Sizable German Reparations Selective: Jews Paid, Forgotten Poles Not

War, Guilt, and World Politics After World War II, by Thomas U. Berger. 2012. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

German Reparations Selective: Jews Paid With Great Diligence and Poles Paid Reluctantly, If at All

Thomas U. Berger is Professor of International Relations at Boston University. His book makes revealing statements about the German compensation to the victims of Nazism, and that is my focus.

GERMAN REPARATIONS SELECTIVE. GERMANY COMPENSATED THE JEWS–BECAUSE SHE HAD TO. JEWISH POWER AND INFLUENCE

In discussing the Luxembourg Agreement (1952), Berger comments, “Jewish groups had been pressing hard for some of special compensation as early as 1943…Without reconciliation with the World Jewish community, Adenauer claimed, Germany would not be able to restore its image in the world. Moreover, he argued, that given the influence of Jews in world financial circles, an accord would be in Germany’s economic interests as well.” (p. 55).

For details of how German reparations to Jews had been motivated by fears of the WELTJUDENTUM (World Jewry), see:

Gullible New Germany Scared By Jewish Influence. Marwecki

The author adds, “Time and time again have we seen how international networks have played a vital role in putting issues of historical justice on the diplomatic agenda. The Jewish Claims Conference, which began its campaign to win support for compensation and restitution for the Jewish victims of Nazism already in 1951, is protypical of the many organizations that followed.” (p. 245).

Follow the money. Note that non-Jewish groups and organizations, such as the Poles, never had the kind of leverage for use against Germany that the Jews did.

OVERT HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM DOMINATES GERMAN THINKING

What about so-called moral duty? Author Berger, when bringing up the HISTORIKERSTREIT (Historians’ Debate), declares that, “the Holocaust was a uniquely evil event.” (p. 67). In other words, the murders of no other people can possibly be as evil as the murders of the Jews. This animates German thinking and drives their policies.

But wait, it gets even better. Berger writes, “A deputy from the FDP, Werner Maihofer, poignantly expressed the new mood, ‘Above the (grave) of every murder, the grass eventually grows again; as a rule it does so after a generation. But grass will never grow above Auschwitz, not even after hundred generations have passed.’” (p. 65).

What racist poetry! Jewish life is sacred and goyish life is not. With this kind of Jewish supremacist mentality, is it any wonder that Germans keep feeling a moral duty to pay compensation to the Jews but feel no moral duty to pay compensation to the Poles?

BEYOND HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM: THE CENSORSHIP OF DISSENTING VIEWPOINTS

So profound is the Holocaust dominance of German thinking that it has degenerated all the way into a Jews-can-do-no-wrong orthodoxy. Berger provides an example of the censorship that follows this racist thinking, “For instance, in October 2003 the CDU deputy Martin Hohman, in a talk in his constituency, said that the Jews as well were victimizers (EIN TAETERVOLK), citing the role played by Jews in the Russian Revolution and the Soviet secret police. He was criticized not only by the Left, but also by many leading conservative politicians. Eventually he was forced out of the party with a vote of 78 percent in favor of expulsion.” (p. 74). Some free speech.

GERMAN REPARATIONS SELECTIVE. HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM FALLS APART

Interestingly, whatever the “merits” of the compensate-Jews-only German policy, Berger realizes that Nazi German enmity to Jews was never absolute in the first place. He cites Bryan Rigg and his HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS, and comments, “Although it is worth noting that fairly large numbers of Jews, perhaps as many as 150,000, were Aryanized and served in the German armed forces during World War II.” (p. 129).

GERMAN REPARATIONS SELECTIVE. GERMANY REFUSES TO PAY COMPENSATION TO POLISH FORCED LABORERS

The Germans, who tripped over themselves in rushing to compensate the Jews, continued to drag their feet in doing any semblance of justice to the Poles. Berger writes, “In the area of compensation for past atrocities, for instance, the German courts in 1973 again rejected claims from former slave laborers residing in Eastern Europe on the grounds that these issues could not be pursued by individuals.” (p. 64). Another German trick.

