“Repairing the Past: Holocaust Restitution in Greece”

Summary of the Research Proposal

The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in history, an unprecedented financial crime. The revival of Jewish Communities in Europe was fundamental, and German reparations were the only way to achieve this. However, in Greece, there has been a long-drawn-out and unsatisfactory process of receiving compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany. The reparations process was a complex and multifaceted one. The purpose of this research is to explain the Holocaust restitution movement in Greece as a legal story and a human drama, its long-delayed genesis, its small successes and its big failures. There is a whole emerging restitution saga the last years in Greece and a campaign that has become a major political issue concerning the german reparations, but we fail as a society to discuss the Holocaust restitution issue, with the exception of Nazi cold, that has acquired mythical dimensions. As reparations are part of the history of twentieth- century politics, and that proves that memory matters politically, my aim is to research the impact of German reparations on the rehabilitation of Jewish life, Greek Jewish communities and Jewish cultural activities during the generation that followed the Holocaust.

This research project was funded by the Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH), with the support of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation.

To view the conference’s program in Greek, click here.

 

Research: “Repairing the Past: The German reparations for the Holocaust of Greek Jews”

Researcher: Dr. Anna Maria Droumpouki

The Holocaust was both the greatest mass murder and the greatest theft in history, an unprecedented financial crime. Historians estimate that the Nazis stole assets worth between 230 billion and 320 in today’s dollars from the Jewish population in Europe.^[1] For more than half a century since the end of WWII, most of these losses remained uncompensated. On 10 September 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany signed agreements with the Government of Israel and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany for the payment of reparations to Israel and to the Jewish people (Wiedergutmachung program). It was the first international commitment undertaken by the newly constituted Republic and an unprecedented landmark in the history of reparations. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany had a historical significance for the revival and rehabilitation of the destroyed Jewish communities in Europe.^[2] Postwar West Germany paid reparations of approximately 70 billion to some Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, but the amounts to each individual were small. WWII, according to many, never ended. It is still very much with us, if we look at the myriad debates on restitution and memory. According to Dan Diner and Gotthart Wunberg, this ensemble of remembrance that was long neutralized or silenced might be called a memory of materia.^[3]

The fairness of the demands of Jews to regain their own assets is self-evident. Elderly Holocaust survivors throughout the world saw their hopes for compensation at last being realized, with the exception of Greece. The creation of laws for the restitution of property and assets taken from Jews proved difficult. Even in divided Germany, the four occupying powers failed to come to a joint agreement about the nature, extent and method of restitution which could be applied to all four occupation zones.^[4] According to Jonathan Petropoulos, while one must recognize that the West Germans (and then the unified Germans) have paid a considerable sum in compensation to victims of National Socialism – more than US$60 billion to date has been distributed to more than five hundred thousand victims around the world- one can identify areas where reparations have been inadequate.⁵ Despite this fact, German reparations to Jews after WWII are a model of an entirely new kind of reparations.^[5] According to Dan Diner, this reclamation of past possession and the restitutions issue highlighted the constrained anthropological tensions between memory and property, the past redux becomes a source of entitlement for the future.^[6]\

Research proposal aims, ideas and hypothese

The revival of Jewish Communities in Europe was fundamental, and restitutions were the only way to achieve this. However, in Greece, there has been a long-drawn-out and unsatisfactory process of receiving compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany. The reparations process was a complex and multifaceted one, whose impact on European Jewish Communities did not derive solely from the program of the Claims Conference. For some countries the Conference was the only channel for restitution and reparations funds, but in Greece (such as in Italy, Holland, Hungary and Poland), the local jewish communities became the successor organizations for heirless Jewish assets.^[7] The rehabilitation of Jewish communities in Greece was hard.

The purpose of this research is to explain the Holocaust restitution movement in Greece as a legal story and a human drama, its long-delayed genesis, its small successes and its big failures. This restitution story in Greece remains an “unknown chapter” in the historiography of the Greek Jews. There is a whole emerging restitution saga the last years in Greece and a campaign that has become a major political issue concerning the german reparations, but we fail as a society to discuss the Holocaust restitution issue, with the exception of Nazi cold, that has acquired mythical dimensions.

