Jews
in contemporary Germany
"The
relationship between German Jews and non-Jews remains somewhat
stilted and artificial. A German has difficulty confronting a Jew
as another person. A German is likely to be keenly aware he is
sitting opposite a Jew. Many Germans will let you know they're
aware of that."
Michael
Blumenthal, director of Berlin's Jewish Museum
"Germans
still see the Jew first, rarely the human being, and even more
rarely the German."
Ignatz Bubis,
former chairperson of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
Long before there
was a country called Germany, the Jews of Prague, Vienna,
Czernowitz, Berlin, Trieste, Zurich, Danzig and Frankfurt wrote,
spoke and defined themselves in the German language. They did not
move but Europe's borders did. The German states unified under
Prussian rule in 1871; Austrian rule collapsed forty-seven years
later and a checkerboard of successor states took its place.
By the time the map
of Central Europe was redrawn in 1945, few Jews were still alive.
What remained were the ideas they left behind. In the half
century before their destruction, German Jews produced great
economic, political, cultural and technological achievements for
Germany underlining their affiliation to the country. In the
years prior to and just after World War I - the Indian summer of
German culture, as H. I. Bach calls it - German Jewry also
reached its finest hour as it forged a synthesis of modern
Judaism. Impassioned Zionists discussed and argued with the great
Jewish philosophers of the day. New translations of the Bible and
Talmud were published.
After the Shoah, the
assassination of six million Jews, the large majority of German
Jews never returned to Germany. Between 1945-1948, around a
quarter of a million Jews passed through Germany on their way to
other lands. They lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps and
ranged from the tens of thousands of Polish Jews fleeing
murderous Antisemitism at home to Romanian, Czech and Hungarian
Jews who had survived the concentration camps. Their families had
been wiped out and they now had nowhere else to go. Not
surprisingly, the leadership of the DP camps wanted to get
everyone out of Europe. Zionism was the only answer they could
envisage.
They called
themselves She'erit ha Peletah (the surviving remnant) and
agitated constantly for permission to enter British-held
Palestine. By 1948, Israel became a state, two-thirds headed off
to make Zionism a reality while the rest emigrated to Canada, the
US and elsewhere. A very few remained. Leaving the camps, they
drifted into rubble-strewn cities to join the tiny number of
German-born Jews who had survived, or who had returned, claiming
they were too old to go on elsewhere. Most Jews told themselves
that staying in Germany would not be permanent, only temporary.
Until things are better in Israel, they said. Until I'm sure my
sister from Poland really died. Until I get my money from the
German government. Until I sell my property. Until my sick mother
passes away. Until I get that invitation from my brother in
Seattle. Until, until... But some did stay. In 1950, some 50,000
Jews were registered in Germany. In 1933 there were more than
half a million.
Jewish life
re-established itself in Germany after the war, despite the
difficulties of being a Jew in the land of the perpetrator,
despite pressure from the outside that Jewish life never again to
be rekindled on German soil. In 1950, international Jewish
organisations vowed not to recognise a Jewish community in the
Federal Republic, but those who lived there formed the Zentralrat
der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany), to
look after political aspects of the various communities in the
country.
A year later the
Zentralrat re-established ZWST, the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der
Juden in Deutschland (Central Welfare Council of Jews in
Germany), which had looked after the welfare needs of Jews
throughout the country from 1914 until it was closed down by the
Nazis. The titles make clear the Jews' own ambiguous position.
These were not organisations of German Jews, but rather of Jews
in Germany. Much of the Jewish Life that was reconstructed after
1945 was the work of Jews who settled in Germany after the war,
from Poland mainly and later from dsHungary and Czechoslovakia.
During the two
decades following the war, everything from community life to
relations with the authorities was carried out quietly and as far
from the public spotlight as possible. No one wanted a high
profile. Jews claimed to be sitting on packed suitcases (the
"packed suitcase syndrome"). This started to change in
the late 1960s. While young non-Jewish Germans began challenging
their parents about the past, the first German Jews to reach
university age. Many identify with being German, more than a few
left the country, heading to Israel and other Countries to study,
live and find work. They wanted to escape the burden of living as
a Jew in Germany throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, many
returned. Yet they would no longer accept the status quo - either
at home or from their neighbours.
