed

calling for moral

and material compensation.

My grandfather was convinced

early on in his term of office as Chancellor,

that it was crucial to build a bridge

with Israel and the Jewish community.

The Federal Government is prepared

together with representatives of world Jewry

and the State of Israel

which has taken in so many
homeless Jewish refugees

to bring about a solution
of the material compensation problem.

He said that, of course, this
compensation, this reparation

is also, in a way,
accepting German guilt.

Adenauer had a deep understanding

that we had committed terrbile injustice.

I think he knew from a moral

and political understanding

that he had to

engage with

the Jewish community.

In 1949, West Germany became
a new sovereign nation,

the Federal Republic of Germany,
with Konrad Adenauer as its Chancellor.

East Germany was behind the Iron
Curtain, cut off from the West.

As the first Chancellor, he had the task of
rebuilding West Germany as a democracy,

regaining membership among
the civilized nations of the world,

and restoring the good name of Germany.

He was a devout Catholic

and had been opposed to Nazism.

His family had paid a severe
price for their opposition.

In 1917, he was elected
the Mayor of Cologne

Cologne was one of the centers
of Jewish life in Germany.

He had Jewish friends.

And this is something that
the Nazis didn't like at all.

He despised the Nazis
right from the start

and it was no secret.

He was removed from office.

These are the German newsreel pictures

put out following
the attempt on the Fuhrer’s life.

Conjecture runs high...

My grandfather wasn't involved
in the plot on Hitler’s life,

but he was arrested at five
o'clock in the morning,

then taken to an internment center
in Cologne.

He was able to escape
with the help of a friend.

Soon after,
they came here to Rhöndorf

to question his wife,

to tell them
where he was hiding.

She refused,
and she was arrested

and taken to Gestapo headquarters.

They also threatened to arrest

her two daughters as well.

So she betrayed my grandfather

and gave up his hiding place.

Of course my grandfather forgave her

but she never recovered from this.

She took sleeping pills
and cut her wrists.

She was saved,

but the poisoning she suffered

couldn't be treated adequately.

She died three years later in 1948.

Of course this was a hard blow
for my grandfather.

Knowing that people in Germany did not

recognize the importance of this subject,

I think he let his decisions be guided

by his inner conviction that

this is necessary,

not just for his own moral responsibility

but for the whole German people.

Adenauer faced fierce opposition
to the idea of paying reparations,

even within his own cabinet.

The biggest threat to Adenauer's plans
was finance minister, Fritz Schäffer.

Schäffer thought that maybe the
German Federal Republic is not capable

of bearing that financial burden.

I mean, I wouldn't call him an
anti-Semite, but he thought that

if Israel needs money,

Israel should address maybe
the United States or others for credit.

And he had a very important
position in the German cabinet.

He has the right to veto.

So it was very important for
Adenauer to overcome that.

The speech by Adenauer,

it was received by the world
as a very brave speech.

But not in Israel.

We hereby proclaim the establishment
of the Jewish state in Palestine

to be called the state of Israel.

Like Adenauer, Ben-Gurion was building
a new nation out of the ashes.

The two leaders actually
had a great deal in common.

Both men were unique combinations
of moralists and realists.

The lesson Ben-Gurion took from
the Holocaust was

that we the Jews
need to protect themselves.

No one saved the Jews.

They can't wait for other
nations to protect them.

And if the Jews want to save themselves,

they need weapons.

For weapons, you need money.

And no one's going to give it to us.

This evening, the invasion.

Arab armies are pouring in.

Their tanks have already
crossed the borders

and the frontier settlements have
helped the first onslaught

of the fighting forces
of the organized Arab armies.

The Israel War of Independence
was the longest

and the most dire

in the history of the Jewish state.

About 85% Gross National Product

was devoted to finance this war.

In the midst of the war,
Israel opened it's gates

for a wave of
mass Jewish immigrations.

