The Way Out — And Back

Tags

Diaspora Jews, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust, refugees, second generation

Spending part of last week inside the University of Luxembourg’s imposing steel skyscraper, situated next door to an even more imposing former steel manufacturing facility was a little eerie. Persistently gray and rainy skies rounded out the steely gray landscape. But the engaging group of historians at the conference The Way Out: Microhistories of Flight from Nazi Germany kept me in good spirits and the feverish work of the translators (English, French, German) kept me entertained whenever there was a dull moment. My presentation about the German Jewish citizenship experience went well and a few attendees even asked to be notified when my book A Place They Called Home comes out.

The other 23 presentations at the conference focused on the pre- and post-war experiences of refugees in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Riga, the No Man’s Land, and many other places. I wasn’t sure how well my more contemporary focus on “the way back” through reclaimed German citizenship would fit into the conference theme. But I felt reassured when Bob Moore, the historian who gave the closing remarks, commented on how extensively the Holocaust has been studied and how important it is for micro-historians to couch their work in a broader framework.

I’m not a micro-historian (or even a historian), but I agree that we can expand knowledge by studying choices made at the individual level, choices that can illuminate “the space of the possible.” Examining the personal histories of re-naturalized German citizens will, I hope, give insight into how descendants of Jewish families who fled the Nazis are forming new connections to contemporary German and European society.

Europe’s Evolving Jewish Diaspora

Tags

Diaspora Jews, European Jews, Jewish population, Sephardic Jews

Despite the much acclaimed resurgence of Jewish life in Europe in recent decades, the Pew Research Center and others have documented a continued decline in Europe’s Jewish population since the Holocaust ended. Researchers expect this trend to continue. A recent Pew study projected that by 2050 Europe’s share of the global Jewish population will decline from the current ten percent to less than eight percent.

With European Jewry often overshadowed by the voices and perspectives of Jews in the U.S. and Israel, European Jews have launched numerous organizations and initiatives to strengthen their communal ties. One positive development for the future of Europe’s Jewish community was Spain’s announcement this week that it has created a path to citizenship for the descendants of Jews expelled during the Spanish Inquisition in 1492.

Yes, that’s right. Those who can trace their Jewish heritage more than five centuries back to Spain, and pass a Spanish language and culture test, can submit their citizenship applications as of October. The Spanish government estimates 90,000 people will apply for citizenship during its initial three year window for applications. This news came coincidentally at the same time my sister and I had begun researching a claim our mother often made while we were growing up, that her ancestors came from Spain. If I brush up on my beginner Spanish and plan to spend some time on the Costa Brava this summer, perhaps I’ll even qualify for Spanish citizenship.

The number of new Spanish Jewish citizens is likely to be quite small and those who do receive their citizenship may have no plans to move to Spain. But just as Germany’s Jewish community is becoming more diverse, so will the European Jewish diaspora. A larger Sephardic Jewish population in Europe will strengthen and enrich European Jewish life. I hope it will also help to broaden the outlook of some German Jewish institutions on what it means to be Jewish.

Israelis and Berlin – A somewhat surprising love story

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Berlin, Diaspora Jews, Israelis in Berlin

Guest Submission by Eyal Roth

In recent years, Berlin has witnessed a rise in immigration from Israel. The numbers are not clear, but it’s estimated that about 15,000 Israelis are living in Berlin at this time. I am one of them.

In the last 15 years many Israelis began to visit Berlin as a travel destination. This emerging city, waking up from years of division, was an ideal place for young artists to work and play. Housing was cheap (sometimes free) and the general atmosphere was very liberal and accepting. It’s that atmosphere that also convinced many young Israelis to move to Berlin and start a life for themselves outside of Israel.

It’s important to say that living in Germany or even visiting it was considered a taboo in Israel for many years, what with its somewhat dark past. When I decided to move to Germany about four and a half years ago, I too was confronted with negative reactions from family and acquaintances. The most common question was “Why Germany?”

Eyal on Kopfsteinstraße in Berlin

The first wave of Israelis moving to Berlin was mainly young, artistic and liberal. As time progressed, Germany as a whole and Berlin specifically gained more and more acceptance in the eyes of many Israelis. Berlin became a well visited tourist magnet and the taboo status greatly diminished.

