A Jewish Family in Germany Today: An Intimate Portrait (review)

Today it is still easier to find a good book on the Jews in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) than to find one on the Jews in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Several factors account for this imbalance, perhaps most important among them the small size of the East German community. Historians usually prefer manageable quantities of material, and the documents produced by or on the approximately 400 Jews in the former GDR seem less overwhelming than the abundance of sources on their co-religionists west of the border. At the same time, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and community leaders in Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin have never been known for their particularly liberal approach to their own historicization. What we have, therefore, is limited to a number of good monographs on the early period of West German Jewish history, several edited volumes containing ambitious theoretical pieces, and collections of interviews that seek to divulge the psychology of post-Holocaust Jewry in the FRG. Y. Michal Bodemann's A Jewish Family in Germany Today is an addition to the latter field—and a very good one at that.

The author belongs to a small group of scholars who have sought to conceptualize the nature of Jewish community life after the war. As do Dan Diner and Micha Brumlik, the sociologist Bodemann paints with a broad brush, providing valuable insights into the nature of Jewish existence, suggesting patterns or trends that other scholars can then attempt to verify, and addressing problems that Jewish politicians are not wont to advertise. In the introduction to his volume, Bodemann outlines several periods that he believes were formative in West German Jewish life after 1945. The first, ending in 1951, revolved around reconstitution; the second, lasting until 1969, witnessed the emergence of "bureaucratic patronage" and the growing isolation of Jews from German society; the third, comprising the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by "representationism," stagnation, and youth emigration to Israel. In the final period, from 1989 onward, massive immigration from the former Soviet Union accompanied a "renascence" of Jewish life. While these temporal distinctions remain suggestive, the author does not follow them up in the main text. Indeed, in the interviews we are often confronted with opinions that seem to contradict the author's periodizations. For example, isolation in the shape of withdrawing "into a cocoon" (p. 4) began early on, as did the sense that Jewish representatives to German authority headed an otherwise indifferent community. Neither do the interviewees allude to a renascence—a term that is perhaps too reminiscent of the Weimar period, when vocal groups within the 600,000-strong community endeavored to bring about cultural renewal.

The main section of the book is devoted to the lives of three brothers, all survivors of Auschwitz, who settled in the Franconian town of "F." Bodemann focuses particularly on Albert, the eldest, and his wife, daughter, and four sons. It is in this story that some of the author's earlier contentions become significant. Thus, as Bodemann emphasizes at the outset, displaced persons tended to remain aloof from German society, hoping to leave as soon as possible. Accordingly, many DPs concentrated on making money, often engaging in short-term, quick-return business ventures, such as real estate, that would allow for easy liquidation and swift emigration. Likewise, many survivors, left homeless and bereft of relatives, invested much of their energy in establishing new families, who were to shield them from a hostile environment and at the same time demonstrate Jewish resilience. Albert's house, protected by a high fence, testifies to this view, as does his refusal to associate regularly with local businessmen.

The most interesting aspect of the interviews is how differently Albert's children have dealt with the German-Jewish predicament. Berthold, for example, claims that he witnessed no antisemitism in school, though he would never call himself German. Esther and Salek...