Second Thoughts

Whose Money Is It Really?

The last time my father saw his parents and his brother Emanuel was in 1934, he was only 21 year old. My father had worked for a Jewish firm  in Berlin, and when the firm was transferred to Palestine he moved with them. Immigration to British Mandate Palestine was banned, but some Jewish businesses were granted a certificate, and this is how my father was saved from the Nazis. My father’s younger brother Ignaz miraculously survived the war and multiple concentration camps, and settled in Germany. In 1956, twenty-two years after they had last seen each other, my father boarded a ship to go visit him.

In the fifties, Israel and West Germany signed a reparation agreement, and my father was granted compensation for the property that he had lost. At that time they were big demonstrations against signing the agreement, and my father too did not want to take any money. My mother, who immigrated to Israel in 1935 from Romania with her parents and enjoyed the support of a loving family, told him: “you can’t refuse the money, it is not for you but for your children,” so my father agreed.

My mother believed that as my father was deprived of his inheritance and any other support of his parents, the money from the reparations could at least compensate for the financial loss. My mother, usually a mild and understated woman, was adamant about accepting the reparation money. Thanks to that money my brother was able to get expensive cello lessons, I got my teeth straightened, and we were able to buy an apartment. Only twenty years later did my parents take their first trip abroad together, when they were already in their fifties.

When my parents died they left me an inheritance, it was more than I had expected. While I was grateful for their love and concern, I was also sad that my parents did not take more trips and vacations while they were still young enough to enjoy them. Yet in a curious way, my mother's advice and example affected me as well and did not allow me to be too relaxed with [my?] money.

 P.S  Some time ago I read with my students the article “Whose Inheritance Is It Anyway?” by Jeff D. Opdyke  from the Financial Times  (8.10.2004). It asked the question how much money should  parents leave their children? Opdyke noticed that some of his friends were worried that their parents were spending  all "their” inheritance money.  He asked his own father how he felt about that issue. The father replied that if children behaved decently toward their parents, he believed that it was the parents’ responsibility to leave the children some of what they themselves had received as an inheritance. I asked my students how they felt about this issue, unlik Opdyke’s friends,  most of them responded that they wished their parents to enjoy their  money