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Controversy Over German Reparations

In 1951, Germany agreed to pay reparations to Israel for the persecution of Jews during World War II. The agreement went into effect in 1952, but there was a storm of controversy before it was ratified. Some Holocaust survivors felt that accepting money from Germany would signal forgiveness of Nazi crimes. Opposition to the reparations agreement was led by future Prime Minister Menaøem Begin, then head of the Øerut Party, whose protest was described in this article from the Jerusalem Post of January 1952.
The question of an approach to Bonn for reparations was debated yesterday in the Knesset in an atmosphere of violence unprecedented in Israel parliamentary life. The shouting of a mob not far off, the intermittent wail of police cars and ambulance sirens, sporadic explosions of gas grenades and the glow of flames from a burning car came through the windows of the Knesset building, and later the window panes were splintered by rocks, and fumes of tear-gas bombs from the battle-scarred street outside permeated the chamber. One member was hit in the head by a stone.

Through all this disturbance, the meeting went on. . . . But later the proceedings were interrupted by obstruction within the Knesset itself when Mr. Menahem Begin (Herut) called the Prime Minister [David Ben-Gurion] "a hooligan" and refused to recant. He also declined to leave the platform when ordered to do so by the Deputy Speaker, saying, "If I don't speak, no one will speak." The meeting was closed by the Deputy Speaker amidst an uproar.

. . . After the recess, Mr. Begin returned to the platform and apologized. He added that he was waiving his Knesset immunity and that this would be his last appearance in the Knesset, and made what most listeners thought was a threat to go underground if an attempt is made to negotiate with Germany:

"Some things are dearer than life. Some things are worse than death. We are willing to leave our families and die. . . . People went to the barricades for lesser things. . . I know that we will be dragged to concentration camps. . . . We will die together."

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