Dr. F. Shinnar, chief of the Israel purchasing mission in Germany and highest ranking Israeli official in the country at present. today hailed the German Parliament’s ratification of the reparations treaty with Israel as an ”historical act without precedent” and predicted that not only Jewish opinion but all world opinion would be ”gratified” by it.
German reparations deliveries will make up about 20 percent of Israel’s current imports, Dr. Shinnar reported. They will help in the constructive integration of countless refugees who came to Israel as victims of the Nazi terror, he emphasized.
Dr. Shinnar singled out Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, for praise in bringing the pact to fruition. “On the Jewish side the agreement is indissoluble bound up with the name of Dr. Goldmann, ”he declared.
The Israeli official also paid tribute to the efforts of some German ”men of goodwill.” Chief among these he named Chancellor konrad Adenauer; Prof. Hallstein, German State Secretary; Erich Lueth, initiator of the ”peace with Israel” campaign; Rev. Herman Maas, Protestant Archdeacon of Heidelberg; Prof. Franz Boehm, chief German negotiator of the pact; and Dr. Otto Kuester, his assistant, whose resignation and public blast against German officials who were blocking the agreement helped looses a diplomatic log jam.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
