Recently the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a mass immigration of European Jews to Israel:
“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday in Jerusalem. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” he added.
It is unlikely that many Jews living in Germany will heed Netanyahu's call. On the contrary, young Israelis are today moving to Berlin in droves. It is hard to imagine what the Federal Republic of Germany would be today without the contribution of Jews. And it is astonishing that so many Jews who were forced to flee Germany for their lives, whose families were murdered by Germans, chose to return to Germany in order to help create a modern democracy. Mischa Brumlik, writing in Die Tageszeitung, reminds of us these incredibly brave souls who contributed so much to every aspect of German society in the early days of the Bundesrepulik.
Sie waren bewusst zurückgekehrt, um ein besseres Deutschland aufzubauen: Die sozialdemokratische Bundestagsabgeordnete Jeannette Wolff, der Regierende Bürgermeister von Hamburg, Herbert Weichmann, der nordrhein-westfälische Justizminister Josef Neuberger, der hessische Generalstaatsanwalt Fritz Bauer, der mit dem Frankfurter Auschwitzprozess die moralische Selbstaufklärung der deutschen Gesellschaft über den millionenfachen Mord an den europäischen Juden in die Wege leitete, der kompromisslose Mahner Heinz Galinski.
Contributions to the Arts and Humanities:
So sind aus dem literarischen, wissenschaftlichen und filmisch-dramatischen Werk zu nennen: etwa die um 1920 geborene Lyrikerin und Romanautorin Hilde Domin oder der Kritiker Marcel Reich-Ranicki, der Drehbuchautor und Regisseur Peter Lilienthal, der Produzent Arthur Brauner, die Schriftsteller Wolfgang Hildesheimer und Edgar Hilsenrath, die Theaterregisseure Peter Zadek und George Tabori, Philosophen und Kulturwissenschaftler wie Ernst Bloch, Michael Landmann, Werner Marx und Friedrich Georg Friedmann, der Soziologe Alphons Silbermann, der Publizist Ralf Giordano, der Literaturwissenschaftler Hans Mayer – die Erfahrung von KZ, erzwungener Emigration sowie Vernichtung nächster Angehöriger ist aus der Gründung der Bundesrepublik nicht wegzudenken.
Mischa Brumlik pays tribute to many more Jewish thinkers, scientists and politicians in the article.
Understandably, for some Jewish intellectuals, the thought of returning to Germany after the war was too traumatic. The German-born poet Nelly Sachs, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature, would never return, and had a nervous breakdown when she accepted a prize in Switzerland and heard German spoken.
Recently, I wrote about the poet Mascha Kaléko, who, after the war, moved to Jerusalem rather than returning to Germany. She never felt at home in Israel, and died homesick for her beloved Berlin.
