How to accept German reparations

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In a landmark process that transformed global reparations after the Holocaust, Germany established the largest redress program in history, exceeding $60 billion. This initiative highlights how material acknowledgment of human rights violations can validate victims' experiences. However, it raises challenging questions about measuring suffering and loss: What is the worth of a life? What types of violence warrant compensation? Susan Slyomovics examines various compensation programs through anthropological and human rights perspectives, questioning the disparities between German reparations and French restitution for Algerian Jews during the Vichy era. She also explores whether colonial crimes deserve reparations and how these models might relate to the contemporary Israel-Palestine conflict. Drawing on her family's history—her grandmother and mother, both Czechoslovakian Jews who survived Auschwitz, Plaszow, and Markkleeberg—Slyomovics notes their differing views on applying for post-World War II Wiedergutmachung programs. She argues that the legacies of German reparations can inform future reparative approaches, prompting an investigation into the complex legal, ethnographic, and personal dilemmas that reparations inherently present.