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Documents - "Making Good"?: Wiedergutmachung in Occupied and Cold War Germany
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1.   Decree on Aid Measures for Former Political Prisoners (1945)
In view of the enormity of the crimes of the Nazi regime, compensation was on the list of Allied demands even before Germany’s defeat. After the war, the individual German states were responsible....
2.   Karl Hauff: Memorandum on the Condition of Victims of Political, Racial, and Religious Persecution by the Nazi Regime (1947)
In the immediate postwar period, the public was receptive to demands for restitution for Nazi victims. Over time, however, the public grew increasingly critical of victim compensation payments that....
3.   Paul Merker to the Chairman of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Wilhelm Pieck, on the Compensation Law in the Soviet Occupation Zone (1948)
Since the GDR, unlike the Federal Republic, refused to see itself as the legal successor to the “Third Reich,” it did not regard itself as similarly responsible for compensating for Nazi crimes.....
4.   Implementation Decree on the Creation and Procedures of Care Centers for Victims of Persecution in Hesse (1948)
Until April 1949, compensation in the Western zones was assigned on the basis of non-uniform state regulations. Issued in May 1948, these guidelines from the Hessian Interior Ministry make clear....
5.   "Restitution for National Socialist Injustice": Article by Oberregierungsrat Ernst Heller in Die Neue Zeitung (March 19, 1949)
In the immediate postwar period, the public was still open to demands for restitution for Nazi victims, but public opinion changed over time. Personal losses brought about by the death of family....
6.   Communiqué Regarding Restitution for Israel and the Jews (September 10, 1952)
The first West German compensation regulations at the state and, after 1949, federal levels made the receipt of benefits contingent upon residency in West Germany. Initially, this meant that a large....
7.   Decree on the Creation of a New Ordinance to Secure the Rights of Recognized Victims of Nazi Persecution (1953)
In September 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany concluded a restitution agreement with Israel, whereby it pledged to pay billions of DM in compensation to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Additionally,....
8.   Jeanette Wolff: Restitution for Nazi Victims (1955)
In 1955, Jeanette Wolff, a Social Democratic Bundestag representative, who was herself Jewish and had lost most of her family in the concentration camps of the “Third Reich,” took the Bundestag floor....
9.   Rolf Helm, Department Chief in the East German Ministry of Justice: Reparations in West Germany (1958)
Whereas the first nationwide compensation regulations stipulated that claimants had to be residents of the Federal Republic, the Federal Compensation Law [Bundesentschädigungsgesetz or BEG]....
10.   Why Don't Our Parents Tell the Truth? (August 1959)
This article, which was published in the teen magazine Twen in 1959, foreshadows the youth’s revolt against the old elites and the generational conflict of the 1960s. It also serves as a reminder....
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