A central paradox of Jewish life in
Germany is expressed in two reports that have appeared in recent weeks. One
relates that German insurance companies are refusing to issue policies to
indemnify Jewish gravestones desecrated by neo-Nazis. The other report notes
that, for the first time since the Holocaust, matriculation examinations are
being administered in a Hebrew day high school.
Those looking for symbolism may be
interested to know that the downtown Berlin building housing the high school
was once a transit station for Berlin Jews who were then sent to the death
camps.There is another paradox in the fact that, while Germany is paying
billions of deutsche marks in reparations to Holocaust survivors and their
heirs, Germany's own Jewish communities are facing a serious financial
crisis that threatens their ability to provide services.
Yet the most striking paradox of all is
the very identity of German Jewry. Although German commentators and
intellectuals maintain that an integral part of the identity of German Jews
must be the Jewish component, German Jewry has never been less "German" in
the post-Emancipation period. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the
number of Jews in Germany has quadrupled to nearly 100,000. Yet 75 percent
of Germany's Jews are actually immigrants from Eastern Europe, primarily the
former Soviet Union, who are very distant from German language and culture.
The German Jewish weekly, Judische
Algemeine Wochenzeitung, has published two interesting reports over a
two-week period. The first, which includes a photograph of shattered
headstones beside the grave of Dr.Heinz Galinsky, a former president of the
community, contains the correspondence between a Jewish woman and eight
German insurance companies. The woman wanted to take out an insurance policy
to indemnify the graves of her mother, grandfather and grandmother against
neo-Nazi vandalism. None of the insurance companies was prepared to issue
such a policy. All the companies explained that they do not include coverage
of a grave, which is a real estate property located in an open area, on
their "list of insurable items." One firm suggested that the woman avail
herself of the services of a ... furniture-moving company. She turned to the
state inspector of insurance transactions, who replied, very politely, that
the companies' refusal stems from the fact that "the assessment of the risk
is extremely problematic."
In the large photograph accompanying
the second article, readers can see 17 smiling faces belonging to the grade
12 students of Berlin's Hebrew Day High School. The students were
photographed on the steps of their school building. More than a third of
them grew up in the Soviet Union. In some classes at the school, 90 percent
of the students are from the former Soviet Union.
The present financial crisis in the
institutions of the German Jewish community is mainly due to its high
proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Some 90 percent of
the Russian Jewish immigrants need some kind of assistance from the
community, says Paul Spiegel, who heads the Central Council of Jews in
Germany. According to Spiegel, four out of every five Jewish community
centers has a budget deficit. He claims that Christian missionary groups
offering communal services and generous financial help are active among the
Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who find it difficult to get work in
Germany's glutted job market. If the German government does not increase its
share in funding Jewish community institutions, says Spiegel, Jewish life in
Germany may soon find itself faced with a major crisis.
Germany has the fastest-growing Jewish
community in the entire Diaspora. Despite the strong general feeling of
hostility toward immigrants, all of Germany's governments have supported
Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union, while Germany's two major
political parties have consistently advocated assistance for these
immigrants.
Today, 55 years after the Holocaust,
Germans consider their own attitudes to both Jews and the Nazi past as a
reflection of the robustness of their democracy. Many Germans feel that the
rebirth of a normal, productive Jewish community is a vital element in
Germany's transition from the 20th century to the 21st.
From the physical standpoint, there is
now a relatively large Jewish presence in the German capital of Berlin.
Dozens of real estate properties worth tens of millions of deutsche marks -
including the golden-domed Great Synagogue on Oranienburg Street - have been
officially restored to the ownership of the Jewish community. Some of those
properties will be sold to provide the community with money to fund its
activities, while some of them will house senior citizens' homes and
cultural and social welfare institutions.
From the intellectual standpoint, the
Jewish return to Germany is highly problematic. The tiny community of Jewish
refugees who came back after the war - primarily from the United Kingdom,
the United States and Israel - kept the memory of the Holocaust burning and
served as a reminder to Germans of the sins of their country's past. Today's
Jewish community, which is growing by leaps and bounds, and which is
renewing the Jewish presence in modern Germany, is increasingly expected to
play an active role in 21st-century Germany.
The expectations of German
intellectuals from their country's Jewish community perhaps take their cue
from the contributions made by Jews to German society, medicine, literature
and art before the rise of the Nazis; however, the "new German Jews" are not
the biological or cultural descendants of those pre-Holocaust Jews. The "new
German Jews" will find it very hard to become the Mahlers, Zweigs,
Reinhardts and Rathenaus of today's unified, modern Germany.
Regardless of the ultimate identity
that Germany's Jewish community adopts, it is an irony of history, writes
Italian-French sociologist
Diana Pinto, herself a Jew, that it is the image of the Jew as a
member of an inferior race that is so deeply inscribed in the modern German
psyche. According to Pinto, Jewish history and German identity can no longer
be separated.
haGalil onLine
19-07-2000
|