About 700 thousand Jewish immigrants
came to Israel,

absorbed by a population
of 600 thousand Jews.

This figure was unprecedented
in the history of nations.

Half of the immigrants came from
Arab Muslim worlds,

and half of the immigrants
came from Europe.

They were Holocaust survivors.

In June 1950,
Israel had about 65 million dollars.

At the end of 1951,

the Israel treasury was empty.

A collapse of the economy

is virtually
the collapse of the state itself.

Ben-Gurion, he knew that for
the survival of Israel,

Israel must obtain these reparations.

It was a very
difficult decision.

He locked himself into a
psychological mode of not listening

to the criticism because
he said I cannot judge

or comment on the pain
of my brothers and sisters

who went through the Holocaust.

But now, I have to
do whatever I can

to build a nation

to move forward.

Ever since the full and horrific extent
of the Holocaust was discovered,

a kind of spontaneous popular boycott

was imposed in Israel on Germany.

This boycott was the expression of
the sense of revulsion,

feelings of hatred,

the desire for revenge

against Germany.

There was a complete rejection of
everything German.

Not only the Nazis.

German art,

German music,

the German language.

Even German products.

That is an Israeli passport.

That can be used for every country.

And here:

Except Germany

When the State was founded,

Ben Gurion became the Prime Minister,

and Moshe Sharett became the
Minister of Foreign Affairs.

They were partners

in the decision

to obtain reparations from West Germany.

The debate in the Knesset

lasted three straight days.

There were not many instances

in the history of the State of Israel

where there were debates
as prolonged and difficult

as those on the topic of reparations.

I’m reading an excerpt

of Sharett’s speech at the Knesset

“Jews were killed

but the German people
continues to enjoy the spoils

of the slaughter and pillage

perpetrated by their previous leaders.

Of this we can say,

'Hast thou killed and also taken possession?'

A member of David Ben-Gurion's party
during the debate rose and said,

"You're a traitor to the Jewish people."

"Even if you sign
the agreement with the Germans,"

"they'll never pay, they're
going to make fools of you."

The emotion was very high
in the Knesset,

but it was nothing compared to
the atmosphere outside in the streets.

Prior to the vote, Begin speaks at a
mass demonstration in Zion Square.

“The vote has already been taken
in Treblinka, in Auschwitz.

There the Jews voted
under the torture of death.

The reparations money will lead to
cleansing the guilt of the German murderers.”

WE WILL REMEMBER TREBLINKA

REMEMBER AUSCHWITZ

The prominent leader that
execute this demonstration

was Menachim Begin,
an Holocaust survivor.

OUR HONOR SHALL NOT
BE SOLD FOR MONEY

When Menachim Begin ended his speech,

stones were thrown against
the police officers

and some members
of the Knesset were injured.

This was actually the first time,
and the last time in Israel history,

that the Knesset was stormed.

The motion to approve negotiations
with the German people passed,

but only by a single vote.

The foreign office decided
on a one billion dollar claim.

The claim was based on the costs for
absorbing 500,000 broken survivors.

But Adenauer had offered
to negotiate with Israel

and a representative of World Jewry.

There was just one small detail.

No such organization existed.

The Jewish people were fragmented.

They were divided.

They had a multiplicity of organizations.

How do you bring them together
to speak

in one voice?

If the leaders of the democratic peoples
of the last decade

would have had just a
little bit more common sense,

just a little bit more
of moral courage,

this second World War

would have been easily avoidable.

Nahum Goldmann was
the only leader at the time

who had the gravitas,
who had the influence

to corral politically
and religiously diverse

Jewish leaders from around the world.

Goldmann was stripped of
his German citizenship

by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

And he was forced to leave
Germany that very same year.

He became deeply involved
in Jewish affairs.

He was president of the
Agency for Palestine,

basically the governing body of the
pre-state Jewish community in Israel.

And he was a founder and president
of the World Jewish Congress.

