“When shall we not forgive?" The Israeli-German reparations agreement: The interface between negotiation and reconciliation

Abstract

Fifty years after the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and Germany, and seventy years after the Holocaust (Shoah in Hebrew), the two states are now close allies, with extensive ties on both official and societal levels. To show the importance of the formal and intentionally-limited negotiations on reparations in the overall process of transformation in the relations between the states (which will be referred to, noncommittally, as ‘reconciliation’), we analyze the early contacts between juvenile Israel and newly emerging West Germany and discuss the debates and difficulties surrounding them.