The Struggle of the Arab Countries against the Israeli-German Reparations Agreement, 1952-1953

Abstract

In the spring of 1951, Israel and West Germany began secret talks on Israel’s claim for reparations for the Holocaust. These contacts were first publicized in March 1952. In September the two sides signed a reparations agreement ‒ in which Bonn undertook to pay approximately $822 million to Jerusalem, in the form of various commodities, over the course of twelve years. 

The Arab countries were outraged: the contribution to Israel’s economy and, thus, its physical strength and survival was anathema to them. Their campaign to torpedo the agreement peaked in the winter of 1952-1953, just as the Bundestag was nearing its approval. The Arabs’ primary argument related to the Palestinian refugee problem: since Israel had not compensated the Palestinian refugees, it should not receive reparations for the Holocaust. The link between these two events minimized the significance of the Holocaust, demonstrated the Arabs’ flagrant contempt toward Jewish suffering, and even implied that its historical veracity was specious. 

The Bonn leadership, and especially Chancellor Adenauer, was unwilling, on the basis of Arab political machinations, to renege on Germany’s moral account that it owed the Jewish people.