One month after Adenauer’s speech,

Nahum Goldmann sent out
invitations in the name

of the Jewish Agency to 23 organizations.

And it was arranged very quickly.

They all got together in the
Waldorf Astoria in New York.

He did bring together a fairly
wide range of organizations.

The first big question was
who represents the victims?

There were survivors in Israel, but
there were survivors all over the world.

In the early 1950s, there were still
tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors

who were living in the DP camps.

They didn't have bank accounts, they
didn't have homes to go back to.

They didn't inherit anything from
their parents who had been murdered.

And they were deprived of an education.

Israel's representative to the
United Nations, Abban Eban,

came to the meeting in New York.

His main argument was that
Israel should represent

all Holocaust survivors worldwide.

The other delegates refused
to accept his position.

They rejected the idea that Israel
should monopolize,

monopolize was the word they used,
monopolize the claims.

That's not going to fly.

The diaspora organizations also
had ongoing needs

in looking after Holocaust survivors.

And there was the whole question
of rehabilitating

the devastated Jewish communities in Europe.

On the second day of the meeting,

a vote was taken
to create the organization.

One group that was vehemently
opposed was Agudath Israel.

The representative of Orthodox Jewry.

The spokesman for Agudath Israel said

the Jewish world would
commit moral suicide

if the offer of Adenauer
was not immediately rejected.

The vote was 22 to one, in favor.

And thus, the Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against Germany,

the Claims Conference, was formed.

They decided to insert
into already unwieldy name

the word 'Material'

because they wanted
the world to understand

this was about material reparations.

But the issues of morality,

of justice,

those would not be solved
or closed by a negotiation.

The nascent Claims Conference
had to figure out on what legal basis

they would present claims.

There was no precedent for
what they were trying to achieve

in international law.

Fortunately, the Claims Conference had
pulled in a handful of brilliant lawyers.

We ask this court to affirm by
international penal action,

man's right to live
in peace and dignity,

regardless of his race or creed.

When I was still a student at the
Harvard law school,

the first year class taught me

that if you do harm to someone,
a wrongful act,

you have an obligation
to try to make amends.

Fundamental principle of law.

Had nothing to do with Nazis,
nothing to do with Germany.

It had to do with law and morality.

He had been drafted into the
army right out of law school

and had never tried a case.

Nevertheless, he was tapped

to be the lead prosecutor
in the Nuremberg Trials

of the SS mobile killing squads

who had murdered some
two million men, women and children.

The case we present is a
plea of humanity to law.

Finding the theory
was the first obstacle.

How do you frame it?

And what form of law,
under which headings?

We decided very early on,
we're not going to ask for anything

for loss of life.

It was too difficult for us to say

Grandpa was worth more than Grandma.

Or you're worth more than
somebody else who was killed.

The most important basis for
individual survivor claims against Germany

was personal suffering.

What happened to that
particular Holocaust survivor?

What they endured.
Where were they?

Were they in camps?

Were they in ghettos
for what period of time?

And there was a second claim, which
was based on the value of the property

that had been plundered by the Nazis
and for which there had been no claims

because there were no surviving owners.

The Holocaust was not only a
war against the Jewish people.

It was the biggest asset
stripping operation in history.

Whole families were
completely annihilated.

And suddenly there was property, but
there were no appropriators anymore.

Who is going to claim that property?

It cannot happen that property will
become legal property

in the land where
that crimes were committed.

You have murdered,
and now you are going to appropriate

the means of the murdered?

That cannot happen.

That's morally unacceptable,
in any culture of the world.

The idea was that the German
compensation would assist

survivors to rebuild their lives.

But this did not constitute in itself
an acknowledgement

of the fact that
Jews forgave the Germans,

because
Jews didn't forgive the Germans.

After liberation,

we were going back to
our hometown, Tomasov Maszewski,

where my grandparents,
great-grandparents,

200 years of people were

born there and lived there.

My mother said, "Somebody
must've come back."

My mother lost 150 people.

