Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day brings my thoughts back to the Holocaust restitution movement, which I have followed closely for ten years. Some have questioned the propriety of Holocaust restitution as the final chapter in the history of the Holocaust. But I have little qualms in concluding that Holocaust restitution has been a good and noble effort.

To understand why I think Holocaust restitution is so important read this excerpt from the Introduction to our book on Holocaust Restitution:

Holocaust restitution is not about money. It is about victims. It is about individuals who have waited sixty years for something. Of course it is not about “perfect justice,” a phrase that may never pass one’s lips in the same breath as “Holocaust.” But it is about waiting for some recognition, some voucher to validate the misdeeds that have been perpetrated.

Excerpts from the letters of one claimant appearing before the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland give voice to this yearning for recognition:

We had not been able to locate [my grandfather’s] personal account. My grandmother tried on several occasions, without success. She gave up in quiet desperation. Sometimes not so quiet. There were a lot of tears. She felt betrayed and deceived, frustrated and powerless. You see, she knew money had been put into Swiss accounts, but she had no power to open the doors. I look at the amount of money now in the account, and I see how little money it is. So little for so much grief! Inconsolable grief. But I also have to remember that in the refugee camps we had nothing, not even a pair of shoes. We ate black bread and lard for months and were lucky to have it. So this money, which I now think of as a little amount, at that time in history, fifty years ago, was indeed a good sum…. My grandmother never dreamed, nor did I, that this moment in history would come. Who could have known. I thought about not pursuing this claim. I said it’s not worth it. But I changed my mind. I have to do this for my grandmother, even though she is dead. For her suffering, for her pain, for her incredible losses. I owe her memory. To pursue and possibly attain the impossible. To be validated! This small amount of money represents more than this to me. It represents a cleansing, a true release and forgiveness of the past. This money needs to be circulated, and therefore cleansed. So I now bless and release this to you to be in right action as your conscience guides you. For me it is an opportunity to wash the pain from the past away, to have a truly new and honorable beginning.

But Holocaust restitution is not only about the victims. It also is about those who victimized. As German President Johannes Rau put it in the December 1999 ceremony commemorating the signing of the German slave labor settlement,

[A]ll contributors to the Foundation Initiative, both government and business, accept the shared responsibility and moral duty arising from the injustices of the past…I know that for many it is not really money that matters. What they want is for their suffering to be recognized as suffering, and for the injustices done to them to be named injustices. I pay tribute to all who were subjected to slave and forced labor under German rule and, in the name of the German people, beg forgiveness.

Such an apology is, in the words of one survivor, a “moral victory that will live forever.” It is a recognition that promises a cleansing for the children and grandchildren of those who victimized. It offers, if you will, a release from their past too. Holocaust restitution, then, is about satisfying the victims’ and victimizers’ historic need for a moral accounting regarding the horrific events that transpired during and after the Second World War.