GERMAN REPARATIONS SELECTIVE: A LITTLE BIT OF BELATED GERMAN RECOGNITION OF NON-JEWISH VICTIMS

The German compensation of non-Jewish victims, when it occurs at all, has always been accompanied by much German resistance. It is much delayed, slow in coming, and meager. Berger remarks, “For instance, German expressions of remorse have often been qualified by a powerful sense of German victimization, or by the fact that German expressions of remorse and efforts to paying compensation have been highly selective, and were at least partly motivated by calculations of material interest…it was not until the late 1990’s that efforts were made to recognize and compensate the majority of those who had been victimized by the Third Reich.” (p. 36. Emphasis added).

Berger elaborates, “In addition, progress was made on the issue of compensating the victims of Nazism, beginning in 1993 with the revision of the German law on compensation, BEG, to include the residents of Eastern Europe. Separate compensation funds were then established for Belorussia, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the Ukraine.” (p. 72).

Wow! Only 48 years after the war. And only a pittance.

GERMAN REPARATIONS SELECTIVE: GERMANS STILL PAY JEWS AND REFUSE TO PAY THE POLES

The historic German resistance to paying reparations to the Poles is long standing. Berger comments, “Moreover, the German policy of paying compensation was highly selective, reflecting its instrumental as well as moral side. Compensation was paid to those who could influence German interests–first and foremost the German people themselves, then the citizens of Germany’s Wester allies and trading partners, and then the Jewish people [Who else?] as represented by the State of Israel. The vast majority of the victims of Nazism, however, lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain and was therefore excluded.” (p. 56. Emphasis added).

“Highly selective”–that’s quite an understatement. And, in view of the fact that the Iron Curtain existed because the Germans started a war that culminated in Soviet rule over Poland, the German refusal to compensate the nations located beyond the Iron Curtain is all the more ironic!

Lo and behold. The Iron Curtain has now been gone for 35 years, and the Germans still continue to make excuses for not paying the vast compensation monies that they owe Poland. For details, see:

Poland War Losses. Germany Owes Poland Reparations Big Time: DEFINITIVE WORK. Poles and Not Only Jews Suffered Long-Term Demographic Losses. Zyblikiewicz and Wnek

GERMAN REPENTANCE SELECTIVE: LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF GERMAN RULE OVER POLAND

The German harm done to Poland is much more considerable than is usually recognized. Berger tacitly recognizes as much. In 2007, “The Polish government insisted that Poland be awarded votes in EU councils on the basis of what its population would have been if Germany had not killed so many Poles during World War II (66 million as opposed to 38 million).” (p. 79. Emphasis in original). In other words, the German genocide of Poles had a future aspect as well as a present aspect.

Jan Peczkis

Full article here: https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2024/08/20/sizable-german-reparations-selective-jews-paid-forgotten-poles-not/

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RELATED

Germany can’t continue to ignore Polish pleas for war reparations

” ….. Those who take umbrage with Warsaw often suggest that Germany’s relinquishing of several territories to Poland in 1945 were adequate recompense for the horrors of war. Germany signed an unconditional surrender with the Allied powers who then chose to grant part of former German lands from the Oder River to Pomerania to Poland. These decisions were agreed at the Yalta, Tehran and Potsdam conferences as partial compensation for lands removed from Poland by the USSR in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Poland was not represented at these talks, and the land swap amounted to a poorly-veiled ploy by Stalin to further distance the West from his centre of power in Moscow. No honest historian could take this seriously as a fair resolution to Poland’s suffering.

One British delegate recounted to me in horror how a German official had privately suggested to him that Jewish people were ‘in a different league’ to Poles when it came to reparations. This bizarre remark is startlingly blinkered to the fact that many Holocaust victims and their families remain without recompense due to Germany’s bungled interactions with Warsaw, not in spite of them….”

Excerpts from https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/germany-cant-continue-to-ignore-polish-pleas-for-war-reparations/

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Admin’s note: Yet no one seems to remember the three partitioning of Poland and her destruction during those times.