Lawyers Writing History: The Politics of the Past of the United Restitution Organisation (URO) from 1948 to the 1980s

Abstract

This article explores the Geschichts- and Vergangenheitspolitik, or politics of the past, of the United Restitution Office/Organisation (URO) in the post-war years and asks how it impacted on the early historiography of the Holocaust. I demonstrate that the URO leadership took a conscious decision to publicly downplay the role of its organisation in German reparations to maximise its legal and political clout behind closed doors. While this strategy was beneficial for many of URO's clients, above all in the 1950s and 1960s, this self-marginalisation prevented the organisation from becoming a significant voice in the public debates about German moral guilt and its consequences in the 1970s and 1980s. One reason for this development was generational. The URO was an enterprise driven by a particular cohort of German-Jewish lawyers for whom it provided an opportunity to personally ‘come to terms’ with the interruptions of their pre-1933 careers and the persecution during the Third Reich. In the post-war period, their legal expertise as well as their intimate knowledge of the German language and customs allowed them to act as transnational citizen diplomats, successfully mediating between the different parties and interest groups, governments and non-governmental lobby groups. For most of these Jewish jurists, their practical experience with their German peers, politicians and the administrators of the German Wiedergutmachung led to an increasing scepticism and ultimately disappointment – despite the undisputedly impressive results that they obtained for their clients.