German reparations for Holocaust reveals complexities of atonement

Germany is considered a global model when it comes to atonement, having paid out nearly €90 billion to Holocaust survivors since the 1950s. 

“Almost every group that wrestles with a history of genocide comes back to the Holocaust at some point, because it’s one of the cases where there has been an enactment of justice,” says Alexander Karn, a Holocaust historian at Colgate University.

Yet the good intent of German “reparations” has real limitations. Holocaust survivors and their advocates say the process of justice for historic harm is far more complicated, even when the commitment to justice is enormous – both in intent and in material compensation. Financial support, once rejected by survivors, can never bring closure, they say, especially as antisemitism rises following the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

As states and countries from California to the United Kingdom grapple with how to leverage reparations to address generations of trauma and poverty for slavery, colonization, genocide, and state policies of exclusion, Germany’s case illustrates just how complex is the idea of addressing massive past wrongs.

Germany is considered a global model when it comes to atonement, having paid out nearly €90 billion to Holocaust survivors around the world over the past 70 years.

The government has constructed world-class memorials and museums to highlight Nazi Germany’s role in the murder of 6 million Jews. Holocaust education is mandated in the public school curriculum, and the federal government staunchly allies itself with Israel. The move to financially redress past wrongs has been crucial to help legitimize democratic governance in Germany after World War II, and instructs others on how to heal wounds that strengthen a country’s foundation for the future, says Alexander Karn, a Holocaust historian at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

“Almost every group that wrestles with a history of genocide comes back to the Holocaust at some point, because it’s one of the cases where there has been an enactment of justice,” says Dr. Karn. 

Yet the good intent of German “reparations” has real limitations. Holocaust survivors and their advocates say the process of justice for historic harm is far more complicated, even when the commitment to justice is enormous – both in intent and in material compensation. Financial support, once rejected by survivors, can never bring closure, they say, especially as antisemitism still exists and is rising following the start of the Israel-Hamas war. As states and countries from California to the United Kingdom grapple with how to leverage reparations to address generations of trauma and poverty for slavery, colonization, genocide, and state policies of exclusion, Germany’s case illustrates just how complex is the idea of addressing massive past wrongs.

“Justice is too big a word, so we don’t use it,” says Rüdiger Mahlo, representative of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, in Europe, the nonprofit responsible for speaking for survivors and negotiating payments with the German government.

Evolution of survival

Most survivors alive today were children during the Holocaust.

The challenges they faced after the end of World War II were numerous, says Berlin-based Holocaust historian Verena Buser. They included post-traumatic stress disorder from losing family members, growing up in hiding, or dealing with post-war poverty. “On a psychological or psycho-social level, they suffer from fears; they lost their trust in others,” she says. “All these issues come back as you age.”

There are an estimated 245,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust era left.

Germany has made some form of payments to survivors since the 1950s, when the Claims Conference first began negotiating on behalf of survivors and administering the resulting payments. The payments include direct compensation and home care services. Last year’s negotiation resulted in $1.4 billion for 2024, with additional one-time funds for some of the poorest survivors – largely Jews from the former Soviet Union who fled the Nazi mobile killing units tasked with eliminating entire Jewish communities. 

Initially, there was a chasm between how the government and survivors saw such agreements, says Mr. Mahlo of the Claims Conference. “In the beginning, survivors said, ‘What is my father or sister worth? How can you possibly morally negotiate those kinds of things?’ So we didn’t,” says Mr. Mahlo.

At first, Israel didn’t want to sit down at the negotiating table, viewing payment as an easy route to making amends. Germans use the term wiedergutmachen, or to “make one whole again,” but that is a framing that didn’t work for survivors amid such loss, says Mr. Mahlo. Only a quarter of Germans in 1951 thought they owed reparations for the Holocaust.

Over 70 years later, however, there is a general consensus that Germany owes its survivors, and those payments are critical to a society’s path forward.

Leon Weintraub, a 97-year-old resident of Stockholm, was 19 when, diagnosed with typhus, he was liberated from the concentration camp at Auschwitz by the French army. He says the German payments helped compensate for various starts and restarts throughout his hard-won life.

During the Holocaust, three of his sisters survived Bergen-Belsen, but everyone else in his immediate family was killed. He worked hard to earn a medical degree and established himself as a doctor in Poland. During a wave of antisemitism there in the 1960s, he started over in Sweden, where he now lives.

Today the payments for some survivors are of substantial help, especially for older adults in Israel who are living out their last days in very poor conditions, says Dr. Weintraub, who receives payments himself. “These payments – €1,500 or €2,000 quarterly – is little help but still very important for them.” 

In the face of such trauma, he says, the commonly used term “reparations” is not the right word. “Because there’s no price for human life. It’s economic and financial support for survivors, to help them in their lives after surviving a terrible experience of living daily with [the prospect of] death,” says Dr. Weintraub, who retired as an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Still the payments are gestures heavy with meaning: “The German government has recognized the guilt of Germany as a state, country, nation,” he says. “That is their responsibility to continue to pay. It is the minimum Germany can do to help the few survivors.” 

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Evolution of victimhood

Indeed, what Germany has done especially well, says Hilary Earl, a historian of Germany and professor at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario, is to acknowledge that the German state was the main perpetrator in the crimes committed against Jews. 

Contrast this, she says, with the Armenian genocide of 1915, for which the Turkish state has never taken responsibility.

Justice takes many forms, and means different things to different survivors, says Dr. Earl. “It is education policy, and an education system that encourages German students to study and learn about the history of World War II and the Holocaust. It is immigration policy, it is ongoing transfer payments made to the state of Israel, it is cultural policy that dedicates money to commemorative events, and it is a government that enables open access to all historical documents that relate to this period. There are so many examples.”

But justice for the past is also issued in the present – and perceptions of obligation and responsibility evolve in modern contexts.

Dr. Weintraub has spent decades traveling around the world educating the public about the need to criminalize far-right ideologies. “Because, knowing about what happened, it’s our responsibility to make sure this never happens again,” he says. But as the Israel-Hamas war continues to dominate the headlines, Dr. Weintraub says he has been re-traumatized by the feeling that he needs to again hide in the face of antisemitism. He is fearful of future genocides.  

Public discourse has also shifted since the war, which began Oct. 7, with people increasingly questioning how Israel, a country born out of the Holocaust, could itself undertake such a devastating campaign of violence against civilians in Gaza.

Dr. Karn, the Holocaust historian, says that Israel and the Palestinian territories are both home to “two deeply traumatized peoples.”

“And while these cycles of violence play out, the categories of perpetrator and victim are sometimes blurred or even collapsed,” he says. “A group that has received reparations in the past or a group that may be entitled to reparations does not automatically achieve any kind of moral purity on the basis of their losses.”

Yet no matter the current state of affairs, he sees a persistent demand for redress, not just from victims but for society overall. “The important thing is that the democratic state has to deliver a concept of justice to its citizens in order to be viewed as legitimate – not only to its citizens but also in the international arena as well.” 

This story was produced as part of a special Monitor series exploring the reparations debate, in the United States and around the world. Explore more.