She had nine brothers and sisters.

They all had children.

Three years of waiting.

Not one person.

Every one of them was murdered.

Why did that make you
not want to accept reparations?

Because I didn't want anybody to
think it's a payment

for the murder

of all the people.

You can't pay for it.

And I was just afraid that somebody

would think that we're
accepting the payments

for the death of our family.

Before negotiations could begin,

the Claims Conference
and the Israeli government

had to be absolutely sure
that Adenauer was sincere,

that he would agree
to significant reparations,

and that Germany would actually pay.

Goldmann's meeting without Adenauer
in London would be the first time

a high ranking Jewish person
had met with a senior German official

since the end of the war.

It was a little bit taken
out of a John Le Carré movie.

Nahum Goldmann came through
the delivery's entrance.

Adenauer was already in the hotel.

So it was all very, very secret

because it still was unbelievable

to have negotiation talks
back in that time.

Nahum Goldmann said
a very unusual thing

to the Chancellor of an upcoming nation.

He said, "Before you even
answer, give me 15 minutes."

"And don't interrupt me."

Goldmann laid out the volcanic controversy
about negotiations with Germany.

He said,
"If there's to be any haggling,"

"it would be better
not to begin the talks at all."

He also made very clear that
without any acknowledgement

of the moral dimension,

there would never be negotiation talks.

And by moral dimension,
he means that

Adenauer and the whole government
has to again accept

unbelievable crimes
have been committed

in the responsibility of Germany.

And that this is not only to get the
readmission to the family of nations.

The fear Nahum Goldmann had that
the whole German government

would regard this to be good business.

We're getting something for
giving that reparations.

Goldmann asked for one billion
as the basis of negotiations.

Goldmann wrote in his diary that
Adenauer said this to him

at the conclusion of their meeting,

"Those who know me
know that I am a man of few words,

and I detest high flown talk.

But I must tell you that
while you were speaking,

I felt the wings of world history
beating in this room."

In a meeting of the
Israeli Foreign Ministry,

there was discussion
where to have to negotiations.

Well, first of all, it was clear
it cannot happen in Germany.

Germany was off limits for Jews.

The location was secret because
they were afraid that there

might be violent attacks.

So in the end, they decided
to go to a neutral country.

It was very hush hush.

I was told get on a boat,

and you proceed to the meeting place,
wherever it is.

I didn't know where it was.

There was this bomb being sent
to Adenauer

and that guy who opened
the package actually died.

We landed in Holland, checked
into the immigration there.

They looked at my papers and
they said, "Wait a moment."

And then a man came out and a
big car and he said, "Get in."

"I'll take you to where you're going."

I said, "Hey, can you tell
me where you're taking me?"

He said, "You'll see."

The Kasteel Oud Wassenaar,

which had been given
by the Dutch government

for the purpose of this meeting.

Well, the three parties that
met in Wessenaar,

the Federal Republic of Germany,
or West Germany,

the State of Israel,

and the Claims Conference.

And none of those organizations
even existed before the war.

And it was no guarantee that
the negotiations would reach

a successful conclusion.

The Claims Conference set up a
delegation made up of Ben Ferencz,

Jacob Robinson, and Nehemiah Robinson,
who were both of them lawyers.

And it was headed by Moses Leavitt.

Israel sent its own delegation.

Israel had the benefit of a foreign
ministry with professional diplomats.

The Claims Conference didn't have that,

but they were fortunate
by having personalities

who had been dealing with
the restoration of Jewish property rights

under the auspices of the American army.

Ben Ferencz was one of them.

Saul Kagan was another.

Goldmann would stay in the
wings until he was needed.

The idea was, he was the most
important person,

and so he should be
kept back as ammunition.

The Israeli foreign ministry
were preparing nearly everything.

How to enter the room.

To enter five minutes before
the German delegation appears

in order not to meet them beforehand.

Everybody has seen
all those movies, yeah?

