From the DW:
“70 years of the Central
Council of Jews in Germany, 'a meaningful voice that is needed'”
The Central Council of Jews has
been the driving force making Jewish culture part of every day life in Germany
again. It's been a history of painful remembrance — but also one of successful
integration. It was meant to be a provisional set-up, when only five years
after the Shoah, the mass murder of six million Jews by Germany, survivors
revivified local Jewish community groups and founded the Central Council of
Jews in Germany. It was meant to symbolize the continued existence of Jewish
life in the country of murderers. The revival of Jewish communities began
within weeks of the end of World War II and the defeat of Nazi Germany at the
hands of the Allies in 1945. The "Israeli Cultural Community" in
Munich, one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany, has just celebrated
75 years since its re-establishment. By late 1945, 51 Jewish communities had
been re-established in Germany. By the time the Central Council of Jews in
Germany was founded, 15,000 Jews were living in Germany. At the council's
opening session in Frankfurt on July 19, 1950, the organization notes
participation from representatives of communities in former East Germany. Yet
the number of Jews living in the GDR, with no comparable institutions
representing them, sank steadily. By 1989, when the Berlin Wall would fall,
around 500 remained across five communities.
Helping survivors to stay — or
indeed leave "The Central Council was not founded with a view to what
Jewish life might look like in 50 or 70 or 100 years," says the current
president of the organization, Josef Schuster. The 66-year-old doctor has been
in the role for six years now. Schuster says that the body's top council was
envisaged at its founding as "a support organization." Its main task
was to help survivors of Nazi persecution in central and eastern Europe to
transit through Germany en route to a new home, Schuster says, "and also
[to facilitate] emigration" for Jews still in Germany who wished to leave.
Yet that wasn't quite how things played out. Many Jewish people elected to
stay where their families had often lived for generations or centuries. Some
even returned from other parts of the world that had granted them shelter
during the Holocaust. That was the case for Josef Schuster. His father and
grandfather survived the concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald and
initially emigrated from Germany to what was then Palestine. Schuster was born
in Haifa in 1954. But when he was three, his family returned to their old home
in Franconia in Germany.
A conscious choice to return "For
a long time, it was very problematic, also in Jewish circles, to stand up and
say that you've consciously chosen a life in Germany," Schuster says. He
says that only really began to change in the 1970s when Werner Nachmann led the
Central Council. "He was the first who openly stated: 'Yes, Jewish life
exists in Germany.'" He faced plenty of criticism for this stance,
not least from Israel. Many simply could not imagine how everyday Jewish life
could persist at the site of such persecution. Later, in the 1990s, another Central Council president, Ignatz
Bubis, went a step further by saying: "I am a German citizen of the Jewish
faith." The Central Council is now the recognized group
representing the interests of Jewish communities in Germany. A total of 105
communities and almost 100,000 people are members, roughly half of Germany's
estimated present-day Jewish population.
Its leaders are seen as an authority in their field, and are well
networked internationally. Schuster, for instance, the eighth Central Council
president to date, is also a vice president of the World Jewish Congress and
the European Jewish Congress.
Daily life, but with police
protection All that said, threats and daily anti-Semitism remain a part of
Jewish life in modern Germany. Police stand guard day and night in front of the
Central Council's offices in Berlin Mitte, a fortified building in its own
right. Similar images can be seen at several sites of Jewish activity in
Germany. Hateful graffiti and threats can be part of daily life. Attacks on
Jewish people still take place. In most cases, authorities say, the motivation
for the crimes tends to be far-right extremism, and the problem of
anti-Semitism among Germany's migrant communities is growing. The most
recent major case was in October 2019— the failed attempt of a suspected
far-right extremist to commit mass murder at the synagogue in the city of
Halle. Unable to get in, he killed a passer-by and an employee at a nearby
kebab shop instead. "I do not have the feeling that the number of
people with resentments or harboring anti-Semitic thoughts has grown in the
last 10 or 20 or 30 years," Schuster says. However, what he does sense,
and he attributes much of the blame to the right-wing populist Alternative for
Germany (AfD)," is that people have indeed become more prepared to
articulate these thoughts once again." For a long time the Central
Council could only boast around 30,000 members in a country of around 80
million. This figure rose after the end of the Cold War when Jews from central
and eastern Europe were able to migrate to reunified Germany. The Central
Council repeatedly urged existing communities to help the new members settle
and integrate. If you visit a Jewish community event, whether it's an annual
gathering of young members or a Hanukkah evening for pensioners, you will
likely encounter a mixed and multilingual group. Yet despite their differences,
they're unmistakably a community.
A necessary voice On its
70th anniversary, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised the Central
Council of Jews in Germany as a "meaningful voice that is needed and is
listened to." He said that Jewish life had developed in the country over
the past decades "in all its diversity." But Steinmeier too noted the
ongoing threats. For Schuster, what's important today is "a
self-confident Jewry, and a self-confident Jewish lifestyle." He'd like
the communities to become a more natural and integral part of the society. Two
current Central Council projects are working towards this goal: Bundeswehr
soldiers will again have access to Jewish chaplains in a few months, with all
the legal hurdles now cleared. And in the city center of Frankfurt am Main
construction work has begun for a new Jewish academy, which is expected to have
an impact on all of Germany. For the Jewish communities in Germany, a
far larger anniversary is also approaching. In 2021, the Central Council will
commemorate 1,700 years of Jewish life on what is now German soil. The Central
Council says it will seek to strike a tone balanced between past, present and
future.
^ I’m glad that Jews stayed in
West Germany (tried to in East Germany) and are now in reunited Germany. It is
one more sign that Hitler and the Nazis did not win – one that is visible on a
daily basis. It shows all the Germans involved with World War 2 and the
Holocaust (the vast majority of Germans living in 1945) that all their
hard-work and sacrifice – including dying for the “Fatherland” was in vain and
that good win over evil. I can not imagine how hard it was for a Holocaust Survivor
to live in West Germany, East Germany or Germany knowing that so many of their
fellow citizens actively tried to murder them and that many were never brought
to justice after the War and that most continued to live openly in every level
of German Society. The Survivor who survived the horrors of the Concentration
and Death Camps then survived the Post-War German “Amnesia” to show that Jewish
Life in Germany has been on-going for nearly 1,700 years and it continues to
grow despite the recent open Anti-Semitic attacks. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.