After the first wave of artists, “other kinds” of Israelis with different professions and life style preferences also started moving to the city, composing what is now the Israeli community of Berlin. This trend has been amplified by the rising housing prices in Israel; many young Israelis deal with a constant battle with their rent and overdrafts. Some of them decide to leave Israel and find a more comfortable existence elsewhere. I too was faced with a similar situation after ending my bachelor’s degree at the University of Tel-Aviv: high rents, low prospects and what felt to me an unpleasant political atmosphere. Berlin seemed like the place to go, and so far with no regrets.

The new Israeli community has already begun to flourish in many ways: a new Hebrew library has been established, monthly “round table” meetings take place, and even a new Hebrew magazine by the name of “Spitz” is printed on a bimonthly basis. These are all facets of a growing Israeli existence in the city. Israeli names have also popped up all over the cultural scene, from musicians, to contemporary dancers and what not. Israelis are everywhere.

Taboo or not, the dark past of Berlin is not a distant shadow and it’s indeed something that the new Israeli immigrants have to deal with. They do it in many different ways: some with humor, some with art, and some with different commemoration projects. A few Israelis (such as myself) take part in historical research and offer educational tours of the city, allowing tourists from Israel and the rest of the world to learn about the city through Jewish (or rather – Israeli) eyes.

Only time will tell if the love story between Israelis and Berlin is a fading trend, but for now it’s quite an exciting one.

Eyal Roth (32) was born in Haifa, Israel. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
He offers educational tours through Jewish Tours of Berlin.

The Next 100?

Tags

Berlin, Diaspora Jews, German Jews

This is my 100th blog post. My self-indulgent musings on this forum over the past four years have been a kind of word therapy for me. I felt gratified when the words came together in just the right way, and inspired when my posts built bridges to people in over 100 countries. Although I felt compelled to hit the keyboard on a regular basis, I often struggled with insecurities and creative malaise. I wanted to share our experiences as a German American Jewish family in Berlin, but why be so public about it?

I’m now ready to try something different and am mulling over whether to change my focus, start a new blog, or just disappear into cyberspace. While I’m figuring this out, I’d like to invite my readers to become writers for Full Circle. Many of you have incredible personal stories that will resonate with a broader audience. If you are an aspiring or novice writer like me, this is a place where you can share your work. I’ve posted some guidelines for guest submissions and encourage you to get in touch (dswartho@aol.com) if you’re interested.

Thanks to everyone who has followed along with my reflections and reached out to me. I’ve corresponded with many of you and even met some of you in Berlin. If you have comments or suggestions for the next 100 posts, please let me know.

More of a Frankfurter than a Hamburger

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Altwiedermus, Biebesheim, Diaspora Jews, Frankfurt Jews, German Jews, Holocaust

If you’re not a banker, you might not have much of a reason to visit Frankfurt am Main. But my sister and I just participated in the city’s “Visiting Program for Former Jewish Citizens and their Descendants.” No longer novices in the art of tracing our family history, we didn’t go to Frankfurt expecting to uncover any new nuggets of information about our father’s family. Instead, we made the trip to learn more about the region’s Jewish history, connect with the other German Jewish families, and spend time together. Our week of peering into the past with our fellow group members had many highlights, but the biggest highlight was the discovery that some of them were related to us.

During the first night of the program, my sister thought she heard one of the participants mention the Wachenheimers from Biebesheim. But it wasn’t until the end of the week that we determined they were the very same Wachenheimers who also married into our own Adler family from Altwiedermus. While my father’s family fled to the U.S. in the 1930s, this branch of the Wachenheimer family fled to Argentina, and their descendants were members of our group. I think both of our families were emotionally stunned by this unanticipated connection. We’re now quite happy to embrace these newest members of our extended familia!

As the descendants of former Jewish residents of both Frankfurt and Hamburg, my sister and I have had the opportunity to participate in both cities’ visiting programs (see Three Generations visit Hamburg). Hamburg is by far the more beautiful of the two cities, but our family’s roots in the Frankfurt area are much deeper. The many Frankfurt program officials, educators, researchers and Jewish community members who spent the last week with us are quite dedicated to helping Jewish families re-connect with their roots. This reconnection to the place where Anne Frank was born and where 30,000 Jewish residents lived before the Nazi era is an important part of the continuing efforts towards Holocaust reconciliation.

