Effingers, a German Jewish Story

 

German-born Gabriele Tergit - born Elise Hirschmann - is a relatively new name for the German literary realm. Her multi-generational roman, Effingers, following a family story of a liberal Jewish family from the 19th century until the mid-20th was published only a couple of years ago.

The family base is in the fictional Kragsheim, but the book also offers an extensive historical and social panorama of Germany during those times, particularly Berlin, through the eyes of the Jewish characters. The book was written in German and finished in 1951. Tergit, the mother of the mathematician Ernst Robert Reifenberg, - whose name was given to a street in Berlin - was born in Germany but escaped the country via Palestine before reaching London where she settled.

Effingers is a very dense novel with many characters who are connecting in different circumstances. Their social mobility and modernity is reflected through their choices and new family connections built on the go. Tergit is a fine observer of the emerging social structures as well as of the Jewish society at the time. In addition to the rich nonfiction bibliography on this topic, the literary contribution is valuable for its authenticity and vicinity to the facts mentioned and the overall social realm. The writer is not only a creator of fictional words but indirectly a witness. 

For a compedium of European Jewish literature, Effingers is of particular importance as an unique - for me, at least - literary saga. A translation of the book into English or French would have offer to the non-German speakers access to an important source of literary testimony about Jewish everyday life in Germany before the Nazi destruction. 

Der gebrauchte Jude

 

Maxim Biller arrived from Czechoslovakia to Germany as an early teen. His Jewish Soviet-born family was forced to leave country after country in order to escape the anti-semitism and political pressures. 

´Ich bin Jude, weil ich keine Russe, Tschecke oder Deutsche sein will´. (I am Jewish, as I don´t want to be Russian, Czech or German - my translation). 

His story is a story of Jewish life in the 1980s, at a time when Jews - Jews coming to live in Germany particularly - were a rare occurrence. Those living there already in public positions - like the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki that Biller randomly interviewed as he 24 years old - were rare and rather were introduced in a ´clean´ narrative of the post-WWII Germany. A rhetoric of the kind: You see, we don´t kill all our Jews, some of them are even allowed to return? From this perspective, there may be some Jews who accepted to be publicly used in this way.

As someone who haven´t lived in Germany those years, such an autobiographical account fills up many details about what really Jewish life meant at the time. I may not say that now it is better or things are improved, but there are different pieces of the puzzle that may come together differently. 

At the same time, the book is also a book about coming-at-age in Germany as a non-German Jew, finding your literary way and thinking at length about having - or not - a place in this complex realm. It is not a philosophical approach too, and there is a lot of Czech-alike humour that is still very useful for surviving Germany, particularly if you take your Jewish identity seriously. 

PS: On purpose I will not mention anything at all about the recent Biller-Czollek ´halachic´ debate

The Dangerous Terror against Jews, in Germany

 

The murderous antisemitic terrorist attack against the synagogue in Halle, Germany, in 2019, in the holiest day of Yom Kippur outraged many people, but for many different reasons. Some - locals, politicians and everyday people probably - because they were reminded of a fact that this time went out of any control. Many, on both sides knew that the incident was just one of the many in a long line of events that were perpetrated every single year since 1945, more than once, all over Germany - be it federal or communist.

Ronen Steinke, German journalist by Süddeutsche Zeitung, collected all those facts and figures about attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions perpetrated continuously since 1945. In Terror gegen Juden, this chapter has 89 pages and it ends the book but I was too curious to wait until the end and went a couple of times through all of the incidents. I knew a couple of them, but I was reading about some of them for the first time. My personal experience is not relevant anyway as I´ve spent a bit over a decade here, but think about people having to deal on a daily basis since their birth with a situation that, as the very well documented shows, it actually never changed. The only new aspect is that to the old right and left anti-semitism - with representatives of both wings getting their stages of terrorist training in Palestinian camps in Lebanon or Jordan - is that in the last 10 years or so, there is added a new threat coming from extreme Islamists. Most probably this last development is convenient for those trying to convince the larger public that the refugees brought antisemitism and increased the number of attacks against Jews. In fact, vandalized cemeteries, synagogues on fire, Jewish lives being lost to terrorist attacks were a reality long before that traumatic event. 