If somebody takes a cigarette,

the other one wants to be polite

and stretches his hand out
with a lighter, automatically.

They were told,
"Don't take lighters with you."

In order not, well, to establish a
situation where you might be polite.

You are presenting a collective.

You're not presenting yourself.

Every thing was choreographed
not to come close to the Germans.

The next question was,
which language should we use?

This was also a symbolic question.

Is it possible to use the language of the
perpetrators to speak about this issue?

Unimaginable.

Good afternoon, gentlemen

On the 27th of September, 1951

The Federal Chancellor made
the following statement

before the Bundestag.

“Unspeakable crimes were committed
in the name of the German people.

This imposes upon us
the obligation

to make moral and material amends

both as regards to
individual damage

which Jews have suffered

and as regard to Jewish property
for which there are

no longer individual claimants.

It further hopes that
the efforts made by Germany

to remedy the damage
done to the Jewish people

will be appreciated

as given proof to our
earnest and sincere desire

to render

“Wiedergutmachung”
.

In the morning, the Germans negotiated
with the Israeli delegation.

In the afternoon they negotiated
with the delegation on behalf

of the Claims Conference.

In the evening, the Claims Conference
and the Israeli delegations met

to coordinate their strategy.

Obstacle number one.

How serious are the Germans?

We said, "Okay."

"What are you offering?"

Because if they're ready to pay two
dollars a person, this discussion is over.

For example, many of those Jews
had stocks and bonds,

and these were all
confiscated by the Nazis.

And they were very valuable.

And they said, "There's millions
of dollars worth of stocks there.”

“And the East Germans,
they're not paying anything.”

“So why should we do anything?"

Whatever it was that
we wanted to put it in,

they would might say,

"Das übersteigt unsere Zahlungsfähigkeit,"

which means,
"That exceeds our capacity to pay."

When the Germans said
they want an accounting

of how the Claims Conference
is going to spend the money,

to give them receipts and so on.

Moses Leavitt answered them
with great force and bitterness.

“This is none of your damn business.”

“You created this mess.”

“We are fixing it.”

“We're trying to rebuild
the lives of the survivors.”

“Don't expect us to give you accounts.”

As head of the relief organization,

the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee,

Leavitt was intimately
familiar with the needs of survivors.

Only three years earlier, he had
toured DP camps in Germany

and filmed survivors with his own camera.

During the negotiations
he wrote in his diary.

“Sick and exhausted, stayed in bed
uninterested in the whole world”

“and wanted to chuck
the whole thing and go home.”

The German negotiators in Wassenaar
were taking their cues from Bonn.

And in particular from
Finance Minister Schäffer.

Schäffer's attitude toward
Wassenaar was increasingly negative.

One has to know that in the same time
of the compensation talks,

we had the so-called
London Debt Negotiations.

The London Debt Conference continues
with the United States,

the Soviet Union, and England
meeting with the new German government

to demand payment
for wartime destruction.

We were still talking about
the debts of the German Reich,

which was also a big number.

Schäffer was also getting reports

from the head of the German delegation in London,
Hermann Josef Abs.

Abs was a high-level
financial advisor to Adenauer.

He was also a Nazi collaborator.

During the war, he was an
executive at Deutsche Bank,

whose job it was to dispossess Jewish
owned companies of their assets.

The U.S. Army had recommended
indicting him for war crimes,

but he was never tried.

Dealing with Abs was
a very difficult issue.

It was clear to everyone in the
Claims Conference

and in the Israeli delegation

that they had no choice but
to deal with the Germans as they were,

including those that had been Nazis.

The Germans would have liked to put the
whole issue to London, which would have

meant that the Jewish claims might have
been part of the larger issue

of German debts resulting from
the second World War.

The German official said,

“First we have to come
to a settlement with the rest of the world,”

“and then we can see
what we can do for Israel.”

And Israel said, "No.”

“It has to be the reverse.”

