Cultural Namesakes

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diaspora, German Jews, Judaism

Berlin city girl

Lately my writing career has been crawling along at the same glacial pace as life in a small town like Bozeman. Wish I had gotten started on this vocation a little earlier in life. Our daughter Olivia just had her first publication at age 13. Our experiences in Berlin nurtured her creative potential as they did mine. You can read her story about a typical day in her twelve-year-old life here: Just Your Average Day in Berlin. I giggled through much of her story and I hope you will too.

Olivia shares my love of the written word, both through reading and writing. Her brother Avery Erwin inherited many special qualities from his Papa Erv (see Namesakes).  Through genetics and cultural heritage, we pass down bits and pieces of ourselves to the next generation. And that is the theme of Deutsche Welle’s new multimedia series Traces of German-Jewish Heritage. Filmed in ten different countries, this project documents the past and present of German Jewish culture. The stories from the United States include a film about our family which you can access here: http://www.dw.de/top-stories/usa/s-31860.

Ute Schaeffer, Deutsche Welle’s editor-in-chief, had this to say about their German Jewish culture project: “We want to show Germany as a modern and open country, but also as a society which recognizes and knows the value of its cultural and historical roots.” In an age of often shallow journalism, I’m impressed by Deutsche Welle’s expansive and well-researched effort to document the cultural history of German Jews. The living reminders of German Jewish history around the globe are something to celebrate during the holiday season.

Reverberations

Tags

diaspora, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust

My sister has often looked aghast or simply stood back in disbelief as I unveiled my latest dream adventure or far-fetched vision for a better life. She’s given up trying to talk me out of my plans and is usually content to stand on the sidelines and cluck her tongue at me.  We are a study in contrasts. She’s watched me turn my life upside down more than a few times while I am constantly encouraging her to shake things up a little. Our move to Germany was yet another upheaval she had to endure, made more difficult by our mother’s anger and distress over our decision.

But something changed for my sister as she saw me sift through the layers of our family history and lay claim to our German Jewish past. The discovery of a Holocaust victim within our own family suddenly made my journey become hers as well. She is now as determined as I am to set the family record straight (see Rewriting Family History) and create a memorial for our great-aunt Meta. She has embarked on a frenzy of genealogical research of her own and is currently embroiled in a battle with her corporate employer to obtain permission to attend Meta’s memorial ceremony in June.  She’s even decided to apply for her German citizenship!

I spent the past week in Los Angeles with my sister where we finally had a chance to reflect on all the recent family discoveries and events. As we chatted over dinner on the night before my departure, we wondered about how our eight cousins from my father’s side of the family would react to Meta’s Untold Story which appeared last week on The Jewish Writing Project.  What version of our family history did they hear as children and how will they feel about the “woman in the shadows” who was left behind? Will they want to look back into such a painful past or keep the door shut? Three of the cousins grew up in South Africa, and although I have met them, we have not maintained contact with each other. Could Meta’s story and my journey back to our family roots create a new bond between us?

As the only grandchild from my family of Holocaust survivors who has returned to Germany to reclaim my heritage, will my experiences reverberate with other family members as they did with my sister? Perhaps it’s time to reach out into the diaspora and find out.

New Citizenship, New Responsibilities

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American Jews, Article 116, diaspora, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust, Judith Kerr

Now that the woes of my long quest for German citizenship are behind me, I realize how fortunate I am. At the age of 52 I have become a citizen of a new country and have much to learn and look forward to about the responsibilities and benefits that go along with my new status. But lately I’ve been thinking about other German Jews from the diaspora who also want to reclaim their German citizenship, but can’t. These are people whose families fled Nazi Germany but do not qualify to have their citizenship restored.

The descendant of a Holocaust refugee is more likely to win back their German citizenship if they are German Jewish through their father rather than their mother. This is because German citizenship could only be derived from the father until 1953.  My friend Wendy was initially told that she did not qualify for German citizenship because her mother, born before 1953, was German, not her father.  When Wendy told a consular official that her parents were never married, she found out that an exception was made for children born out-of-wedlock!

