The Forward met with the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, at his New York office.

"We Bludgeoned Them and Bludgeoned Them .... But at What Price?"

 See too Edgar Bronfman's unashamed 1998 boast that in Switzerland "we gave them an excuse for antisemitism".

New York, September 4, 1998     Forward: So, you said you have a lot on your mind. Mr. Foxman: I have a lot of stuff here (points to his chest). I don't know what pushes it first -- the fact that I am a survivor, the fact that I spent my adult life fighting anti-Semitism and trying to change attitudes, I don't know. The 50th anniversary of the end of the war I went to Europe. I was invited to Germany and I said, yech, I don't want to be there, commemorating 50 years of the end of the war. I was invited to Russia, and I wasn't comfortable going there. But I didn't want to be here. It meant too much to mark that period. So I went to Brussels, where I was able to watch on television everywhere. And then I was hit with a question: Is it over? And I said, what are you going to do on May 8, 1996? The question is, is there a commemoration or are we finished with the era? And I walked away feeling that it was over, that all these countries commemorated the closing of an era, and all of them wanted to move on. It reminded me of my first visit to Germany, which was in the aftermath of Bitburg. The New Germans convinced me that it's time to confront the new Germany, and after a personal struggle, saying my heart and kishke told me I can't go, I don't want to go, my mind told me I have to go, because you can't harbor hate. This generation of Germans is not that generation of Germans. So I went. I met with students at their West Point -- Bundeswehr University -- and at one point, one of the cadets said to me, "Herr Foxman, it's over." And I said, "I understand that you want it to be over. But it's not over for you, because it's not over for me. It's not over for me, because I am still the generation of survivors.... A lot of survivors, first generation, second generation, are still touched, scarred. And so it's not over, you're going to have to wait another generation or two.

But I didn't realize to what extent it wasn't over, to what extent it continues to haunt us, to be part of our life. And so, whether it's Madeleine Albright being touched 50 years later, and the impact on her life, whether it's this whole issue of money, reparations, gold, 50 years later what is supposed to be over is in fact all around us. Around us because documents are being revealed, they're being sold, they're being released, they're being opened. And I'm troubled as to how this third generation after is dealing with it. One major issue that gnaws at me is this whole issue of material claims. I still remember the conversations around the dinner table: Yes to take reparations, no to take reparations. There was simultaneously a very wrenching debate in Israel, whether Israel should take reparations. And by God, Israel needed it. I remember Menachem Begin stood there and said, no, it's blood money, it will ease conscience. It will buy forgiveness which you can't sell. I remember, again, at home, we certainly needed the money, and my mother saying, it can only help, it can help your son's education, and my father saying, but it will cheaply buy [us] off. Well, to a large extent this debate should continue, although I'm not sure it's out there. It is in my kishke. We have to remember why, why we're dealing with it now. Now, there are some practical reasons, and that is, after 50 years, the British opened up some of their books. The Soviet Union's disarray has made documents available to be bought. But there's another reason that we didn't deal with this issue for 50 years -- because the trauma of the human tragedy was so tremendous, so enormous, so gargantuan, that nobody wanted to talk about material loss for fear that it will lessen the human tragedy. Because when you begin talking about property, then what about life? And so for at least two generations -- yeah, Israel decided to take reparations, it needed it -- but individually we didn't deal with it. Not that we didn't know that there were bank accounts, that there was insurance, that there was property. My mother's family had a factory in Warsaw. My father had some stores in Baranowcz. But nobody ever raised it. Nobody ever said, look what we lost. I don't remember conversations of material loss. Now I realize how significant the loss was, but nobody talked about it. Because what they talked about was that they lost 16 members of their family.