The mixture of people who are hating to death Jews in Germany is bizarre, colourful and always toxic. From the communitarian idealists, to eco-fascists, pure neo Nazis - including among the police forces - and Islamists. Those marching and shouting Al Quds events were in fact saying loud what many everyday Germans may strongly believe. The reluctance of taking a firm stance against the BDS movement is based on the fact that actually there is a good slice of the German population which supports the ideas expressed by that movement. 

The book doesn´t address particularly the situation in the communist Germany other than by mentioning the frequent cases of cemetery desecrations, but it does not mean that it was much better, as both the German communists and their STASI allies purposely assumed. The fact that so many right wing ´identitary´ movements are currently nested in Eastern part of the country shows that, no matter where one may look within Germany, the so-called de-nazification - both institutionally and at the level of mentalities - was never a political priority and therefore never fully achieved.

What Ronen Steinke outlines in his book, based on facts and legal realities, is that too little have been done for approaching in a coherent way this constant phenomenon of the post-war Germany. Among which the inconsistent, if any, support of the state for an outstanding security concept of Jewish institutions and synagogues, as well as the lack of a coherent legal approach of attacks aimed at Jews - including the lack of a proper legal definition of antisemitism. 

The book is more than a random reading about post-war antisemitism, but it includes a couple of useful suggestions that I wish to live long enough to see them accomplished at the institutional level, among which harder punishments for antisemitic attacks and hate crimes in general, de-neo-nazification of the police - I dare to say that not only the police is sharing such mindsets, and this is not only the case of Germany -  a legal argumentation of the judiciary that does not offer such a generous space of expression and manifestation to antisemitic perpetrators and last but not least a higher security for the Jewish institutions - educational, religious, social. 

There is so much to say and write on this topic. Way too much. But it´s fantastic to notice a new generation of Jewish writers and scholars and journalists who are not giving up, no matter the reason. 

Learning to be Jewish in Germany

Dmitrij Belkin is one of the few of the so-called 'contingent' Jews who arrived in Germany following chancellor's Kohl decision to open the country to people of Jewish origin from Russia. Although the venerable leader of the Jewish community in Berlin Hans Galinski requested that only those who are halahically Jews - mother is Jewish - to be allowed, the political interest prevailed and in the end where accepted all those with a 'Jewish' heritage, which complicated at a great extent the overall distribution and identity of the newly created community.

Dmitrij Belkin arrived in the South of Germany from Ukraine as an adult, keen to continue his studies and learn - including German. Wandering from an absorption center to the other, meeting his new German neighbours or other people with migration background, Belkin is becoming aware not only of the new realities of the country he is about to become part of, but also of his Jewish identity. Actually, it is not the first time when I hear that someone is becoming more interested and focused on his own Jewish identity since living in Germany. It has to do not only with the memory of the Shoah, but with a certain Jewish reality that you cannot ignore and sooner or later, becoming part of this - even only intellectually - will happen. Even if you are an outsider, observing this reality means that there is a minimal interest for it and it may be enough for making a fire out of the sparke later. 

Ironically and self-ironically, engaged or just observing, Belkin is going through all the stages of becoming a public Jewish intellectual in Germany - including by doing his conversion to Judaism. He is taking note of the different Jewish communities in Frankfurt/Main or Berlin, is becoming involved in various projects and improves his German and academic credentials. He is part of the newly Jewish experiences in Germany and his full of humour memoir is really worth reading it if you want to better understand a different Jewish mentality and perspective.    

Saviors of Jews in Postdam and Griebnitzsee

I am often writing here about the sad Jewish histories of WWII, especially how Jews were left alone or even helped to go on their way to the death. However, there were also exceptions and my travels are opening my mind to new information. Here is a short account of my latest discoveries while traveling to Griebnitzee - near Berlin - and Potsdam.

