I have spent my childhood living in Germany as a practicing German Jew. This idea is very difficult for some of my American friends to comprehend, because they are scared to find out that it is exactly what it sounds like. My Oma und Opa were survivors of the Concentration and Death Camps in the Holocaust and my family has a deeply rooted Jewish history. After telling them of my family background, I receive many looks of sympathy and sorrow because they thought that I was treated unfairly for practicing Judaism in Germany. They may have been right, but in reality I never knew, because outside of my family I was not allowed to identify as Jewish, only as German. My dad would tell me “Nobody needs to know that we celebrate Hannukah and Passover.” I always wondered why this was, and now I realize that there is still anti-Semitism in Germany today.
A picture of the current Neo-Nazi, Skin Head population in Germany today.
The development of anti-Semitism in Germany is very interesting because it has changed in the times before the war, during the war, immediately after the war, during the Berlin Wall, and finally, during my childhood in the 90s. It is ironic that before the war, just like me during my childhood, German Jews living in Germany did not identify as Jewish, only as German, and it was Hitler who turned them into Jews (Peck, Jeffrey M.). After the worst forms of anti-Semitism during the Third Reich came to an end, the Allied powers worked together on Entnazifizierung. However, the prejudices against Jewish people did not go away over night. This had a lot to do with the massive Nazi Propaganda that had a large effect on the younger citizens during Hitler’s regime. On the other hand, the citizens of the two Germanys had to be careful that they were being anti-Semitic without emitting illegal forms of Nazism. During the years following the war, the Jewish community in Germany was in the process of re-establishing themselves. Since the Jewish survivors from the camps were displaced all throughout Europe with little connections to their families and communities, this was very difficult. As they were making progress in connecting with each other all over Germany, the building of the Berlin Wall unfortunately separated them once again. While anti-Semitism was still present at this time, it was kept more discreet within racial groups and it became harder for non-Jews to distinguish Jewish people in society because they made an effort to blend in more. After the fall of the wall, anti-Semitic beliefs changed from “the hatred of Jews” to “the abnormality of being Jewish”. It was not normal to be a Jew in Germany, thus you were not hated, but you were not as loved and accepted as regular German Christian citizens either. This is because Jews were now a symbol for all questions concerning the tolerance of German people towards others (Peck, Jeffrey M.). I believe that Germans made more of an effort to set an example for a new way of accepting different races in Germany and coming to terms with the past. Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the development of anti-Semitism are very much intertwined.
The video below demonstrates the current ways of anti-semitism in Germany:
The term "Jude" is used very lightly as a non-chalant insult in Germany today. Although the efforts to eliminate anti-Semitism are strong, there will always be a controversial idea associated with the word "Jude".
The question: “How do you memorialize something like the Holocaust?” is one that has never been questioned in my mind until now. I only knew the experience of my grandparents after the war and their hatred for, well…everyone. I never thought about how the members of the Third Reich and the followers of Hitler could come to terms with the past. Anti-Semitism played a large role, because many organizations, such as the Neo-Nazis, use anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial as a way of forgetting the Holocaust but remembering and trying to exercise the political ideas of the Third Reich. Another major factor in Vergangenheitsbewältigung is the issue of collective guilt within Germany. Some of the regular modern German citizens feel guilt that they believe they shouldn’t feel, but can’t help feeling, and the only way to cope with it is not to think about it. The memory must be kept alive without living in misery, but at the same time the past will always be there in some way or another, and this is why Vergangenheitsbewältigung and anti-Semitism are such controversial topics.
It seems that the development of anti-Semitism in Germany has made a full circle, because it was not normal to be Jewish in Germany before the war, and still during my childhood. Although there were many extremist forms of it in between these times, I believe Germany can never again become what it was during the Third Reich. The concepts of Jewish-German Identity and Vergangenheitsbewältigung play a large role in anti-Semitism in post war Germany
A curent image of the Swastika Symbol spray painted on the gravestones of Holocaust Survivors.
A grotesque image of the Jew depicted in Nazi propaganda "der ewige Jude", meaning the eternal Jew. This picture suggests the eternal anti-Semitic ideas that will be associated with Jews in any way.
A curent image of the Swastika Symbol spray painted on the gravestones of Holocaust Survivors.
Sources:
1. Knight, Ben, ed. Deutsche Welle. N.p., 29 Sept. 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2012. <http://www.dw.de/new-wave-of-anti-semitism-in-berlin/a-16272971-1>.
2. Peck, Jeffrey M. Being Jewish in the New Germany. Washington D.C: German Historical Institute, 2006. Print.
