We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” declared Winston Churchill as he announced the end of the Second World War Europe and invited members of Parliament to the Church of St. Margaret, Westminster “to give humble and reverent thanks to Almighty God for our deliverance from the threat of German domination”.
In the land of Israel, the celebrations were more muted. For years after the war, Jews reeled from the trauma of the Holocaust and there were reminders everywhere. In summer, as survivors rolled up their sleeves, the Auschwitz numbers tattooed on their arms were revealed for all to see.
During the Yizkor memorial prayers, no one left synagogue because everyone had lost family in the Holocaust or in Israel’s War of Independence. Meanwhile, Israel was fighting for its life while struggling to absorb Jews from European DP (displaced persons) camps and from Arab states that had expelled their Jewish citizens.
Into these crises, came another. In 1952, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion launched negotiations with Germany over Holocaust reparations. Ben Gurion believed that the Jewish homeland was entitled to receive this money and it was essential to the new state’s survival. He even admired Germany’s willingness to pay reparations based on moral pressure rather than force.
Not everyone agreed. Menachem Begin, the leader of Israel’s right-wing opposition party, opposed the talks. His family had been murdered in the Holocaust and he refused “to trade blood for German cash”. Begin led angry protests that brought the country to the brink of civil war.
As the arguments raged, religious Jews turned to their rabbis for guidance. Many of the respondents were survivors now living in America. Yet, they still signed their responsa with their titles as rabbis of towns whose Jewish communities no longer existed.
Changing his mind: Rav Joseph Soloveitchik (Yeshiva University Archives)[Missing Credit]
Some argued that after everything Germany had done, the Jewish state should continue to boycott it. Others were more circumspect. The war was over, but the future remained unclear. They still feared that the Nazis would return to power, so they counselled their colleagues to moderate their language rather than risk provoking more murderous antisemitism.
These appeals for restraint were in turn rejected by those who claimed that it was insensitive to demand mildness from men who had lost everything in the Holocaust and who now lived in dire poverty and despair.
The rabbinic discussions were sometimes bitter. One rabbi lamented that his rulings were dismissed because “he hadn’t lost enough family to rule on such matters”. He reminded his readers that he too mourned many murdered relatives.
Despite their differences, the rabbis agreed that Israel should accept Germany’s bid to indemnify it for property stolen from Jews. But other restitution payments remained controversial. The German word for the compensation plan, Wiedergutmachund, meant “make good again,” implying that the payments would absolve Germany of blame and rehabilitate it.
Rabbi Isaac Lewin of the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael group suspected that this was an attempt to whitewash Germany’s crimes which were “so heinous that they could not be forgiven for a thousand years”. He backed up his accusation by noting that Germany was barely prosecuting any of its war criminals. Citing the biblical law that murderers may not pay money to evade punishment (Numbers 35:31), Rabbi Lewin ruled that Israel should reject the restitution package.
Others believed that Jews should set the example by refusing to accept the German payments. This would parallel the end of the Purim story when the victorious Jews resisted the temptation to take plunder from their enemies.
But while they wanted to relive the Purim drama, when the rabbis discovered that many survivors had already availed themselves of the compensation packages, they ruled that other Jews should not miss out on the funds to which they were entitled.
Some scholars found precedent for the compensation plan in the Exodus story. As the Israelites left Egypt, God invited them to take gold from the Egyptians as compensation for their hundreds of years of slave labour and a vindication of their righteousness. He even used the word “please” indicating that they should do so even if they felt uncomfortable receiving “blood money” from their Egyptian persecutors.
A most fascinating approach was taken by the American scholar, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993). Initially, he called on Israel to reject reparations, so as not to legitimise an evil enemy or absolve Germany of its crimes. Later, he changed his mind.
He explained that sometimes when rabbinic opinion is divided, God reveals his ruling through history. In this case, with time, it became clear that Israelis desperately needed those funds to build and defend the Jewish homeland, so it was right to accept them.
Fortunately, the worst fears of the rabbis were never realised. Germany remained a democracy, it became a staunch ally of Israel and its reparations payments helped the country to flourish.
Gideon Sylvester is the United Synagogue’s Israel rabbi
