Wiedergutmachung

Wiedergutmachung (German pronunciation: [viːdɐˈɡuːtˌmaxʊŋ] ; German: "compensation", "restitution", lit: "make good again") refers to the reparations that the German government agreed to pay in 1953 to the direct survivors of the Holocaust, and to those who were made to work at forced labour camps or who otherwise became victims of the Nazis. The sum would amount, through the years, to over 100 billion Deutsche Mark. Historian Tony Judt writes about Wiedergutmachung: In making this agreement Konrad Adenauer ran some domestic political risk: in December 1951, just 5% of West Germans surveyed admitted feeling 'guilty' towards Jews. A further 29% acknowledged that Germany owed some restitution to the Jewish people. The rest were divided between those (some two-fifths of respondents) who thought that only people 'who really committed something' were responsible and should pay, and those (21%) who thought 'that the Jews themselves were partly responsible for what happened to them during the Third Reich.' When the restitution agreement was debated in the Bundestag on March 18th 1953, the Communists voted against, the Free Democrats abstained and both the Christian Social Union and Adenauer's own CDU were divided, with many voting against any Wiedergutmachung (reparations). The noun Wiedergutmachung is the general term for "restitution" or "reparation". The noun is made up of wieder ("again"), gut ("good" or "well"), and machung, a verbal noun of machen ("to make"). The verb wiedergutmachen means literally "to make good again" or to compensate. Wiedergutmachungsgeld means "Wiedergutmachung money." In the former East Germany, Wiedergutmachung was mostly directed to Poland and the former USSR. The German federal office currently in charge of this issue is the Bundesamt für zentrale Dienste und offene Vermögensfragen (BADV) (Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues). It applies the "Federal Compensation Laws" and took these responsibilities over from the Verwaltungsamt...