Bess Rothenberg, whose mother was born in 1944, wasn’t so lucky. When Rothenberg learned that she did not qualify for restored citizenship, she complained that the German government was perpetuating sexism in its attempt to redress racism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bess-rothenberg/a-german-law-rectifies-ra_b_794993.html.  I find it especially ironic that a German Jew must rely on their father to reclaim their German citizenship, while traditional Jewish law confers Jewish identity through the mother.

Another sad irony is that descendants of Jews who fled Germany before Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor are ineligible for restored citizenship.  Families that had the foresight to flee before January 30, 1933 are considered to have left “voluntarily.” I’ve met a few people who did not qualify for restored citizenship because their families were smart enough to get out early. Judith Kerr’s novel, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, is based on the true story of her own family’s terror over Hitler’s impending rise to power and early escape to safety.

Mary Beth Warner’s recent article, Jewish American Families Reclaim German Roots, reveals that citizenship applications from such families are on the rise. As a new German citizen, perhaps I can help others who experience delays and mishaps as I did, or are just bewildered about how to proceed. Or maybe I will lobby to strike the pre-1953 gender-based citizenship standard from German law……..that oughta keep me busy!

A Year of Blogging

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American Jews, Berlin, diaspora, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust, Jewish identity

My first blog post was just about one year ago.  Now the school year is drawing to a close which means I will have less time for writing and reflection over the summer.  This blog has helped me to chronicle and process the incredible experience we’ve had as “a German American Jewish family in Berlin.” 

The bumpy path towards my German citizenship, an expansion of my Jewish identity, and discoveries about both my ancestors and living relatives have stimulated my life enough to shake me out of the mid-life malaise I was in back in Bozeman.  I haven’t shared all the emotional highs and lows of the past year: the fresh grief over the loss of my father (a quintessentially German Jewish man), the pain upon seeing the photo of a family member who perished during the Holocaust, the guilt and anxiety about how our choices have affected others.  I’ve spent days on end gripped with an angst that never found its way into my writing.  The moments of joy have been no less difficult for me to capture with words, what it feels like to find a cousin who needed you before you knew her, or to see your son put on your father’s bar mitzvah tallit for the first time.

I plan to keep writing and hope to develop and publish some of the thoughts I’ve recorded  in this personal forum.  I’ve just had a piece accepted for publication on a writer’s blog and will provide the link when it appears later this summer. I appreciate all of the comments I receive from readers (most come via email) and find a lot of support and inspiration from them.

Olivia, Sam and I went to Vienna last weekend to see our new-found cousins (see  Shrinking the Family Diaspora) once more before they move back to Israel.  The coincidence of our families living in Europe at the same time has been one of the best gifts of the past year, one that will sweeten and enrich our lives for years to come.  Now I am looking forward to the next trip, back to Bozeman for three weeks this summer.

Shrinking the Family Diaspora

Tags

American Jews, diaspora, German Jews, Holocaust, Israel

Meeting the relatives is a life-long process, especially when they are part of the vast  diaspora that resulted from the Holocaust.  Many of my relatives fled from Germany to South Africa in the late 1930s and over the years I’ve met quite a few of them.  As a child and young adult I approached these encounters with mild interest, but as an adult they’ve become more meaningful.  When I heard that I had a cousin who was born in South Africa, grew up in Israel, and was temporarily living in Vienna, it seemed important to meet her and discover if we felt a family connection. Not only did Daniella and I form a quick connection, but our kids are ecstatic about their new 9-year-old twin cousins that they never even knew about until now.

What did I, an American from California and the Rockies, and Daniella, who grew up on a kibbutz where she met her wonderful husband while tending the cows, have in common?  Experiences with our mothers, of course! Our grandparents were siblings and we had many stories to share about our mothers, the offspring of her grandfather and my grandmother. The genetic connection between us is invisible to the naked eye and yet it felt very palpable as we spent a whirlwind weekend together in Berlin. The kids must have felt it too, or else they were just extremely compatible playmates. 

But there was also the sense of wanting to piece together the family diaspora that can help us understand who we are and where we came from. Our personal stories were very different, but there was an overlap of shared experience that seemed to stem from our blood ties.  The temporary Vienna-Berlin connection between our families is a fortunate coincidence to take advantage of before we disperse back to North America and the Middle East.  A trip to Vienna will have to be added to our travel agenda!

Sam, Naveh, Avery, May, and Olivia

Andrea and Daniella