Holocaust survivors received reparations from Germany and France (which had sent French Jews to German concentration camps). However, America has never paid reparations to Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees who’d made it to America alive, had no standing in the courts. For that reason, the American government used its standing on their behalf, and the courts ordered Germany and France to send reparations to survivors here in America, via the U.S. government.

That said, the time for Americans to make reparations to the descendants of enslaved Americans, is long overdue. As few people have the courage to admit, capitalism works against wrongdoers. Every year a debt remains unpaid, compound interest accrues and increases the debt. Thanks to capitalism, reparation debt due the enslaved in 1865 was small, compared to what it is today. Nonetheless, capitalism did its moral duty, and kept pace with the growing number of descendants.

On Jan. 16, 1865, General William T. Sherman’s issued, Special Field Order No. 15. Inasmuch as there are 2.43 billion acres of land in America, President Lincoln approved a relatively miniscule 400,000 acres of land for the formerly enslaved, confined to a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast.

The value of those 40 acres for freed slaves in 1865, would be worth $640 billion today. It pays to pay your debts.