“You have to acknowledge your debt
to us because it is a moral debt.”

“And only then can you settle
with the rest of the world."

About three weeks in the
atmosphere between

the Jews and the Germans
had thawed considerably.

So Konrad Adenauer picked Franz Böhm to
be the chief negotiator in Wassenaar.

Franz Böhm was a very eminent
opposition figure in the time

of the national socialists.

He was removed from his chair being
a university professor in Freiburg.

His deputy was Otto Küster,
who had been a judge.

He was removed from the bench by
the Nazis because he was opposed

to the new national socialists laws.

These delegates were
completely astonished.

Well, I thought we would meet all
those persons who represented "the past".

In quotation marks.

I think for the German delegation, this
was also not such an easy situation.

It was also the first encounter
with officials from world Jewry.

Of course there had been
this collective shame.

And I think this shame was
also in the room.

They were making significant progress.

Then, suddenly,

the German delegation informed
Israel and the Claims Conference,

the negotiations in Wassenaar
could not continue

until the
London Debt Conference was finished.

This was exactly what
those in the Jewish world

who had opposed negotiations

had feared all along.

The Jews would agree to negotiate.

And then the Germans would
renege on their promises.

The Jews would be made to look like
fools in the eyes of the world.

And worse yet,
even in their own eyes.

Böhm and Küster were disgusted by this.

They were shocked that the
government didn't want to

move forward with talks
on Jewish claims.

Böhm and Küster resigned.

They said our government is not serious.

So that was really a
treasonous act on their part.

Because the Israeli government was
so desperately in need of money,

Abs was trying to get a cheap deal.

So he brought forward an offer
to the Israeli government,

it consisted of 100 million, which
was far away from the expectations.

The number which had been on the
table so far was one billion.

Goldmann came here
to this house

to overcome this impasse

and to return to the negotiating table.

Goldmann explained to Adenauer that you
couldn't go on this way,

there couldn't be
what he called horse trading.

It was humiliating for both sides.

It was unreasonable.

Adenauer was under pressure
to achieve some deals.

That's the dynamics of a negotiation.

At a certain point, you cannot step back
without producing a lot of damage

and the damage would have been
huge at that time.

Without a deal with Israel,
Germany would have not been able to

succeed in the international realm.

My grandfather believed in God and ethics.

Morals were at the basis of his political life.

But at the same time,

he was very pragmatical and
he was also tactical.

I think the ethical and moral obligation

to atone these terrible crimes
committed by the German people

were the driving force and
the crucial motivation.

Even if there had been
no benefit for Germany,

he would have done it anyway.

Adenauer overruled his own government
officials and said that there was

not going to be any link between
negotiations on the Jewish claims

and negotiations on German debts.

And so the delegation went
back to the negotiating table.

There were big compromises on the part
of both Israel and the Claims Conference.

Israel demanded one billion dollars.

It received 750 million dollars
in installments.

The Germans said they
didn't have the money.

And so instead of paying Israel in cash,

Israel would receive commodities and oil.

The Claims Conference
had originally demanded

a lump sum of 500 million dollars.

Instead of receiving 500 million,
they received 107 million dollars.

Nahum Goldmann later explained that the
reason why it was that it accepted that

Israel was in desperate need of the money.

So they prioritized Israel over
the Claims Conference claim.

The Claims Conference was negotiating
partly for a global payment

that would go to help the Jewish people,

but an even higher priority

was to help Holocaust survivors individually

to receive pensions
directly from Germany

that would help them live out
the rest of their lives in dignity.

But there were many people who were

not eligible
under the original program.

People who lived behind the Iron Curtain,
people who had been in hiding

or in other places that they weren't eligible.

The view of the organization
ultimately was

let's do what we can now

and let's keep fighting for justice.

The night before the signing,

Moshe Sharett arrived
in Luxembourg from Israel

and Konrad Adenauer arrived from Bonn.

