The Vectors of Postwar Victim Reparations: Relief, Redress and Memory Politics

Abstract

This article discusses the reparation schemes that were developed in response to the nazi policies of persecution and genocide. It looks at the measures aimed at redressing nazi atrocities in a wider context of postwar planning and reconstruction and asks how proposals for individual compensation payments dealt with the shortfalls in international law. In comparing French, East German and Swiss compensation policies, it also focuses on intersections between victim reparations and the construction of collective memory. Depending on a country's history in the nazi era and its desire to construct meaningful narratives of this period, reparation policies were often aimed at bolstering dominant interpretations of the past. At the same time, they also mirrored the degree of political influence that specific victim groups could mobilize in favour of their rehabilitation. This raises the question of how such interconnections affected the chances of individual victims to find recognition of their victimhood as well as financial relief for the damages they had suffered.