In Gribnitzee, on Karl-Marx Straße nr. 11, family Anemarie and Dr. Helmuth Sell hid and helped to go out of the country Ezra Ben Gershom, a young Jewish boy who previously was living on the streets for months. The German family, social-democrats and enemies of the Nazi regime, obtained forged documents for the young boy and helped him to escape. Their efforts were postumously recognized in 1981 by the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem with the prestigious title 'righteous among the nations'.

Carola Müller (born Hammer) risked her own life helping the Jewish couple Louise and Victoria Hagen, who were deprived of livelihood because of their Jewish origin. She was even detained for a couple of days by the Gestapo for her stubborness to give up in the front of the evil. Hagen family was able to leave savely the country sailing direction USA. Müller's efforts were recognized later by Yad Vashem and a public memorial mention can be seen in Potsdam, on Friedrich Ebert Straße where she lived.

Traces of Jewish life in Perleberg, Germany

My travels through Germany often bring me near traces of Jewish life. There are so many places now where Jews are no more since the end of the 1930s, but their memory is preserved and the places of memory are symbolically converted into cultural meeting points. Although there is a lot to talk about this issue too, as for now I will focus on the way in which the Jewish memory is introduced into the bigger narrative of a city without Jews.

My latest discovery was into the city of Perleberg, a former Hansa city with an interesting old town architecture.

Perleberg has the best maintained Jüdenhof in Germany. Situated on Parchimerstrasse 6a (previously Jüdenstrasse), close to the city center but on a side street, its entrance is symbolically marked by a big white arch. The Jewish history is introduced to the visitor on a big billboard in German, right at the entrance.

The Jewish community here, attracted by the opportunities of trade, went through different stages. Its first history dates back from the 14th until the 16th century, troubled times when the Jews were often the victims of unjust anti-Semitic trials and pogroms. 

The second episode of Jewish history in Perleberg starts in 1800, when a new Synagogue is built and the community is flourishing, but again, only for a short time. In 1942, all the local Jews are sent to concentration camp and killed. Nowadays, there are no signs of organised Jewish life here and most probably no Jew is living here.

The space that was used before to keep the Jews isolated from the rest of the city is used nowadays for cultural encounters and as a meeting point where topics which include Jewish history and traditions are introduced to the wider public through conferences or art and photo exhibitions. Most events are hosted in a simple modern looking rectangular building on the place of the former synagogue, neighbouring a traditional timbered house.  

Traces of Jewish life in Ludgwislust, Germany

Ludwigslust is a small town in the German district of Mecklenburg Vorpommern, in the Northern part of the country. It is mostly famous for the baroque castle, called the Versailles of the North, for its golden stucco and massive decorations, most of them made out using a special revolutionary technique at the time - 18th century - of papier mache. 

The Jewish life here was rather discrete, without significant mentions of the city as an active center. Being close to Hamburg and the big trade center, most probably Jewish families established here searching for a quiet place far away from the urban centers. Nowadays, the city has a Jewish cemetery. Documents of missionary centers mention a high number of baptism done among the local Jews. Jewish citizens of Ludwigslust were mostly reform. Near Ludwigslust, a locality where the Jewish presence is mentioned is Grabow.
On Kanalstrasse, at no. 10, I noticed a Stolpersteine, remembering the inhabitant of the house, whose fate remained unknown. His properties were seized by new owners. Tourist information documents mention the existence of several other Stolpersteine on various streets in the city. 

Besides the castle, there is a dark side of Ludwigslust, not well known. Towards the end of WWII, in its close vicinity of the city the Wöbbelin camp was created, as a subcamp of a Neungamme concentration camp. Here were brought prisoners from all over the country whom the SS evacuated from the other camps to prevent the liberation. Around 5,000 inmates were found by the 82nd Airbone Division who liberated the camp May 2, 1945. Funeral services for the inmates - both Jewish and Christians - were made, where the inhabitants of Ludgwislust were brought to in order to witness the horrors made.
In the city it was also a munition factory where Jews were sent to work too.
Probably a comprehensive history of Jews in Ludwigslust remains to be written, but my short visit there revealed equally some important and tragic facts. 

