262.84A41/5–2552: Telegram
No. 439
The United States High Commissioner for
Germany (McCloy)
to the Department of State
3060. Fol is text Paris 894, to Bonn:
“For the Secretary.
I have just received the following letter from the Israeli Minister in Paris.
‘Mr. Ambassador
I have been instructed by my government to transmit to Mr. Dean Acheson an urgent message from the Israeli Foreign Minister Mr. Moshe Sharett. I am enclosing this message and I shall be most grateful if you will be able to arrange for a transmission to Mr. Acheson at the earliest opportunity and at any rate before the forthcoming meeting of the 3 Allied Foreign Ministers with the German Bundeskanzler in Bonn. Please accept (Mr. Ambassador) with the expression of my apology for the trouble I am causing you the assurance of my highest consideration.
Maurice Fischer
E. E. and Minister Plenipotentiary.’
The 3 great Western democracies are about to take a momentous step in removing the last vestiges of formal allied control over the German Federal Republic and welcoming her as a full-fledged member of the community of nations. On the eve of this grave event Israel and the Jewish people pose the question whether from the Allied Government’s own viewpoint such emancipation can be justly accorded and Germany’s good name restored at a time when the criminal liability for the wholesale plunder and destruction of Jewish wealth throughout Europe by the Nazi regime has not been even partially redeemed by its successors. On behalf of the Government of Israel and in full concert with the World Committee of Jewish organizations I beg respectfully to urge that at this crucial juncture in Western Germany’s fortunes her responsibility for making good the material damage cause to the Jewish People should be impressed upon her in the strongest possible terms by representatives of the Allied Powers assembled in Paris.
It will be recalled that Chancellor Adenauer in a public statement to the Bundestag on 27 September 1951 solemnly admitted this liability as resting upon the Bonn Government and in a subsequent letter accepted the claim of Israel for the payment of $1 billion as a basis for negotiations. It was on the strength of this acceptance that Israel and the Committee of Jewish Organizations entered into negotiations with Western Germany, and The Hague. The 3 Western governments had specifically advised Israel and the Jewish Organizations to seek a settlement by direct negotiations. The discussions resulted in the acknowledgement by the Bonn Government of a debt to Israel in the amount of $715 million, the liability to be assumed towards the committee remaining still to be determined. More recently tactics of equivocation have become manifest and an attempt is now being made to whittle down the amount of Western Germany’s payment to relatively insignificant proportions. If these counsels of evasion prevail, the negotiations already suspended are bound to end in final failure. The threatened breach of faith has aroused strong protests within the Bonn Government itself, and has caused the resignation of the GW leaders of its Hague delegation. Those who advocate this violation of Germany’s minimal obligation may be under the illusion that the Western Allies are indifferent to the manner in which Western Germany will treat its admitted liability towards Israel and the Jewish people. In the interests of international justice it is essential that the mind of the Bonn Government be disabused without delay of any such false notions and that its leaders be prevailed upon to keep faith with their pledged word. Israel is confident that the 3 Allied governments which have had decisive responsibility for the development of the Western German Republic at every stage will surely not desire to appear to be disinterested in so grave a moral and political issue.
Accordingly I submit that the present historic moment in the evolution of relations between the Western powers and Germany affords a compelling opportunity to require the Government of the German Federal Republic to fulfill the obligations which it has incurred and acknowledged. I am addressing this communication also [Page 938] to Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs and to the Foreign Minister of the French Republic.
22nd May 1952.
Signed: Moshe Sharett
Foreign Minister of Israel.”