Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II, and: A Letter to My Children: From the Edge of the Holocaust (review)

In the introduction to her new book about the Jews of postwar Germany, Ruth Gay writes: "The mourning for the dead of the Holocaust seems to have preempted the place of the living and left a strange lack of interest in history both before and after the Nazi period" (p. xiii). This statement may come as a surprise to those aware of the avalanche of books on the period before and after the Holocaust.¹ No matter. Gay's well-written account of the renewal of Jewish life in Germany from l945 to 2000, and the ensuing problems of identity, is for the general reader rather than the specialist. Although the book covers little new ground, Gay cleverly gathers various sources and presents a social history that is a pleasure to read. She describes the pioneer groups of this contentious community in some detail: the concentration camp survivors, the German Jews who came out of hiding, and the Jews who had fled Eastern Europe after the war and who by l946 constituted the majority of the displaced persons under U.S. Army control. Gay updates the story (albeit somewhat superficially) with the arrival of 75,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s, a group that now constitutes by far the largest number of Jews in Germany.

Her most interesting chapters describe the rebirth of Berlin's Jewish community as well as the tensions between the Eastern European Jews, who despised all things German, and the German Jews, who owed their lives to their "Aryan" spouses and other courageous Germans. Her colorful descriptions of various personalities in Berlin are especially striking. One anecdote concerns the 1947 return of 295 former Jewish Berliners from Shanghai. The group was warmly welcomed by Berlin Mayor Ferdinand Friedensburg, but newsreels showing footage of the arrival "elicited noisy outbursts of anti-Semitism from audiences all across the city," clearly demonstrating the gap between official and popular attitudes among the German population at the time (pp. 171-73).

Another evocative anecdote concerns Yehudi Menuhin's visit to Berlin in September l947. The U.S. Army invited the world-famous violinist to perform for the benefit of a German children's charity under the baton of the brilliant but extremely controversial Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin, a well-meaning naïf, wanted to make a gesture of reconciliation and to "normalize" relations between Jews and Germans. He later recalled that he had thought it perfectly appropriate to play with Furtwängler, "who had been cleared of outright collaboration and...was back in the place of honor. As I had imagined...to play the greatest German music with this greatest of German conductors was an experience of almost religious intensity. I came down from the clouds to find myself a traitor." The concert caused an uproar among Eastern European Jews in Berlin. Menuhin's scheduled performance the next day for Jewish DPs was boycotted. The DPs were not quite ready for "reconciliation" with the Germans. Their spokesman, Eliahu Yones, addressed Menuhin in Yiddish:

We the people and you have no language in common. Therefore, instead of talking to each other, let us imagine ourselves walking down the streets of Berlin. When you, the artist, observe the ruins you will say: "What a pity that so much that was beautiful was destroyed." When we who lost our families see the same ruins, we will say: "What a pity that so much remains standing" .²

(pp. 195-98)

Gay understands the nuances of cultural difference and conflict, and she avoids overstressing the larger political context except insofar as it bears directly on...