BERLIN (dpa) – The wind howls across a snowbound patch of land the size of a soccer field in Berlin where the Holocaust Memorial will one day serve as a powerful reminder of the past.
At the desolate site, visited by flocks of crows scavenging for winter food, visitors will find a billboard about preserving the memory of Germany’s bleakest chapter, the murder of six million Jews in World War II.An elderly man from New York is close to tears as he peers at the site, close to the historic Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, the German lower house of parliament.“It would have made more sense had the memorial been built 30 or 40 years ago. But still, perhaps it will help future generations understand the enormity of what occurred during the Nazi era,” he says, as he walks away in the direction of the nearby Unter den Linden boulevard.Work on realising American architect Peter Eisenman’s controversial design, featuring some 2,700 concrete pillars, is due to start soon.For years after 1939-45 war, only a few of Jews who survived the horrors of Nazism chose to return to Berlin. Most preferred to head to the United States, England, France, and Canada, hoping to shed the memory of what had gone before.German-Jewish reconciliation was a painfully slow process. By the end of the 1960s there were fewer than 6,000 Jews to be found in Berlin, whereas prewar the figure had been close to 500,000.But now the pattern has changed. As many as 20,000 Jews a year have been arriving in Germany in recent years, most of them from the former Soviet Union, says Irene Runge of the Jewish Cultural Association in Berlin.Estimates say as many as 140,000 to 150,000 Jews may be living in Germany now. Most settle in and around the nation’s big cities, such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Duesseldorf, Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig, after brief spells at often isolated reception centres.In Moscow, thousands of Jews are eager to emigrate to Germany or Israel, the two countries that open doors for them. Waiting lists are long with applications sometimes taking five years to be processed.“Every time someone leaves, someone else joins the waiting list,” says Mrs. Runge, a perky middle-aged woman who speaks English with a strong American accent.Berlin’s Jewish Community has doubled in size in the past decade, and now boasts between 12,000 to 13,000 members, making it the biggest in Germany.More than a decade ago the fear was that the ageing Jewish community might die out by the early part of this century. But the communist East Bloc collapse and fall of the Berlin Wall led to a dramatic transformation.With the Wall’s demise the trickle soon became a torrent, paving the way for a welcome revival of activity in the Jewish community. Today, Berlin has eight synagogues and more than a dozen Jewish restaurants and businesses.The city also has several Jewish cemeteries, the largest of them at Weissensee in northeast Berlin. It is also the biggest in Europe and some of its gravestones date back to the 17th century.While the city can never hope to have the Jewish flavour it enjoyed back in the 1920s, Jewish tradition does live on in Berlin.Runge says Germany is now embarking on the task of transforming itself into a nation of immigrants. “While they like the concept of Jewish immigration, the problems start when they have to deal with real people,” she said.“The Russian Jews don’t fit in,” Runge added. “They don’t look Jewish for a start. They want to eat Sushi on the Kurfuerstendamm (western Berlin’s elegant boulevard).” Many new arrivals have skills, but face problems obtaining work because they don’t speak German.Julius Schoeps, a Jewish historian working in Potsdam, southeast of Berlin, notes the change in the structure of the Jewish community today. “New members,” he says, “ask for rights, for Russian prayer in the synagogues.”Integrating new arrivals takes time, he says, but for the next generation it will be easier. “They will become known as German Jews with an east European background.”Hermann Simon, who heads the “Centrum Judaicum” – the name given to the now splendidly restored, golden-domed, pre-war synagogue on the central Oranienburgerstrasse, agrees. He admits that early Russian arrivals did cause them headaches at first.“But they are a great hope for the Jewish Community. In ten years’ time they will all be integrated and we’ll be discussing other topics,” he argues.Since the mid-1990s, a small but thriving Jewish business community has emerged in the city. Jewish-run restaurants, bars and shops are to be found on and around the Oranienburgerstrasse – Berlin’s old Jewish quarter.Currently, Andreas Nachama, 48, a historian formerly in charge of the Topography of Terror Foundation, in Berlin, is the city’s Jewish community leader. He is seeking re-election later this month.While critical of the German authorities for “failing to curb anti-foreigner violence and neo-Nazi activity in the country”, he remains optimistic about the Jewish community’s future.“People sometimes say we’re the last remaining Jews here, whereas the truth is our community is expanding in size, confirming our view that there is a future for Jewish life in Berlin,” Nachama says.
