Germany the Jews and Israel

Germany, the Jews and Israel: An Evolving Exhibition.
A number of significant milestones relating to German history are currently being commemorated around the world including 100 years since the outbreak of World War I; 75 years since the outbreak of World War II and 70 years since its conclusion; 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall; and 50 years since the beginning of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany.

The period between 1914 and 1989 saw Germany in its vicissitudes. World War I ended in massive defeat and hyperinflation, though it also precipitated the rise of the first true democracy in German history and the “Golden Age” of the 1920s, shortly followed by the Nazis’ rise to power, the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust. The defeat of the Nazis, in turn, led to the partition of Germany and its ultimate reunification at the end of the Cold War. The reparations agreements between Israel and Germany and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries are both significant historical events in and of themselves.

Twentieth-century German and Jewish histories are closely intertwined in a complex relationship. Jews historically played an active role as part of the German nation. They were active in politics and economics, played a seminal role in culture, and were victims of the darkest chapters in German history. It is not at all surprising that in existing historiography, there is a strong interest in the “German-Jewish symbiosis” and its failure. Today, years later, the general population in Israel has taken a renewed interest in German history and culture. Israeli tourism to Germany, and mainly to Berlin, is a well-known phenomenon, but it is also only one expression of this renewed interest, and of a re-examination of this complex history at the dawn of the 21st century.

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?

Letter of the Author Moshe Yaakov Ben Gavriel to His Friend in Germany regarding the Future German Ambassador to Israel, 1963

Among the letters preserved in his personal archive in the National Library one can find correspondences with individuals in Germany discussing the question of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries

The Author Moshe Yaakov Ben Gavriel and the Red Army Faction Activist Gudrun Ensslin

During those years, an underground organization of activists from the radical German left was established, which operated against the West German government by carrying out a long series of terrorist acts, kidnappings, hijackings and robberies

Munich Olympics

Massacre of the Israeli Athletes on German Soil

The Reparations Agreement of 1952 and the response in Israel

Not only did many German citizens have reservations about the agreement-in-process. Considerable portions of the Israeli public were also unprepared to accept neither the very concept of negotiations with Germany nor the funds from the “land of the murderers,” which was defined by opponents as “blood money.”