As reparations are part of the history of twentieth- century politics, and that proves that memory matters politically, my aim is to research the impact of German reparations on the rehabilitation of Jewish life, Greek Jewish communities and Jewish cultural activities during the generation that followed the Holocaust. The survivors’ struggles in their search for recognition and compensation continued until recently. Victims also complained that the evaluation procedure for the claims were a rather unpleasant and inhumane experience, and many survivors found it too difficult to return to the past, as some of them already felt guilt for surviving, or shame, not to mention the pain of reliving these traumatic experiences. A large number of victims suffered from post-traumatc disorders and it was not easy to revive these experiences. The bureaucratic obstacles were many and a large percentage of survivors who attempted to receive restitution, have now died without receiving anything. Individual victims have testified to a variety of experiences with the procedure, illustrating the complexity of the process and obstacles they had to overcome, always facing a cold bureaucracy. The procedure leading to compensation was strenuous for the victims.

Methodology and approach

In my post-doctoral research, I also incorporate testimonies from Greek Jews at my narrative, by drawing back into view the very process, the many complicated historical, political, and aesthetic axes, on which memory is being constructed. This part of the post-Holocaust life failed to enter into greek public discourse and it was largely ignored by the Holocaust historiography in Greece. This research also aims to demonstrate that the end of war in 1945 did not bring the end of injustice, and that the post war history of jewish communities in Greece and Europe and the history of the survivors returning to their homeland, still has to be written and rewritten.

 

---

[1] Michael J. Bazyler, Holocaust Justice. The battle for Restitution in America’s Courts, New York University Press, New York and London 2003, p. xi.

[2] Ariel Colonomos, Andrea Armstrong, “German Reparations to the Jews after World War II: A

Turning Point in the History of Reparations”, in: Pablo De Greiff (ed.), The Handbook of Reparations, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p. 390.

[3] Dan Diner, Gotthart Wunberg (eds.), Restitution and Memory. Material Restoration in Europe, Berghahn Books, USA 2007, p. 1.

[4] Jessica Reinisch, “Introduction: Survivors and Survival in Europe after the Second World War”, in Suzanne Bardgett, David Cesarani, Jessica Reinisch, Johannes-Dieter Steinert (eds.), Justice, Politics and Memory in Europe after the Second World War, Vallentine Mitchell, London/ Portland 2011, p. 7 (1-16). ⁵ Jonathan Petropoulos, «Postwar justice and the treatment of Nazi assets”, in: Jonathan Petropoulos, John K. Roth (eds.), Gray Zones. Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, Berghahn Books, New York/ Oxford 2005, p. 335 (325- 338).

[5] Ariel Colonomos, Andrea Armstrong, “German Reparations to the Jews after World War II: A Turning Point in the History of Reparations”, in: Pablo De Greiff (ed.), The Handbook of Reparations, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p. 391. (390-419).

[6] Dan Diner, “The Irreconcilability of an Event: Integrating the Holocaust into the Narrative of the Century”, in: Dan Michman, Remembering the Holocaust in Germany, 1945-2000: German strategies and Jewish responses, Peter Lang, New York 2002, p. 96.  

[7] Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World. A History of the Claims Conference, Frank Cass, London/ Portland 2001, p. 188- 189.