The men were staying in different hotels

and couriers exchanged the speeches

that they had prepared for the next day.

This is from Sharett's speech.

Our memory is still haunted
by the catastrophe

inflicted on the Jewish people

by the German Nazi regime,

in which two out of every three
European Jews were put to death.

Forgiveness is not possible.

Adenauer read through Sharett’s speech.

I think he totally understood it.

It's a very difficult situation.

Survivors of such
cruelty or atrocities

find it difficult to forgive,
impossible to forgive.

And you simply have to accept this.

But this was not in line with his own

personal feelings.

He thought that honest repentance

and atonement

should be recognized as such.

The idea that
no forgiveness is possible,

for a Roman Catholic
that's a virtual impossibilty.

Catholics believe that
people are sinful

but that sins can be repaired.

Well, it was clear
from midnight on,

Adenauer didn't accept
the half sentence

about no forgiveness possible.

As a person, he may accept it.

But not as a Chancellor of Germany.

And then they came to the
conclusion, no speeches at all.

During the choreography of
signing the agreement,

both delegations
arrived from different doors.

They entered the room.

Names were whispered

Mister X, Mister Y,
and so on and so forth.

And then silence
prevailed in the room,

for about 12 and a half minutes.

Adenauer sat in front of the
Israeli Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett,

and both of them
signed the accord

between Israel and Germany.

I'm sitting next to Nahum Goldmann and
right opposite me is Chancellor Adenauer.

Time comes to sign the contract
for the Claims Conference.

That had two parts to it.

Goldmann whipped out his pen,
and he tried it.

That didn't work.

But I gave a pen, which my wife had
given me when I graduated from Harvard

and I carried that with me
throughout the war.

Good luck charm.

I give it to Goldmann.

And the treating was
in fact signed with my pen.

After the signing of the treaty,

Adenauer went to a chapel

and he prayed there.

He wrote in his memoirs
that the Luxembourg Agreements

was one of the most important

achievements of his life.

They were extremely important to him.

After the agreements were signed,

Nahum Goldmann wrote
a letter to Konrad Adenauer.

Even more important than
the financial significance

of the Luxembourg Agreement

is its moral significance.

It established a precedent.

According to the agreement,
West Germany promised to pay

Israel in goods and services.

The goods consisted of raw materials,
especially petroleum,

agricultural produce,
industrial machinery,

ships for the Israeli Navy,
and so on.

This agreement, first of all,
upgraded Israel's standard of living.

It enabled construction of
housing and lodging

for the newcomers

with economic growth around
10 or 11 percent per annum.

It was also a sea change.

It broke many taboos.

In those days,

the country was almost
on the verge of civil war.

What is amazing is that once

the agreement between
Israel government and Germany

was signed

and the reparations money

started flowing into Israel

everybody was happy with it.

The opposition stopped fighting it.

And the German reparations
rescued the Jewish state.

Ironically as it sounds.

There is no question that the
payments to the state of Israel

were an unqualified success.

As for the individual payments
to survivors,

it's more complicated.

I moved to Israel with the
organization Youth Aliyah in 1948.

I was 18 years old.

My mother decided to go to Germany

in order to claim the reparations due to her.

I think she said,
"This is what we’re doing.” So I did it.

When we arrived in Germany and got off the plane,

and I heard Germans shouting,

"Attention! Attention!”

with all the German that I heard,

it brought back all these terrible memories

and I was terrified.

We took a tram.

My mother got off at the stop

but I wasn't able to get off in time.

I felt such panic.

Afterwards, for about ten days,
I didn't get out of bed.

I remember my mother going
from one lawyer to another,

from one office to the next.

My mother succeeded in getting reparations.

First of all,
there is certainly

no compensation in the world

that could bring back my childhood to me,

fill the deep pit

inside my soul,

bring back my father,

or give me back a normal life.

No sum of money.

I tried to take my life.

I tried to committ suicide twice.

However,

as a result of the reparations,

I was able to develop myself.

