The son of Barnard Madoff committed suicide, apparently unable to cope with unrelenting innuendo and, finally, lawsuits and allegations that he and his brother knew and participated in the $64 billion fraudulent scheme devised and executed by his father. Two years ago, Bernard Madoff confessed to him and his brother, and they in turn reported the fraud to the authorities. The two year statute-of-limitations on fraud claims has come, and the trustee must file now to recover assets for the victims of the massive fraud. Those victims include a number of Jewish charities as well as wealthy individuals.
The courts will eventually decide the factual and legal fine points as to whether the Madoff family were knowing (or unknowing) beneficiaries of the fraud, and whether such knowledge (or lack of knowledge) makes any difference. On a vastly larger scale and with even greater evil intent, the Nazi machine took the lives and the property of over 11,000,000 people, 6,000,000 of them Jews. Much of continental Europe and the Soviet Union were more or less complicit, with much of the rest of world in a state of willful ignorance.
Those of the Nazi hierarchy who could be caught (or who were not protected as designated intelligence or national defense assets), were tried and punished. Complicit Swiss and other banks and institutions were eventually forced to disgorge some of the stolen property. The German state (but why not the Austrian state?) paid out substantial though insufficient reparations.
So there are now those who say "enough, already." The evil generation is dead. Let's move forward. Forget about it! Essentially, they say, the statute of limitations runs at the end of a generation. Maybe such should be so in terms of material repayment. But can it, or should it, be so with collective memory? Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the holocaust, will not let it be soon forgot, painful though the memory can be. How could anyone distantly related to me, either participate in or turn a blind eye, to such pervasive evil? Under the same pressures, would I have behaved any differently?
On both sides, going back to the 17th century, my family comes from religious German-speaking peasants from the Strasburg, Alsace and Stuttgart, Wuertemburg regions of Europe. On the maternal side, the family arrived in Maryland in the mid 1700’s and joined with devout Lutheran immigrants seeking refuge from the wars and turmoil of Europe. They were co-founders of several of the earliest Lutheran congregations in Maryland, near Frederick and Hagerstown. My maternal grandmother, one of 14 children, came from a Roman Catholic family of Luxembourgers who emigrated to the United States in 1875. She was ex-communicated when she married my grandfather and agreed to raise my mother and her siblings in a non-Lutheran protestant faith.
On the paternal side, my family was part of a strict pietist Lutheran sect that emigrated from Wuertemburg to the Odessa, South Russia region near the Black Sea in the late 1700’s and first decade of the 1800’s. There they established self-sufficient ethnic colonies and prospered until the rise of Slavic nationalism in the 1880’s. They separated (were excommunicated) from the Lutheran Church, which they viewed as insufficiently pious. They held their own services in their homes, believed that the world would end in the early 1800’s and, among other reasons, emigrated to Russia to be near Israel at the end of days. In the 1880's, they started leaving for the Dakotas, a region similar to the Russian steppes. They continued their strict religious observances through the third decade of the 20th Century, but did re-join the Missouri Synod, one of the mainstream American Lutheran sects.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the South Russia emigration is the connection to Georg Leibbrandt. As summarized in the Jewish Virtual Library:
Georg Leibbrandt was a scholar and politician in the Nazi Party.
Born to ethnic German parents in Torosovo (also called Hoffnungsfeld), near Odessa, in the Zebrikovo district of the Ukraine. It is probable, during his lifetime, he was the world's foremost scholar on the subject of Volga Germans.
In 1918, Leibbrandt studied theology in Germany; also taking classes in philology and history. In 1927, he was awarded a Ph.D. He traveled extensively through the Soviet Union in 1926, 1928, and 1929. During his visits, he was variously represented as a doctor of philosophy, a post-graduate student, a professor of history from Leipzig University, and an employee of the Institute for the Study of Germans Abroad (Deutsches Ausland Institute) in Stuttgart. The official purposes of his visits were the study of the history of the development of German colonies in the Black Sea coastal region and the gathering of historical information. As a result of his work, a book regarding emigrant movement of the Germans was published in Germany.
Leibbrandt had a talent for languages; which, coupled with a Rockefeller scholarship, enabled him to resume his studies in Paris and the United States from 1931 - 1933. While in the U.S. he kept contact with Volga Germans who had also emigrated to America.
