This is the first comprehensive history of Jewish negotiations with East Germany regarding restitution and reparations for Nazi war crimes. Angelika Timm analyzes the politics of old and new anti-Semitism and the context in which they grew under the officially propagated ideology of antifascism.

Investigating the mass of unpublished, newly available archival data from the United States, Israel, and the former German Democratic Republic, and more than forty personal interviews, Timm fills a critical gap in the scholarship on postwar Germany. She analyzes the role of the Holocaust and the image of Jews in the historical consciousness and political culture of East Germany and chronicles the efforts of Jewish organizations, especially the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, to negotiate reparations with the East German state. The unique relationship between ideology and Realpolitik defined the manner in which East Germany confronted the crimes of its past and allowed anti-Semitism to reemerge.

Prof. Angelika Timm received a Ph. D. in the history of Palestine from Humboldt University, Berlin where she was the head of the Seminar for Israel Studies until 1998. She had a research position at the Free University in Berlin (1999 to 2002) and taught as a guest professor at the Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel (2002-2007). She was the director of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Israel Office 2008 – 2015.