I’m back in Berlin where I’m feeling almost as much a Frankfurter as a Berliner, with a little bit of Hamburger mixed in as well. In case you missed the recent piece I wrote for the Jewish Writing Project, here’s the link: Where I’ll Celebrate Passover Next Year

The Push-Me Pull-You of Israel

Tags

Diaspora Jews, Israel, Jewish identity, Passover

It will take some time to unravel the twisted knot of emotions that wove its way through me over the nine days we spent in Israel. My sensory delight in the sweet smell of jasmine, the warm and inviting limestone architecture, the abundant sunshine, and the rich tastes of hummus and falafel expanded during each day of the trip. While my senses enjoyed this daily barrage of gifts, my brain was constantly working overtime to fill in the multi-colored canvas that is Israel. Each day the land and the people drew me in, but not without moments when my buttons were pushed and I drew back. I felt a bit like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, the gazelle-unicorn whose two heads try to go in opposite directions whenever it moves.

The highlight of our trip was spending time with our cousins who we first met in 2011, but with whom we already share a deep bond (see Shrinking the Family Diaspora). That bond was strengthened as we picked up where we left off three years ago and wrote a new family history into the moments we spent together. But sadness and even anger bubbled up within me while trying to make sense of the ultra-orthdox Jews whose demeanor and conduct sent a loud message that said “keep away — you are not one of us.” Driving through the Mea She’arim area and provoking the rage of its residents was probably a bad idea, but even worse was the feeling we had while walking around Jerusalem of being invisible in the eyes of those who are a part of our history but who reject us as Jews.

Visiting Israel during Passover made it more challenging for us to connect with Jewish life since our family is fairly secular and does not keep kosher for the holiday. We often found ourselves gravitating toward Arabic areas and had our most spiritually uplifting experience at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday. Although we spoke with no one during our brief visit, we felt not only welcome and accepted, but also a sense of peace that spoke of the human potential that has yet to be achieved in the Middle East. I hope to share some further reflections as I unravel my thoughts and emotions and try to get my head pointed in just one direction.

Die Ganze Mishpocha

Tags

Berlin, Diaspora Jews, die mishpocha, German Jews, Jewish Community of Berlin, Jewish Stammtisch, Juedische Gemeinde zu Berlin, Kreuzberg

Jewish Berlin dishes up great soap opera material. While financial scandals and power struggles dominate the official Jewish Community of Berlin, tensions abound at the social level as well. The Jewish Stammtisch, an informal social gathering that I attended when we first moved to Berlin in 2010, had a rift and split into two groups. One group meets at Terzo Mondo, a Greek restaurant in West Berlin’s “schicki-micki” Ku’damm neighborhood. The other group gathers at Seerose, a vegetarian restaurant in the more hip Kreuzberg district that borders on East Berlin.

I don’t detect much of a cultural difference between the two Stammtisch groups. Both are predominantly made up of middle-aged and older Jews from the diaspora who sit around sipping wine and shmoozing for a few hours once a month. Their evening get-togethers may not rock the city, but they do provide Berlin’s Jews with an opportunity to explore shared family and historical connections.

As I chatted with a woman from Argentina at Seerose last week, we discovered that we each had a parent who fled Hamburg in the late 1930s, another parent from Hessen, and we both have cousins who live right near each other in Israel. A sweet older gentleman who was sitting with us (also from Argentina, but born in Berlin in 1936 and once again a Berliner) kept exclaiming “die ganze mishpocha!” as we continued the conversation and learned of other similarities in our family backgrounds.

“Die ganze mishpocha” is a Yiddish phrase that refers to an entire family network of relatives and even friends. Lots of Jewish Berliners bemoan the cultural and political divide between the City’s East European Jews and the much smaller group of us with German Jewish roots. But Berlin is still a place where anyone with a German Jewish background may find others who are a part of their mishpocha. Even if you don’t meet anyone from your mishpocha, those who you do meet will have their own fascinating stories to tell over a glass of wine, whether in the posh west or trendy east part of the City.