So now we are two, three generations later. We have a perspective of history, And rightfully so. Edgar Bronfman is right, [Senator] D'Amato is right. Some of the survivors are right. Stuart Eizenstat is right. The time has come to confront the other part of the loss. We're capable of doing it because we are 50 years away. And after all, it's important to provide justice. It's important to have an accounting and accountability. Not only for the victims, not only for the loss, but as a message for the future, in that it's important for people to know if you do evil, if you rob, if you steal, you're going to pay a price. The Bible says the greatest crime is to steal from those who are weak. Understandably, there's a need to try to obtain some justice and to deliver a message for the future that, no matter how many years go by, there's accountability. And so, I welcome it. I think it's important. "What motivated me is to say that this debate, this issue, prolonged, will so skew the Holocaust that I fear that the last sound bite of this century on the Holocaust will be not that Jews died because they were Jews but that Jews died because they had money." But, I was from the first day on concerned about the price we may be paying, knowing that we cannot obtain justice. How do you ever find out what was so destroyed in the records destroyed and hidden for 50 years? How do you put a price on the life of a child that the Swiss turned back at the border? How do you put a price on that? We know we can't. I was concerned that a protracted discussion and debate on this issue would bring about a high price for the Jewish people and for history and for memory. And so, from day one, I convinced the leadership of the ADL to take a role. What motivated me is to say that this debate, this issue, prolonged, will so skew the Holocaust that I fear that the last sound bite of this century on the Holocaust will be not that Jews died because they were Jews but that Jews died because they had money. And, the more the news, the more the coverage, the more the discussion, what is it? Jews and their bank accounts, Jews and their gold, gold fillings, art, musical instruments. Now we're talking about property, buildings. And you keep repeating it, at a time when most people don't know, don't understand; there's Holocaust denial, and you will establish that sound bite out there: Hey, you know what, the reason the Jews were killed was because they had money, because they had riches. That's to me a desecration of the victims. It's a perversion of what it's all about and it's, in my mind, too high a price to pay for a justice we'll never achieve. We went to Switzerland two years ago. And we said to them, don't deal with this legally, deal with this morally. I'm sorry they didn't listen because it would have prevented some of that anguish. And they would have prevented the sanctions and the bludgeoning. I continue to be worried that this is just the beginning. People are talking about insurance, banks, factories, musical instruments. Some people are saying they want a museum. I don't want a museum of stolen Stradivariuses or Picassos with a little plaque that says, this belonged to. - . who died ... I want a museum on the Holocaust, but not that. Some lawyers see this as a lifetime's opportunity. Some politicians see this as a way to money and election. I don't want the victims to be a political football. I don't want it to be anybody's ticket. I say this with a lot of trepidation, because, in a way, it started with the World Jewish Congress, and if the American government was not willing to go forward as it did, by instructing and empowering Stu Eizenstat to do the research, to do the work, if the politicians like D'Amato didn't take up the cudgels, we wouldn't have 1.25 billion, there's no question in my mind. We were asking the Swiss to do something that's very difficult. Here we, the Jewish people, say that we do not visit the sins of the parents on their children. And yet, we were pointing a finger at those children and saying, these were not your sins, but we will judge you by how you deal with the sins of your parents.

You know what it is to ask people to look back at their parents, their grandparents and their aunts and uncles, and wake up in the morning and find out that they were greedy, that they weren't the heroes that stood up for freedom and liberty and neutrality. It's a very difficult thing to do. And I don't think we did it with the greatest finesse. We bludgeoned them and bludgeoned them and bludgeoned them. It brought about results, but I still ask the Question. at what price? At the price where the Swiss government says they have nothing to do with this? Well then what was it all about? It was about morality, it was about reconciliation, it was about confronting history -- not a check, where we don't know what it's going to go to or do, which is another problem which we need to deal with. I don't know what we achieved. I think now, we probably need to invest money to educate the Swiss. You know what it is to ask people to look back at their parents, their grandparents and their aunts and uncles, and wake up in the morning and find out that they were greedy, that they weren't the heroes that stood up for freedom and liberty and neutrality. I don't know how many Jews had bank accounts. 10,000? 20,000? 30,000? We talk about gold teeth. You would think if you watched the news that every Jew had a mouth full of gold teeth. A million and a half children died. Most of them didn't have teeth. Again, there's this conflict. Yeah, justice, but at what price? And I worry about the price that we may be paying. And we will not achieve justice. We can't. There's no way. And if we're talking about the morality of it, somehow it's getting lost. And now, all those who fought us on this issue are waiting to see how the Jewish community is going to go to war with itself, looking, almost with a smirk, expecting the war of the Jews on how to deal with the money. God forbid. God forbid. I don't know the answer, but we better come together, and we better come together quickly, and we better find a unified approach, because otherwise we will desecrate -- we, not they -- we will desecrate the memory of the Six Million. "...now we have to educate the Swiss people [to say] that the Jews are not our enemy, but that history was the enemy; that it wasn't blackmail, but that it was a moral debt that we should have paid on our own and not have been forced into having to pay. There's a lot of ugliness still out there that we're going to have to still discover." What's the answer? To stop it? No. But I worry about circuses out there. And therefore, in a way I guess, global settlements to me are important. I think we have to bring closure, understanding there is no absolute justice, you'll never achieve it. People said to me, are you pleased with $1.25 billion? What an absurd question. What would I be pleased with? I don't have the slightest. Is there anybody who could say they'd be pleased with $20 billion? Would that do it? What an absurdity. What I would be pleased with would be if the Swiss government said, we came to grips with it. We're going to put in 'X' to show that we're part of it. Yeah, that maybe. And then what I would really be pleased with would be if the Swiss came together with us and said: now we have to educate the Swiss people that the Jews are not our enemy, but that history was the enemy; that it wasn't blackmail, but that it was a moral debt that we should have paid on our own and not have been forced into having to pay. There's a lot of ugliness still out there that we're going to have to still discover. Money, what do we do about money? I believe that, first and foremost, those who have claims, even without death certificates, those who come forward and say, I believe, are entitled and should receive. Then, just survivors, period, if they want and if they're willing. Then the question is, what happens to the rest of the money? I am concerned about a tussle as to who should get and who shouldn't get. ... I have a recommendation. After that, I would give it to Israel, in the same way that reparations were given to Israel... I understand the needs of the many Jewish organizations here and abroad. But I don't know where the Solomons exist, and I worry about that type of a process. It may be a chicken's way out.

© Forward, New York, 1998.

The above news item is reproduced without editing other than typographical

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