ABSTRACT In early March 1951, the Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, announced to the three Western powers occupying his country – the United States, Great Britain, and France – that his government was ready to acquiesce to their demands and settle the external debts Germany had accumulated before and after World War II. This announcement was made at roughly the same time that Israel presented its claim for reparations, which was added onto two other kinds of compensation claims the Jewish world had been already promoting in the aftermath of the Holocaust: claims for restitution of property and personal indemnification. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IMFA) was gravely worried about the possibility that West Germany would not be able to settle its moral debt to the Jewish people and the Jewish state due to the need to repay its commercial debts in the international arena. The present article examines the policy implemented by Israel with the aim of avoiding such a scenario.