Two events in
Frankfurt in the 1980s signalled a turning point in Jewish
consciousness in Germany: "The Suitcases are Unpacked".
On October 31, 1985, thirty Jews - real estate developers,
intellectuals, housewives, students - walked onto the stage of
the Frankfurt theatre before the premier performance of Rainer
Werner Fassbinder's "Garbage, the City and Death" and
prevented the play - which featured an insatiably greedy Jewish
real estate speculator - from being performed. They accused it of
being openly anti-Semitic. Sitting on the edge of the stage, this
curious gathering of Jews engaged the audience in discussion
about why they felt compelled to protest. Later they gave
interviews to newspapers and were seen and heard on television
and radio. A line had been crossed. Jews - actual living Jews -
were out of Germany's closet.
A year later, in
1986, a new Jewish community centre in Frankfurt opened its
doors. The difference between it and its Berlin counterpart marks
the difference. One, a drab building of featureless, cold stone,
was built in 1959 to administer a tiny and dispirited community.
The other, opened three decades later, was filled with
classrooms, lounges, youth clubs and playgrounds. They are both
reflections of the time they were built.
A new awakening was
followed in the 1990s by four mayor events that put Jews back on
their guard. The first was German unification itself. It was not
the thought of living with eighty million Germans after all, what
is the difference between the sixty plus million of the Federal
Republic plus those from the former East? It was the fear of
creating a too powerful, too dominant Germany within Europe. They
know what happened the last time. Germany was Europe's most
powerful state. Jews in Germany gritted their teeth, there was a
sharp intake of breath, followed by the fervent wish that a big
Germany would remain as liberal, reserved and democratic state.
Almost immediately
however a wave of anti-foreigner and neo-Nazi violence rocked the
country. Skinheads torched apartments for asylum seekers in
eastern German cities of Rostock (1991) and Hoyerswerda (1992)
while neighbours gathered to cheer. Young Germans set fire to the
Jewish barracks at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. West
Germans hurried to point out that all this new violence was
taking place in the former East Germany. But then in the west, a
man merely thought to be a Jew was killed near the Dutch border
(he wasn't Jewish). Turkish families were burned to death in
arson attacks in Mölln and Solingen. Jewish cemeteries were
defaced in several cities and the Lübeck synagogue was
bombed. The Zentralrat, which had always received anonymous hate
mail, noticed the letters were now being signed. The mayor of a
village not far from Mainz wrote to tell the Zentralrat how glad
he was no Jew lived in his town.
The next event was
the Gulf War. While Israelis stared at each other through gas
masks, German mothers claimed to be afraid and bought out whole
grocery stores. Hans Christian Ströbele, spokesperson of the
Green party, said, "The Iraqi missile attacks on Israel are
the logical, almost unavoidable outcome if Israel's policies."
In addition, the logistics for the Iraqi gas armament was
delivered by German suppliers. These developments shocked,
disturbed and worried Jews. What was different now, however, was
that they raised their voices openly and aired their concerns.
From officials such as Heinz Galinski, president of the
Zentralrat, to writers and essayists like Julius Schoeps, Ralf
Giordorno, Dan Diner, Micha Brumlik and especially Henryk M.
Broder, Jews went on television and radio and churned out scores
of articles for the best known newspapers and magazines in the
country. They let their point be known: that German anti-war
behaviour during the Gulf War was - for the most part - a
disguise for anti-Israelism. During the Gulf War and afterwards,
Ignatz Bubis, who became president of the Zentralrat after
Galinski died in 1992, seemed to be everywhere, taking on a
public persona that was unprecedented for a post-war Jewish
leader.