Anna Maria Droumpouki holds a BA in History and Archaeology, an MA in Museology and a PhD in Contemporary Greek and European History (all from the University of Athens). She was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Simon-Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture (Leipzig, 2009), and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Centre for Modern History of Panteion University (Athens, 2014-16) working on ““Repairing the Past: Holocaust Restitution in Greece”. She is the author of Monuments of Oblivion: Traces of the Second World War in Greece and in Europe (Athens, 2014), and a founding member of the Workshop on the Study of Modern Greek Jewry (https://greekjewry.wordpress.com/). Currently she is research assistant and scientific coordinator of the Greek- German Project “Memories of the Occupation in Greece” at Free University Berlin. She is Administrator of the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation at the University of Athens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Επανορθώνοντας το Παρελθόν: Οι γερμανικές αποζημιώσεις για το Ολοκαύτωμα των Ελλήνων Εβραίων, Ποταμός 2018.
• Μνημεία της Λήθης. Ίχνη του Β’ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου στην Ελλάδα και στην Ευρώπη, Πόλις, Αθήνα 2014
• Με Philip Carabott, Riki van Boeschoten, Bart Wallet, History Unwanted. Testimonies, Silence and Public Memory in Greece and the Netherlands, Sidestone Press and Netherlands Institute of Greece: Leiden, 2018.
• Με Φίλιππο Κάραμποτ, Από τον διωγμό στην αποκατάσταση: Πτυχές της ιστορίας των Εβραίων της Ελλάδας, Ποταμός, Αθήνα 2018.
• Με Ευάγγελο Χεκίμογλου, Την επαύριον του Ολοκαυτώματος: Νέες προσεγγίσεις για το Ολοκαύτωμα των Εβραίων στην Ελλάδα, Εβραϊκό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης, Θεσσαλονίκη 2017.
• Με Κατερίνα Γαρδίκα, Βαγγέλη Καραμανωλάκη, Κώστα Ράπτη, Πόλεμος, Κατοχή, Αντίσταση, Εμφύλιος. Η δεκαετία του ’40 και η μακρά σκιά της. Τιμητικός τόμος για τον Χάγκεν Φλάισερ, Αλεξάνδρεια, Αθήνα 2015.
• Με Ιάσονα Χανδρινό, Η Θεσσαλονίκη κατά τη Γερμανική Κατοχή, Ποταμός, Αθήνα 2014.
• „Personal Experiences in the post-Shoah Greece: The Case of Isaak Menahem Rousso“, Historein, Vol. 17 (2018).
• „German Federal Compensation and Restitution Laws and the Greek Jews“, Yad Vashem Studies 45:1 (Spring 2017), σ. 155–177.
• „Shaping Holocaust Memory in Greece: Memorials and Their Public History“, National Identities (April 2015), <DOI: 10.1080/14608944.2015.1027760>.
• „Trivialization of World War Two and Shoah in Greece: Uses, Misuses and Analogies in Light of the current Debt Crisis“, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 21:2 (2013), σ. 190–201.
• «28 χρόνια μετά: Μια αποτίμηση της δεκαετίας του 1940 και της προσφοράς του Χάγκεν Φλάισερ», Τα Ιστορικά, τόμος 57, Δεκέμβριος 2012, σ. 516–527.
• «Οι διαιρεμένες μνήμες των μαρτυρικών χωριών: Η 13^η Δεκεμβρίου στα Καλάβρυτα και οι αναπαραστάσεις της», Τα Ιστορικά, τόμος 56, Ιούνιος 2012, σ. 193–210.
• «Στρατόπεδο Χαϊδαρίου: Όψεις της κατοχικής βιογραφίας μιας πόλης», Σύγχρονα Θέματα, τεύχος 116, Ιανουάριος- Μάρτιος 2012, σ. 73–79.
• «Η θεσμική μνήμη του Ολοκαυτώματος στην Ελλάδα», The Books‘ Journal 25 (Νοέμβριος 2012), σ. 86–91.
• Με Ιάσονα Χανδρινό, „The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey“, στο: Dirk Moses, Giorgos Antoniou (επιμ.), The Holocaust in Greece, Cambridge University Press 2018.
• «Η «δεύτερη ζωή» της σφαγής των Καλαβρύτων: ηθική, νομική και δημοσιογραφική προσέγγιση, 1945–2015», στο: Μαριλίζα Μητσού, Χρυσούλα Καμπά (επιμ.),  Η ασύμμετρη μνήμη της Κατοχής στην Ελλάδα και τη Γερμανία, Αλεξάνδρεια, Αθήνα 2018.