Leibbrandt accepted a request from Alfred Rosenberg in 1933 to return to Germany, and joined the Nazi Party that year. He was then named director of the Eastern Division of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP. He was also placed in charge of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda. When the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941, and the Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories was established, Dr. Leibbrandt was chosen by Rosenberg to direct the Political Department. Thus, Leibbrandt became the liaison for the Ukrainian, Caucasian, Russian, and other groups of emigres. Leibbrandt and Alfred Meyer attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942; representing the Ostministerium. In the summer of 1943, for unknown reasons, he ceased his duties in the Ministry and joined the Kriegsmarine (German Navy).
Leibbrandt was kept in Allied internment from 1945 - May 1949. He was formally charged with involvement in the murder of Jews, January 1950, by the Nuernberg Landgericht. The case against him was dismissed on August 10, 1950 and he was released from custody. In the post-war period, he returned to America and resumed his earlier studies on the subject of the Volga Germans; making expert contributions to the Association of Germans from Russia until his death in Bonn on June 16, 1982.
Leibbrandt’s birthplace, Hoffnungsfeld, was a daughter colony of Hoffnungstahl (Valley of Hope) that was established in the early 1800’s by Leibbrandt’s and my ancestors. Leibbrandt’s principal scholarly work prior to joining the Nazi party, “Hoffnungstal und seine Schwaben”, is still the seminal genealogical compilation for that region of South Russia. Over the last ten years, there have been several indirect negotiations over the use and copyright restrictions on that material on behalf of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society.
A large scale emigration from South Russia to the high plains in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas started in the 1880’s (prompted by the rise of Slavic nationalism) until the Stalinist terror cut off most of the escape during and after World War I. Those who did not make it out before then were mostly executed or disappeared in concentration camps or Siberia. A few survived and stayed in the area, only to be caught between the Russian and the German armies in World War II.
In one of life’s odd coincidences, the Jewish great-grandparents of my wife’s godsons emigrated from Odessa, the city nearest Hoffnungstal, to the Dakotas at the same time as my great-grandparents. They all homesteaded within a few miles of each other, and probably knew each other.
So, in October of this year, I turned the corner and came face to face with the portrait of Georg Leibbrandt at the Yad Vashem Wannsee Conference exhibit. Did Leibbrandt successfully recruit spies or collaborators in South Russia? In South Dakota? The sparse records and recollections remaining from South Russia contain accounts of horrific Russian atrocities against all non-slavic groups, more or less indiscriminately. They also include accounts of Black Sea Germans collaborating with the German army against Russia as well as accounts of Black Sea Germans hiding or protecting Jews. There are also a few accounts of Black Sea Germans participating in harassment of Jews.
In South Dakota, and the United States generally, Black Sea Germans volunteered and served in the U.S. armed forces in numbers greatly disproportionate to their percentage of the total population. They did this even though they were regarded with suspicion during both World Wars, as many still spoke German. Some were arrested and jailed for a time for no reason other than their ethnic background.
The Black Sea Germans along with much of the remaining Jewish population in the same region fled to central and western Europe in the hope that they would be under the protection of the British and American forces at the end of World War II. Under terms Stalin extracted from Roosevelt at Yalta, both groups were "re-patriated" to areas under Russian control by order of General Eisenhower. Much suffering ensued. Survivors of the long trek out of South Russia and the spirit crushing "repatriation" have left bitter memories -- separately recorded, but eerily alike -- in the Jewish and Black Sea German populations.
So when, if ever, does the accounting for the inhumanity of one people to another come to a close? When, if ever, and if ever, how, is justice done? And what does doing justice do to those who would bring justice? These are hard questions with many facile and few, if any, satisfying answers. It may be one problem we have to the end of time.
The Black Sea Germans along with much of the remaining Jewish population in the same region fled to central and western Europe in the hope that they would be under the protection of the British and American forces at the end of World War II. Under terms Stalin extracted from Roosevelt at Yalta, both groups were "re-patriated" to areas under Russian control by order of General Eisenhower. Much suffering ensued. Survivors of the long trek out of South Russia and the spirit crushing "repatriation" have left bitter memories -- separately recorded, but eerily alike -- in the Jewish and Black Sea German populations.
So when, if ever, does the accounting for the inhumanity of one people to another come to a close? When, if ever, and if ever, how, is justice done? And what does doing justice do to those who would bring justice? These are hard questions with many facile and few, if any, satisfying answers. It may be one problem we have to the end of time.
