Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe (review)

Robbery and Restitution adds to the excellent reputation of Berghahn’s Studies on War and Genocide series under the general editorship of Omer Bartov. Readers familiar with the series know that it summarizes the most recent research on such topics as “the Massacre in History,” “Nazi Extermination Policies,” and “Genocide and Religion.” One of the latest volumes, Robbery and Restitution is essential reading for all Holocaust scholars.

Organizing the anthology into four sections, the editors present sixteen essays by leading American and European scholars. Part One consists of an introductory essay by Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther establishing the main themes that subsequent essays examine in more detail. Essays in Parts Two and Three investigate the robbery and the restitution of Jewish property, respectively. The late Gerald Feldman wrote the conclusion that constitutes Part Four.

Goschler and Ther’s introduction argues that scholars must examine expropriation as a political process involving more than German Nazis; as a social process closely linked to local attitudes and actions throughout Axis Europe; and as “a typology” (p. 11) reflecting local variations in the process of “Aryanization.” Several factors limited restitution after the war, and while these factors also varied by country, common obstacles included the sheer number of Jews murdered, the Cold War confrontation between East and West, and the degree of willingness in each country to face the extent of its own people’s role in the robbery.

Martin Dean’s introductory essay in Part Two compares Nazi methods and local responses to the looting and discerns a direct link between the timing of spoliation and the evolution of the Holocaust. The robbery of the Jews in Western Europe generally occurred prior to deportation, which itself preceded extermination; in most of occupied Eastern Europe the perpetrators robbed the Jews and killed them at almost the same time and almost the same place. Despite problems encountered by the thieves, such as correctly identifying “Jewish” property, Dean argues that the robbery proved comprehensive and could have happened only through state direction.

The four remaining essays of part two explore this state expropriation and illustrate variations in such factors as the legal framework, the motivations of the perpetrators, the structure of government in occupied lands, and the nature and effectiveness of implementation. For example, while Frank Bajohr concludes that the five-stage Aryanization process in Germany took several years to accomplish and seemed quite comprehensive, Tatjano Tönsmeyer’s analysis of Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia illustrates how quickly the process occurred in Hungary at the same time as it left some of the larger Jewish businesses untouched.

As the timeline of robbery varied in different parts of Europe, so did the role Germans played in administering the spoliation. The speed of events seems to have corresponded to the level of direct German involvement. Jean-Marc Dreyfus’s comparative essay on France, Belgium, and the Netherlands views the more fanatically Nazi administration in the Netherlands as key in realizing the most drastic implementation in the three countries. By contrast, France seemed more restrained. According to Dreyfus, the German military administrations in France and Belgium tempered the implementation of looting policies; the collaborationist Vichy regime in France mediated and restrained the harshest measures.

In Eastern Europe no intermediary could (or would) temper the looting policies. Dieter Pohl vividly illustrates the nature and scale of the expropriation process in Eastern Europe with a comparative examination of Poland, the Czech territories, and the occupied portions of the Soviet Union, concluding that in these areas, the robbery and murder of the Jews went hand in hand, as the perpetrators seized Jewish property and killed Jews as part of a single process.

Each of the essays in Part Two examines the perpetrators’ motivations, which varied in different places. For example, Tönsmeyer clearly indicates that the Axis governments in Slovakia, Hungary...