Traces of Jewish life in Angermünde

In the region of Brandenburg, close to Berlin, there are many traces of Jewish life and even well settled communities, many of them destroyed during Shoah. The question regarding the choice of Jews to settle in those area has some simple answers: many of them where waiting for an eventual opportunity to make it to Berlin, or they just wanted to take advantage of the relatively tolerant - non-Catholic - ambiance and use the trade routes to Poland and other Central European destinations.

As his part of Germany used to be during the Cold War part of the communist world - the GDR - if a minimal, if any denazification, many of the traces of Jewish life disappeared. The idea of the German communists was that most of the perpetrators were actually in the 'West' therefore the biggest number of victims were on the other German soil. After the reunification, more efforts were directed towards recognizing the victims and traces of Jewish presence in this part of the country, hence the big number of mentions about Jewish life in Brandenburg and elsewhere in the ex-communist realm.

During a short weekend visit to Angermünde, on the Pushkinallee, I encounter a mention regarding the former Jewish cemetery in this locality, The Jews established here at the beginning of the 19th century, with 1709 the year of the first Jewish presence. In 1835 it was bought a piece of land that was used as a cemetery until 1936. After the intensification of anti-Semitic attacks, the cemetery was took over by the state and the space used for various destinations, among others as a garage. As in many cases in Brandenburg, Prenzlau for instance, the stones were took away by the locals and used for their own constructions.

There are no Jews or signs of Jewish presence in the nowadays Angermünde, only a short historical mention about their presence here, installed in 1996.

Jewish memories in Hamburg: Otto and Paul Lang

The - sometimes strong - connection between national socialism and sport, especially in the case of the big sport associations is not yet fully explored. One of such cases is the famous and extremely popular FC Pauli in Hamburg. In the 1930s, many players of Jewish origin were either dismissed from their sport clubs or simply encouraged to do so by themselves.

One such a case are the brothers Lang, Otto and Paul, in whose honour a memorial stone was inaugurated a couple of years ago. The memorial stays at the entrance to the stadium. 

Both of them had an important contribution to the development of the local rugby. They left FC Pauli in 1933, the clear conditions of the departure not being documented in full details. 

Otto left shortly after Germany via Antwerp, from where he moved in the United States where he died in 2003. His brother, Paul, stayed in Germany and was deported to KZ Theresienstadt in 1945. He survived and returned to Hamburg after the war, where he died in 2003.

Lena Gorelik's box of memories

Long time ago, what I knew about Russian Jews in Germany what the result of some articles published in various publications, whose main treat was the sadness of being poor, often refused - as it was not enough to be a refusenik once - and marginalized by both the Germans and the local Jewish organizations. My big question - not yet fully answered - was why to decide going to Germany instead of using your free ticket to Israel.

Little by little, I learned not only to appreciate them - especially after reading many interesting books about the hard resistance to keep Yiddishkeit alive - but to simply understand their specificities and their specific cases. I met many BT in their early 40s, with secular background but a desire to grow permanently and to learn more and more about Judaism. And last but not least, who are very proud that their children are the first generation of frum Russian Jews, with ahavat Yisroel and desire to learn in yeshiva and create Jewish homes. Somehow, their generation made the transition to a new generation a better Jews. 

There are not too many young Russian Jewish authors in Germany more active than Lena Gorelik. She writes book after book, in German, with a lot of humour and creative inspiration. I've read at least four of her books and even though some of the subjects may repeat and the main topic is always the same, I never got bored. She can be funny, serious, engaged and informtive at the same time. Her books are not only good documentaries about the life of Jews in Germany in the last decades, but also about the identity of Russian Jews and their interesting background and the normality of their struggle to recognition and acception of what they are. Understanding is the first step towards tolerance, and Lena Gorelik is doing a good job of using her talent of creative writing in this direction. She has the simplicity of her personal stories and a strong voice that brings to light children stories and more recent memories. 

I am not sure if she is much known outside Germany or if her books were translated, but she represents a new wave of strong voices of the Russian Jews in Germany. And, of the Jewish literary life.