Three Generations Visit Hamburg

Tags

Diaspora Jews, German Jews, Hamburg, second generation, third generation

Glass stars: Judische Gemeinde in Hamburg

34 of us came together in Hamburg last week from Israel, the U.S., England, Brazil, and Germany. Ranging in age from 9 (my son Sam) to 86, our shared connection was that we belonged to Jewish families who fled or were deported from Hamburg during the Nazi years. As guests of the Senate of Hamburg, we were treated to a week of cultural and historical excursions and events. And we had time to explore what little traces were left of our families’ residency in this beautiful city that was home to more than 20,000 Jews in the 1920s. The oldest member of our group, who had been deported to Riga, is once again a resident of Hamburg, where he now spends his summers.

The visitor programs in cities across Germany have been part of  the nation’s continuing efforts towards reconciliation. Hamburg’s program dates back to the 1970s and helped my mother come to terms with her disrupted childhood when she participated quite some years ago. But most of the programs have come to an end as the first generation of survivors has passed away. Hamburg and Frankfurt continue to invite the descendants of former residents to visit the places that so many of us learned so little about as we were growing up.

going to lunch in Rathaus Hamburg

As my sister, Sam and I rode around in a Mercedes bus from one historical point of interest to another, I tried to connect this visit with my family’s decision to live in Germany today. I feel safe and welcome in Berlin and I respect Germany’s extensive efforts to confront its atrocious past. But I know that not all immigrants to Germany feel as comfortable here as I do. I worry less about the future of Jews in Germany than I do about the future of ethnic groups that have been the target of the latest Neo-Nazi activities. I worry that Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation efforts are too far removed from Germany’s current integration challenges.

As the descendants of Holocaust survivors make the choice to visit Germany, I hope they will have the opportunity to learn about the concerns of this era while delving into their family histories. The younger generations are uniquely situated to grasp the connections between past and present.

Packing up Memories

Tags

Berlin, Diaspora Jews, Germany

As if packing up our 2800 square foot house and finding a tenant for it didn’t keep us busy enough, we have also begun planning my 80-year-old mother’s move from Bozeman to Los Angeles. After an extensive visit with a neuropsychologist, my sister and I received definitive confirmation that mom should no longer be living independently. Both moves are now scheduled to take place in July. The only member of our family who will be left in Bozeman is my father. He is buried in the Bozeman City Cemetery, which sits in the center of a park and trail network that is just a short walk from our house.

My mom feels terrible about leaving dad behind and often says she would like to take him to California. Perhaps she could stow him with her luggage on the plane, but I’d like him to stay just where he is, the place where he saw two of his grandchildren come into the world and where he fully enjoyed his retirement until he became ill. I don’t feel that I will be leaving my dad behind, but will carry his memory with me back to the country of his birth.

As the physical packing process gets underway, the back aches have also arrived, but they pale compared with the emotional strain of parting with our friends for the second time in the last three years. Our excitement about returning to Berlin is tempered by sadness and nostalgia. We arrived in Bozeman as newlyweds in 1996 and we will leave with many treasured memories and three beautiful children who define “home” for us wherever we are.

On location in the Diaspora

Tags

Diaspora Jews, German Jews

our film crew (left to right):
Bill Heiselmann, Sabine Kieselbach, Randy Wimberg

We had fun during our three days of filming for Deutsche Welle’s project on the surviving traces of German Jewish culture in the diaspora. Hanging out with the film crew was a holiday from all the logistics of getting settled back into Bozeman for a while. Answering loads of  questions on camera was even a natural part of processing all the emotions I felt about leaving Berlin after two years. And nothing about the experience smacked of Hollywood, although Randy, our camera man, did shout “action!” a few times.

The caution and hesitation that we felt about working with a German media outlet quickly evaporated the more time we spent with Sabine Kieselbach, the warm and wonderful reporter from Deutsche Welle. I don’t know how much our story will resonate with others, but I’m confident that a broader audience than I have previously reached will learn about the profound consequences that can arise when a family traces its pre-Holocaust roots. Sabine’s interviews covered three generations of our family and produced a range of perspectives on our German Jewish identity and connection to modern-day Germany. I’ll post the link to the program when it airs early next year

filming in Cameron, Montana

Now that the filming is over, it’s back to the less glamorous task of getting adjusted to life in Montana. I’m struggling with the scope of life in a small town like Bozeman and am doing my best to avoid entering big box stores. I also have a hard time answering questions like “How was Germany?” But each day I remind myself that new discoveries still lie ahead even though one chapter of our German American Jewish story has come to a close.