I was able to attend university.

I was able to go to psychological counseling

which helped me work on my soul.

Blood money.
I always called it blood money.

But I took it because people say,
"You're stupid.”

“You’re stupid.
You have such stupid ideas.”

“Take it, take it because
they owe it to you."

It was very difficult
to accept reparations.

Personally, I felt that for
murdering my whole family,

that was a very small price to pay

and that we should take the money.

When I first heard about reparations,

I was living in Brooklyn, New York

with a host family
and yes, with my sister.

My mother's sister, Roszi, was the one
who really, really needed the money.

She was genuinely ill.

My whole life in Auschwitz was guided
by the fact that I was with Roszi.

I felt that I belonged to someone
who was strong

and will take care of me
as a mother would.

Roszi applied.

She said that she had
the tattoo on her arm

and that her family was destroyed.

And then she also told them
the basic facts

that her health was
very badly affected.

But she would say nothing
about her mental state.

She would not open her soul
to the German doctor.

The doctor told her that the physical
conditions she could have acquired

after being liberated from Auschwitz.

Restitution was denied.

I felt a lot like Roszi,
that I don't want your money.

But I did take it because
I was a young girl.

I was able to go to school
because I had that money.

We needed basic things,
you know, clothes, shoes.

So this was the only money
that we really had to live on.

Many of the survivors, they all felt that
they didn't get enough and they were right.

But the amounts totalling
were quite a bit.

There were from the beginning,
different perceptions

from the German side
and the Jewish side

about what lies
behind these agreements.

From the German side, this was what
they called "Wiedergutmachung."

To make whole.

We don't use that term because we
don't think it's possible

to make whole a Holocaust survivor

who has been
through the unimaginable.

We call it compensation,
recognition, an acknowledgement.

Important, but this doesn't make whole.

We don't have the right to forgive.

Germany is a very important
ally of Israel today

and a very close friend.

But it does not
erase the past in any way.

Wiedergutmachung is not possible.

You cannot make good.

But we continue to try

wherever we can

to at least alleviate

the consequences of injustice.

This is a broad concensus

but it was different in the early 1950s.

The Germans mistakenly thought
that the Luxembourg Agreements

were the beginning and the end of
all negotiations on reparations.

And in fact, this was just the first round
of many, many more rounds of negotiations.

When the program first started,
those programs provided

a quite limited subset of survivors.

And what the job of the
Claims Conference has been ever since

is to broaden and expand the eligibility.

I have been the chief negotiator since 2006.

And in the 12 years I had this role,

we always learn new facts,

new people that never
received any compensation.

Ultimately, these negotiations are
not over just money

or even individuals.

They're negotiations over history itself.

What happened and how Germany

and we, as a society,

understand that history

and acknowledge that history.

This was a reckoning.

The first reparations ever paid by a
state to individuals the state had harmed.

An honest confrontation with your past

is the most important way

in which you can
build a different future.

We visited an older lady
who survived Auschwitz as a child.

At one point the lady said to me
she was very happy and grateful

for all the support and assistance she was getting,

but she also said what is even
more important was that

here in Germany

current generations and
future generations do not forget

what Germany did to the Jewish people.

I’ve always said in the talks that

I don’t think the new generations

have collective guilt

because, to me,

guilt is something
very individual and personal.

But I think what we need to pass on

to the next generation is simply

the collective responsibility we have
for our own history.

People ask me, "When will this stop?"

It's our obligation to make
sure that we never stop.

So that we continue to provide dignity

we continue to provide needed assistance.

The compensation is not just dollars.

It's a statement that
they have not been forgotten.

I hope Luxembourg
was a stepping stone

toward a more humane
and peaceful world.

It illustrated the
determination of human beings

to survive and to carry on.

My mother was a concert pianist.

I grew up with music.

Dancing helped me get back my sanity.

When I dance,
I forget everything.

I see only beauty
and I hear only beauty.