In 1998 the winner
of the annual Peace Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair
("Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels"), the well
known writer and former leftist, Martin Walser, held a gratitude
speech, which was an outburst of Antisemitism. After receiving
the prize, Walser raised the ire of Bubis by lamenting in a
speech that Germany continues to be confronted with its guilt
which is used as a "moral stick" with which to beat the
German people. He condemned what he calls the
"instrumentalization" of Auschwitz as "a permanent
exhibit of our shame." And he said he personally had learned
to turn away from scenes from the Holocaust. Ignatz Bubis felt
the speech of Walser as a remarkable clear movement for an
''intellectual nationalism'' which encouraged neo-Nazis. But the
most remarkable fact was, that he was the only present person to
condemn that speech. He and his wife were alone under all these
non-Jewish Germans. Klaus von Dohnanyi - former mayor of Hamburg
and a lifelong Social Democrat - intervened, condemning "the
all too frequent attempts by others to use our conscience for
their own advantage, to abuse it to manipulate it". He upset
nobody by complaining that German schoolchildren had to endure
being taunted as "Nazis" when they went abroad and that
the British press used images of Hitler in the anti-Euro
campaign. Jews in Germany "must also ask themselves if they
would have behaved much more bravely than most other Germans if
it had only been the disabled, the homosexuals and the Gypsies
who were taken off to the death camps after 1933", he wrote
in a German Newspaper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Von
Dohnanyi's remark was described as wicked by the Jewish leader,
but his sentiments are shared by the majority of the Germans who
feel no responsibility for events, no matter if they took part in
WW II or that took place before they were born. Bubis, who died
in 1999, consistently wanted to be buried in Israel.
The new diversity
of Jewish Life in Germany
In the Berlin Jewish
community, the number of Jews grew from 9,200 to 11,000 from 1992
until 1998 (the actual number of Jews in Berlin, many of whom
remain unaffiliated, is higher and hard to estimate, probably
around 18 - 20,000). A drop in bucket compared to the 170,000
pre-war, but one does not build a community by focusing
backwards. While that in mind, Jews in Berlin, Frankfurt and
Munich opened kindergartens in the early 1970s and by the 1980s
they started Jewish-run elementary schools as well. Now there is
even a newly-opened high school in Berlin and by 1995, with five
hundred Berlin children in community schools, the first
newly-constructed Jewish elementary school on German soil since
the war was opened.
Throughout Germany
in fact diversity is rearing its head, a concept not altogether
welcomed by the Zentralrat. Until recently, post-war religious
life in Germany was completely in the hands of orthodox Jews,
despite the fact that very few Jews in Germany would define
themselves as orthodox. And while members of the Zentralrat
complained they had great difficulty in finding orthodox rabbis
who would come to Germany, their constituency was obviously
crying out for liberalisation. When the tiny Jewish communities
of Oldenburg and Braunschweig hired a woman rabbi in 1995, the
Zentralrat sharply stated its move. This was somewhat ironic, as
Germany, after all, had its first woman rabbi in the 1930s. When
several Frankfurt Jews started their own liberal congregation in
1994, the Zentralrat was no more enthusiastic. This, too, was
ironic, given Germany's historic role as the cradle of reform
Judaism. Reform-style services have recently been reintroduced.
An independent group meets monthly for shabbat services with a
feminist orientation. In addition, there are a dozen or so
independent groups - religious, cultural, and political - that
have bolstered Jewish life. Many of these groups, such as the
left-wing Jüdische Gruppe in Berlin, or the gay and lesbian
group Yachad, provide a place for Jews who are otherwise
uncomfortable within the Community.
With the continuing
immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, things will
change in Germany's Jewish communities. Just as the Zentralrat
was dominated by Jews who came from Polish Jewish stock, in time,
Jews from even further east will take their place. They already
make up the majority of members in many communities throughout
the country.
In September 2001 a
national and bilingual Jewish Museum in Berlin opened its doors
to the public. The building in which the museum is housed is an
important striking thing. The structure, by Daniel Libeskind, is
an arresting post-modern building that attempts to depict
architecturally the unsettling history presented inside. In the
museum there is a permanent exhibition on the history of nearly
2,000 years of Jews in the German-speaking area.
Timo Reinfrank,
2001-09-27 (timo@iak-net.de)
References
* W. Michael
Blumenthal: The Invisible wall. Germans and Jews. A Personal
Exploration. Washington D.C. 1998
* Ignatz Bubis: Juden in
Deutschland. Berlin 1996
* Andrew Roth/ Michael Frajman: The
Goldapple Guide to Jewish Berlin. Berlin 1998
* Edward
Serotta: Jews in contemporary Germany. Berlin 1996
See also
www.haGalil.com.
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