The Forging of Jewish-Christian Brotherhood: Revisiting the 1990s Holocaust Restitution Claims

• In Event: Revisiting the Holocaust

Abstract

This paper revisits the Holocaust restitution claims of the Clinton era, to argue against Norman Finkelstein’s controversial thesis that these claims were made primarily for the financial benefit of non-survivor lawyers and functionaries. Rather than simply striving for financial gain, these figures sought to smooth the way to the acceptance of acculturated American Jews in the dominant North American order amidst continued worries about antisemitism.

This paper pursues this argument by homing in on U.S. politician Stuart Eizenstat’s role in these claims. Drawing on Eizenstat’s books and documents in the Clinton Archives, I argue that, between the late 1970s and early 2000s, Eizenstat believed in the neoliberal order he helped craft under Carter and Clinton, and as U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. However, Eizenstat harbored lingering doubts about Jewish status and belonging in America, and his country’s moral standing considering its history of chattel slavery. Harried by these doubts, Eizenstat set out on a mission, inspired by his witnessing of the Eichmann trials on television and announcements of Israeli triumph during the 1967 Six-Day War. He strove to ensure Jewish-Christian brotherhood under the neoliberal order by invoking Holocaust memory.

In the 1990s, Eizenstat, along with other key players, including Edgar Bronfman, attempted to forge such a Judeo-Christian brotherhood by leading Jewish property restitution efforts–this despite the fact that most remaining Holocaust survivors had already been compensated through the 1958 Claims Conference and were in their last years of life. Pressuring Swiss Banks and German corporations, among others, to pay out, meant rehearsing America’s founding moments, when it stood up to Britain and the aristocracy to secure its God-ordained freedom: plots of land. Through Jewish property restitution, this land-transfer would be made unquestioningly moral, bringing together Jews and Christians in a community of belonging under the dominant order.

In sum, this paper pushes back against the antisemitic undertones of Finkelstein’s argument, namely the idea that financial gain was, surreptitiously, the main goal of 1990s claims. Many factors, including North American Jews’ ambivalent responses to American antisemitism, contributed to their restitution efforts.

Author

• Yasmine Lucas, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at University of Toronto