The partitioning of Germany into occupied areas was, in effect, the beginning of the political division of the state which endured until 1989. Each of the Allied powers advanced its interests in the area under its control
Letter of First German Ambassador, Rolf Pauls, to Chava Steinitz (Buber)
Some of the Israeli public opposed the establishment of relations
The Student Demonstration against the Nazis and against Anti-Semitism, Munich, 1960
“It is impossible to define anti-Semitic activity as a prank. It is directed not only against the Jewish citizens who live with us, but against the basic rights of our country. What is called for is not punishment, but education!”
Marcel Reich-Ranicki and the German Literature
Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013), a Polish-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, was the preeminent authority in modern literary criticism in Germany
David Ben Gurion Meets Conrad Adenauer in New York, 1960
At the beginning of 1960, Israeli and West German leaders decided that it was time for a certain détente. This took the form of an official meeting between the two head statesmen: David Ben Gurion and Konrad Adenauer
Postcard from Curt David Wormann to Felix Weltsch, 1955
Who was Curt Wormann? What was he doing in Germany just ten years after the end of the war? And who was Felix Weltsch?
Erich Kästner’s Poems in Hebrew, 1965
Kästner sympathized with the Zionist idea and even visited Israel a number of times. Some of his books were translated into Hebrew already in the 1930s
Theodor Heuss in Jerusalem
“The Germans must not forget what was done during these shameful years. […] Nobody, absolutely no one, will relieve us from that shame.”
First Auschwitz Trial in Germany, 1963-1965
In keeping with the legal interpretation accepted at the time in Germany, there was a statue of limitations on every act of Nazis against Jews and against people with anti-Nazi views, with the exception of murder. Through these documents, it was possible to connect concrete murder cases with concrete people, enabling a legal investigation against the perpetrators.
The German Martin and the Jewish Mordechai: A Meeting between Buber and Heidegger, 1957
For over fifty years, hiding away in the Mordechai Martin Buber’s archives was a series of photographs in an envelope, labeled: “unidentified.” Did the hand that wrote this, and chose to archive these photos, do so intentionally, out of a fear of the visual representation, the unequivocal and patently clear proof of the friendly meeting between Buber and Martin Heidegger? And why did this meeting become a fact that needed to be played down, if not enshrouded in a fog of uncertainty?
