JEWS IN CONTEMPORARY EAST GERMANY

JEWS IN CONTEMPORARY EAST GERMANY

Jews in Contemporary East Germany The Children of Moses in The Land of Marx Robin Ostow Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-10156-6 ISBN 978-1-349-10154-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10154-2 Robin Ostow, 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1989 978-0-333-46299-7 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1989 ISBN 978-0-312-03118-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ostow, Robin. Jews in contemporary East Germany: the children of Moses in the land of Marx/Robin Ostow. p. cm. Includes transcriptions of twelve taped interviews, nine being translations from the German. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-03118-3 1. Jews--Germany (East)-History. 2. Holocaust survivors -Germany (East)-History. 3. Germany (East)-Ethnic relations. I. Title. DS135.G332085 1989 943.1'004924---dc19 89-30606 elp

This book is dedicated to Natascha, Naomi and Nurit

Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Survival and Metamorphosis: The History of the Jewish Community of East Berlin Part I The Jewish Community Seen from Within 2 The Jewish Community in East Berlin Dr Peter Kirchner 3 Social Work and the Jewish Community Sonja Berne 4 The Jewish Community and the Preservation of Jewish Culture in East Berlin Dr Hermann Simon 5 A Newcomer to the Jewish Community Dr Irene Runge 6 Jewish Education and the Jewish Youth in East Berlin Gerrit Kirchner Part II The Jews in the Party: The Quality of their Jewishness and their View of the Jewish Community 7 A Yiddish Folksinger in the Bosom of the Party Jalda Rehling 61 8 A Jewish Existentialist at the Academy of Sciences Dr Vincent von Wroblewsky 73 9 Returning to Berlin from the Soviet Union Clara Berliner 83 10 Jews, Germans, and Psychotherapy in the German Democratic Republic Dr Alfred Katzenstein 91 11 From Germany to the German Democratic Republic via Palestine, France and the USA Dr Ursula Katzenstein 103 ix 1 13 25 35 43 55 vii

VIII Contents Part III Two Interviews Conducted in West Berlin 12 The View from West Berlin Thomas Eckert 13 The Unorthodox View of Jewish History in the German Democratic Republic Helmut Eschwege 127 14 Afterword The German Democratic Republic and its Jewish Community Postscript An East-West Simchat Torah, East Berlin, Notes Bibliography Glossary Index October 1987 113 141 149 155 159 163 166

Acknowledgements It goes without saying that this kind of project could be carried out only with strong support on both sides of the 'Iron Curtain'. My work benefited immensely from the advice, help, and encouragement of many people and institutions on two continents, although I assume final responsibility for the text. The first thanks go to those most directly involved; the interviewees, the Internationales Pressezentrum, and the Jewish Community in East Berlin for their gracious cooperation. The transcription, translation and editing of the twelve tapes and the research for the first and last chapters were generously supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The American Jewish Committee, the American Joint Distribution Committee, and the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, and the Library of the Jewish Community in West Berlin all offered me access to their documentary resources, and their staff members provided much-appreciated advice and help. Thomas Sandberg of East Berlin provided several of the photos. In Berlin, West Germany, and Switzerland, ideas and encouragement in various forms came from David Bathrick, Claus Offe, Friedemann Buttner, Hajo Funke, Jochen Blaschke, Franz and Verena von Hammerstein, Aron Bodenheimer, Monika Richarz, Annegret Ehmann, Klaus Scheurenberg, Tom Strauss, and Eva Kaminer. Thanks also to Julius Schoeps and the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German Jewish History. In Toronto Gregory Baum, Robert Brym, Gerry Gold, Frances Henry, Klaus Hermann, lwona Irwin Zarecka, Margie Wolfe, Gail Bennick and Meyer Symiotyckie provided support and suggestions, especially in the later phases of developing the raw interviews and data into a book. Cordula Hacke and Edith Dierker transcribed the tapes, Shirley Fulford typed the final text, William Cunningham provided technical assistance, and Campus Reproductions handled the photocopying. In the USA many thanks are due to Frank Mecklenburg, Michael Riff and Marion Kaplan at the Leo Baeck Institute, Gene Du Bow at the American Jewish Committee, and Denise Gluck at the American Joint Distribution Committee; also to Kurt Wolff, George Ross, Gerson Cohen, Eli Ginzberg, Gerry Bubis, Phyllis Freeman, Shari Friedman, and to my parents Miriam and Mortimer Ostow. I also wish to thank my editors, Simon Winder and Susan Kemp at Macmillan, and Annalisa Vivieni at Jiidische Verlag bei Atheniium, for the energy, skill and care with which they turned my manuscript into a book. IX

X Acknowledgements Michael Bodemann is responsible for the fact that I ever got to East Berlin. He read and commented on every chapter, supplied photos for the book, and put up with endless discussions of what Jewish life in the GDR is (and is not) all about. My children Natascha, Naomi, and Nurit graciously accommodated themselves to my work schedule and itinerary. They are the reason for undertaking this kind of project in the first place. Finally, there are three people without whom this enterprise would have been impossible. They prefer to remain anonymous, but they know who they are, what they have accomplished, and how much it is appreciated. Robin Ostow Berlin