"When two countries go to war, the winning side collects reparations from the losing side, but giving reparations to people personally was unprecedented."
With the official announcement of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the war, and the opening of the gates of hell of the extermination camps, the question arose as to who would finance the rehabilitation and rehabilitation of the survivors who remained alive.
Do they want compensation at all?
On the occasion of International Holocaust Day starting tomorrow, yes Docu will broadcast "Reckoning", which tells the story of the "Luxembourg Agreements", which resulted in the tens of billions that Germany paid to the young state of Israel and the rest of the refugees that made it up.
"Soul Account", photo: yes
The film interviews jurists who drafted the complicated agreements, historians who introduce the viewer to the struggles within the two nations, and Holocaust survivors who were torn between the need to rebuild their lives, and the reluctance to grant the Germans some kind of act of forgiveness, and between the fear that compensation will be considered by the environment as profiting from the death of their loved ones.
The willingness to establish the reparations agreements did not come from a collective moral understanding of the people who had to rehabilitate the cities of the swords that were once Germany.
In fact, when the Allies did a survey among the German public asking who they thought was the victim of the war - the Jews ranked last.
Only 11% of the population supported the discussions on reparations for the Jews.
"Soul Account", photo: yes
It was Chancellor Adenauer who led the support for reparations for the survivors and for the country that bears the burden of receiving them.
In Israel, Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett just founded a state that is struggling for its security and economic existence.
But the debate also revolved around the burning of guilt.
On the German side, they objected, because giving reparations is also admitting guilt.
On the Israeli side, they claimed that the reparations would lead to their purification from the guilt of the German murderers.
The middle part of the film deals with the historical legal issues: under what laws do they sue?
How is the suffering of a survivor calculated - according to the loss?
According to his days in the ghetto or in the extermination camp?
An accurate reconstruction of the meetings of the two delegations conveys the story of the signed agreement, down to its smallest nuances.
This is Roberta Grossman's film ("Blessed is the Match"), which was made following an appeal by the Claims Committee and the German government, and it does take a distinct side in the debate: sometimes it feels like an image video to promote the importance of the agreement, especially when the opposing side is presented disproportionately.
But while films and articles on the issue that tore the nation apart have been made in the past - "Soul Reckoning" is here to tell the subtle dismantling of the political, legal, moral and cognitive bomb in the reparations agreement between the countries.
And this he does effectively.
"Soul Account", photo: yes
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