The Final Solution was about murder on a colossal scale, conducted by a government machine fine-tuned for efficient slaughter. But Nazi crimes did not stop with the destruction of millions of lives. The property of those killed was also confiscated.
The failure to restore that stolen property continues to compound the crime. Although it is 60 years after the defeat of Germany and the end of World War II, thousands of Jews have never received even “imperfect justice” in the form of partial recovery of property or compensation.
Still, the complex tale of the effort for restitution and its successes and failures makes for a riveting story in “Imperfect Justice.” The author is former Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat, first appointed by President Carter as a special envoy to assist in the return of property stolen first by the Nazis and then by communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the recovery of property — including real estate, furniture, artworks, bank accounts, stock and securities — was a low priority. Europe was in shambles. Few were willing to put the restitution of property at the top of the agenda.
But many individuals, families and groups persevered, seeking to discover what had happened to their property. The Nazis often covered their tracks, and they easily transported items such as diamonds or bank notes no doubt overseas, to places that many top Nazis would eventually escape to, such as South America and the Middle East.
Eizenstat’s 2003 book, now available in softcover, is replete with stories of obstruction and deception as political and financial institutions tried to marginalize the flood of queries by Holocaust survivors and others seeking redress for the victims.
As the author demonstrates, obstacles to recovery of stolen property — especially bank accounts and pension funds — were often set up by organizations that actually midwived the thievery a half-century ago. For example, banks that collaborated with Hitler’s regime have been among those most difficult to penetrate.
These also became the highest priority targets. Swiss banks hastily erected barriers to the truth. Records were destroyed, witnesses were dead and valuables, such as artwork and jewelry, hidden.
While some survivors wished to put the Holocaust behind them and refused to take on the pressures involved in pressing claims, others were haunted by the thought of Hitler achieving a kind of long-term victory through their failure to repatriate stolen property.
In the early 1950s, organized efforts began to provide indemnification for the wholesale theft of Jewish property and valuables. West Germany and Israel merged almost two dozen separate Jewish organizational efforts into a single “Claims Conference.” This provided a central entity with whom governments could work in ensuing decades, but silence by the Soviet states impeded the struggle for justice.
With the exception of the Federal Republic of Germany, the nations of Western Europe did not respond much better to Jewish claims. Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany, stated in 1951 that “for Germany to return to the community of nations, it has to face its past.” It is estimated by Eizenstat that some $60 billion in reparations has been paid by West Germany to more than a half-million survivors all over the world.
A watershed event in the long struggle for restitution was the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, which resulted in the opening of archives and a new willingness (always under American diplomatic pressure) by the former communist governments to confront the long-standing injustice of World War II confiscations.
The publication of accounts of the Holocaust in the 1970s and 1980s underscored the property issues, and Elie Wiesel was appointed by President Carter to preside over an exploratory commission. Property restitution became part of a broader American policy to encourage the rule of law in the former Soviet states, to respect property rights and to give minorities the rights they are entitled to.
Eizenstat paints a detailed picture of the many convergent activities that resulted in unprecedented “civil liability for the violation of human rights.” In addition to compensation and/or the restoration of property, there have been significant public apologies by the leaders of Germany, Austria, Poland and the Vatican.
The rebirth of Jewish life and culture in Central and Eastern Europe has been bolstered enormously by the long-delayed “imperfect justice.” We recall the ancient proverb from the Pirkei Avot: “It is not your obligation to finish the task, but neither are you free to exempt yourself from it.”
“Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II” by Stuart E. Eizenstat (400 pages, Public Affairs, $16 softcover, $30 hardcover).