• „Das Distomo Massaker (10.6.1944): Das belastende Erbe eines unbewältigten NS- Verbrechens vom Kriegsende bis heute“, στο: Christine Schröder (επιμ.), Gewaltraum Mittelmeer? Strukturen, Erfahrungen und Erinnerung kollektiver Gewalt im Zeitalter der Weltkriege, Sonderheft Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, Bochum 2018.
• „Griechische Erinnerungsorte der Okkupationszeit – Eine vergleichende Analyse“, στο: Nikolas Pissis, Dimitris Karydas (επιμ.), 70 Jahre danach. Die deutsche Besatzungszeit in Griechenland, Berlin: Romiosyni, 2018.
• «Δεν είμεθα επαίται, ούτε ζητούμε ελεημοσύνην από κανέναν: Oι γερμανικές αποζημιώσεις για το Ολοκαύτωμα των Ελλήνων Εβραίων», στο: Στράτος Δορδανάς, Νίκος Παπαναστασίου (επιμ.), O μακρύς ελληνογερμανικός εικοστός αιώνας: Οι μαύρες σκιές στην ιστορία των διμερών σχέσεων, Επίκεντρο, Θεσσαλονίκη 2018.
• «Ο αγώνας για την αποκατάσταση των ελληνικών εβραϊκών κοινοτήτων μέσα από τα γερμανικά αρχεία», στο: Άννα Μαρία Δρουμπούκη, Ευάγγελος Χεκίμογλου (εισαγωγή και επιμέλεια), Την επαύριον του Ολοκαυτώματος: Νέες προσεγγίσεις για το Ολοκαύτωμα των Εβραίων στην Ελλάδα, Εβραϊκό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης, Θεσσαλονίκη 2017, σ. 175-187.
• «Οδυνηρή μνήμη, διστακτική μνημειοποίηση: Ο πόλεμος και η γερμανική Κατοχή στην ελληνική συλλογική μνήμη», στο: Αγάθη Γεωργιάδου, Βασιλική Δεμερτζή (επιμ.), Ναζισμός. Το Ολοκαύτωμα των αξιών, Ρόδον, Αθήνα 2017, σ. 29- 37.
• Με Χάγκεν Φλάισερ, «Κλειώ και Κλισέ: Η διπλωματία και τα ΜΜΕ της Γερμανίας απέναντι στην τηλεοπτική σειρά Holocaust», στο: Λήδα Παπαστεφανάκη, Άννα Μαχαιρά (επιμ.), Οι Εβραϊκές Κοινότητες ανάμεσα σε Ανατολή και Δύση, 15ος- 20ος αιώνας: οικονομία, κοινωνία, πολιτική, πολιτισμός, Ισνάφι, Ιωάννινα 2016, σ. 326-345.
• „Das posthum gespaltene Gedächtnis von Kalavryta: Die öffentliche Geschichtswahrnehmung des Massakers 1943 in der Nachkriegszeit“, στο: Chryssoula Kambas, Marilisa Mitsou (επιμ.), Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik der Okkupation Griechenlands (1941–44). Deutsch-griechisches Gedächtnis in Medien und Literatur, Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau, 2015, S. 143–154.
• «Oι πόλεμοι της μνήμης συνεχίζονται;», στο Κατερίνα Γαρδίκα, Άννα Μαρία Δρουμπούκη, Βαγγέλης Καραμανωλάκης, Κώστας Ράπτης (εισ., επιμ.), Πόλεμος, Κατοχή, Αντίσταση, Εμφύλιος. Η δεκαετία του ’40 και η μακρά σκιά της. Τιμητικός τόμος για τον Χάγκεν Φλάισερ, Αλεξάνδρεια, Αθήνα 2015, σ. 395-419.
• Λήμματα „LAOS“, „Chrisi Avgi“, στο: Wolfgang Benz (επιμ.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Band 5, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter/Saur, 2012, σ. 109-110, 367-368.
• „Contemporary Greek History in abandonment: Sites of memory of Second World War and the use of memory in public history”, στο: Berteke Waaldijk, Carla Salvaterra, Izabella Agardi (επιμ.), Making Sense, Crafting History. Practices of Producing Historical Meaning, Pisa: Edizioni Plus Pisa University Press, 2010, σ. 75-91.
• «Κοραή 4, μια φυλακή στο κέντρο της πόλης», στο: Σάββας Στρούμπος (επιμ.), Στη σωφρονιστική αποικία του Κάφκα, Νεφέλη, Αθήνα 2009, σ. 59-70.
• „Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine. Review of Christian Ingrao’s Book”, Historein, Nr. 14, 2014, σ. 108- 111.
• «Η ανάδυση μιας δύσκολης μνήμης», Τα Ιστορικά, Ν. 58, Ιούνιος 2013, σ. 258-261.
• „Consuming History. Historians and heritage in contemporary popular culture”, Historein, Nr. 10, 2010, σ. 172- 175.
• «Η ενηλικίωση μιας γενιάς. Νέοι και νέες στην Κατοχή και στην Αντίσταση. Σκέψεις γύρω από το βιβλίο της Οντέτ Βαρών-Βασάρ», Επιστήμη και Κοινωνία, Ν. 22-23, 2009, σ. 250-256.