My parents, both Holocaust survivors, were indignant that the German government dared to presume that it could offer monetary compensation for human lives and suffering, so they applied for no restitution payments.
Over time, my parents’ moral rectitude about dealing with the devil was softened by economic necessity. They came across a display ad in the Aufbau, an Anglo-German newspaper, and hooked up with Julius Weinberg, who advertised his services, on commission, to survivors in similar circumstances. The bachelor lawyer, an Austrian, operated out of a small Washington Heights apartment located in the midst of the expatriate German Jewish refugee community in New York City.
Weinberg and my parents began a long, tedious process of reconstructing dates; documenting where they lived before and during the war, when they were arrested, what camps they had been in, and finding witnesses and proof for their claims. Time became a pressing matter when my father was diagnosed with a fatal illness.
Knowing that he wouldn’t survive the prognosis, he accelerated his efforts to submit his settlement claim. He used a portable Remington typewriter to correspond with Weinberg and the restitution officials in Germany. Everything was in German, with blue carbon paper smudges.
Dad’s desk was piled with letters and notarized forms bearing official seals and formal signatures from the consulate general of the Federal Republic of Germany. Each of his letters was messy with handwritten corrections, evidence of my father’s terrible two-fingered typing and his “dismissal” from German public schools at a young age.
The letters contained enormously complicated, multi-syllabic words like Entschädigungsbehörde and Ordnungsangelegenheiten. For suffering through four years in 13 concentration camps and the killing of his parents, grandparents and brother, he got a $17,000 check in 1971, just months before he died.
My mother had to go to New York for hospital tests conducted by white-coated German doctors in order to prove the merits of her claim. She was awarded a survivor’s pension that unfailingly came at the end of each month. The amounts differed, depending on the monetary exchange rate, but the checks were never late.
Not long ago, my mother passed away. I took it upon myself to notify the Germans to terminate her survivor’s pension. Not knowing whom to contact, I called the German embassy. The switchboard operator offered condolences and said that she would take care of everything, provided that I send a certified death certificate to her attention, which I did.
Within days, she returned the original document, as promised. Since then, there have been no more checks sent to Jenny Jacobs from Landesbank Berlin AG, Auslandsservice BS-Zv 31, Alexanderplatz 2, D-10178, Berlin, Germany.
On the other hand, when I called the Frontier Phone Company to shut off my late mother’s local phone line, I was told that only she was authorized to cancel her services. It took me 24 calls to IDT, the long-distance carrier, to get a refund to which mom was entitled. And my mother’s neighbors still pick up mail from her mailbox, even though I filled out the requisite U.S. Postal Service “Deceased — Please Forward All Mail” forms.
But when it came time to close their file on a Jew with A-1454 tattooed on her left arm, the Generalkonsulat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland got it right with only one call.
Jackie Jacobs is executive director of the Columbus Jewish Foundation in Columbus, Ohio.
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This is a fascinating, informative and touching article. I'm not sure the conclusion is apt, however.
Then you, Ms. Jacobs, have been very lucky. During my times working with survivors in the US and in my position as the Restitution Officer for the Jewish community in my city, I have encountered horrible instances of the officials not being able to stop the last check, it being spent by an elderly surviving spouse, and the check's amount being demanded, with interest on the return. I have even encountered cases where the Germans, after only one letter apprising the estate of the mistake, engaging lawyers to sue for the errant payment. What is really the point to be highlighted should be this: it is hard, VERY hard for survivors to actually get anything in Restitution money or in any form of claim, but it is relatively easy to be dismissed by the German (and Jewish) claims authorities; death is not required for dismissal.
Jackie, My father died Feb 4th and the same courteous and considerate treatment was given us by the German Consulate office we contacted to stop his German Social Security checks, payment for his years in an Arbeitslager connected to Sobibor. His union and Social Security made my mother, also a survivor, jump through hoops before they would do anything. It is ironic that the german fetish for accurate records was useful in bith getting and stopping his German reparations benefits.
Similarly, when I sent an email to the German embassy in the U.S. inquiring whether I might be (involuntarily) treated as a German citizen by German law, based on my mother's German citizenship by birth in 1919, they replied with an accurate summary of the law as of 1937, the relevant date, in just one day. Amazing.
Oh my god, your comments are so ridiculous. Here´s the only country in the world that cares about its victims and pays compensations and again it is all evil and terrible and typically german, cause the money arrives on time. Please ask the the victims of american, chinese, soviet, israeli etc. politics when their money arrives. You should be ashamed.
Oh my god, your comments are so ridiculous. Here´s the only country in the world that cares about its victims and pays compensations and again it is all evil and terrible and typically german, cause the money arrives on time. Please ask the the victims of american, chinese, soviet, israeli etc. politics when their money arrives. You should be ashamed.
What a moving story! Perhaps one day the Arab world that surrounds the permanent State of Israel will concede their mad ways...just as the "Bundesland Deutsch" did 55 years ago. We are only asking for Peace this time.
Wow. This is a moving article. I was born in Germany, so I know exactly what she is talking about. Sometimes I think this country is soo terrible. But then I have to admit it is my homeland and hence has shaped me as a person.