Germany

Angela Merkel honoured for opposing antisemitism

Zoe Winograd — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:27:36 +0100

German chancellor Angela Merkel has been awarded the Lord Jakobovits Prize for European Jewry by the Conference of European Rabbis.

At a ceremony in Brussels on Wednesday Ms Merkel was honoured for her support of the German Jewish community and her outspoken denunciation of anti s emitism throughout Europe.

CER president, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said: "Chancellor Merkel is a worthy recipient in recognition of her continuing efforts of inter-communal harmony across Europe, her friendship towards the Jewish community and outstanding contributions to the promotion of tolerance and understanding."

Receiving the award , Ms Merkel said: “We must learn to talk to one another and not to about one another... Freedom needs to be defended anew every day. I am deeply moved to have received this prize and I see it as an encouragement as there is much work still to be done across Europe.”

She also stressed the importance of Holocaust education. "The fight against anti-semitism is a paramount duty of a free democratic state."

Ms Merkel has been recognised for her efforts to protect the religious practice of circumcision which has been under threat in Germany.

Holocaust-themed Tannhauser cancelled

Sandy Rashty — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:15:28 +0100

A Holocaust-themed production of Wagner opera was cancelled last week after its traumatic scenes caused a number of guests to seek medical help.

The Dusseldorf opera’s version of Tannhauser included scenes of rape, suicide and a family having their heads shaved before they were shot. Some guests were so distressed that they were treated for shock.

A spokesperson for the opera house confirmed that “some scenes, especially the firing-squad sequence, proved such a intolerable burden for numerous members of the audience that they were subsequently obliged to undergo medical treatment.”

The spokesperson added that the opera house had asked stage director Burkhard C Kosminski to tone down the performance but, “citing the freedom of art, he has refused.

“Deutsche Oper am Rhein cannot and will not accept responsibility [if there are] possibly grave effects on its guests. The freedom of art is valid only as long as the personal safety of individuals is not in danger.”

Michael Szentei-Heise, head of the Jewish community in Dusseldorf, told Associated Press that the production was “tasteless and not legitimate. This opera has nothing to do with the Holocaust.”

Wagner, widely regarded as an antisemite, was one of Adolf Hitler’s favourite composers.

The production will now only be performed as a concert and current ticket holders have been offered a refund.

After $57m trial, claims body is still under fire

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:30:44 +0100

As if the convictions in the $57.3 million (£37.6m) fraud case that was wound up in a Manhattan federal court last week were not enough, it was alleged on Tuesday that top officials at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany were warned about the criminal activity nearly a decade before they called in external investigators.

The fraud was perpetrated over two decades and, of the 31 people convicted, 10 were former Claims Conference employees. Semen Domnitser — one of only three to plead not guilty who were on trial last week — was himself the director of the defrauded programmes between 1999 and 2010. It emerged in the trial that Domnitser had helped people falsely apply for funds from two major programmes.

The Forward has now claimed that a whistleblowing letter was seen by senior leaders of the Conference in 2001. The accusations it contained were corroborated by a preliminary internal investigation but further action was deterred by Domnitser until the federal investigation in 2009.

Clearly, the Claims Conference, one of the most important Jewish institutions in the post-Holocaust world, which has disbursed around $70 billion since its foundation in 1951, must now answer some serious questions about its governance and oversight.

The organisation released a statement in the wake of the trial saying that “Deloitte was hired by the German government to review the processing systems for both individual compensation programmes and homecare allocations, identify any potential weaknesses and recommend improvements.”

A “packet of recommendations”, it said, had already been adopted or were in the process of being adopted.

The questions of how the fraud went on undetected for 15 years — and how the warning went unheeded — remain unanswered. As of going to press, Greg Schneider, current executive director and former chief operating officer; Gideon Taylor, then the executive director; and Julius Berman, the chairman of the conference, had not provided any answers.

The Claims Conference has no doubt required a large bureaucracy to achieve its two aims — to secure funds from governments responsible for post-Holocaust compensation and to distribute that money to victims and survivors.

However, the organisation appears to have fallen down in its management of that bureaucracy.

The scale of its achievements is vast. The Conference secured collaboration between a large number of representatives of the institutions of world Jewry, raised money from German governments before and after unification and established myriad programmes to recognise the ways victims suffered.

But it has come under fire in recent years. A former chairman of the board of the WJC, Isi Leibler, has been a voluble critic of the Conference’s lack of independent oversight and recently suggested that the $57.3m fraud might be the tip of an iceberg.

It remains to be seen how the Conference responds to his accusations and how effectively it will be able to clean its own house.

Cancelling Holocaust opera is 'censorship’, claims German director

Sandy Rashty — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:20:35 +0100

A German director has described the decision to cancel his Holocaust-themed opera production as "censorship".

Director Burkhard C Kosminski's modern production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser, which held its opening night at the Rheinoper in Düsseldorf, was cancelled last week after its traumatic scenes caused a number of guests to seek medical help.

Despite initial protests from the opera house, director Mr Kosminski reportedly insisted on a realistic portrayal of atrocities at a concentration camp "for artistic reasons", an opera house spokesperson told the BBC.

Graphic scenes included rape, suicide and a family having their heads shaved before they were shot.

Some guests were subsequently treated for shock.

"There was heckling during the performance," Mr Kosminski told Der Spiegel news. "When I bowed during the applause, there was a chorus of boos mixed with many bravos. At the premier party I was insulted heavily."

A spokesperson for the opera house added that “some scenes were depicted very realistically [and caused] psychological and physical stress."

Michael Szentei-Heise, head of the Jewish community in Dusseldorf, told the Associated Press that the production was "tasteless and not legitimate.

"This opera has nothing to do with the Holocaust. However, I think the audience has made this very clear to the opera and the producer."

But the theater director insisted that: "the Jewish Community did not demand that the performance be withdrawn. My staging doesn't ridicule victims, but rather mourns them.

"What happened in Düsseldorf is the censorship of art. That is the actual scandal."

Wagner, who is widely regarded as an antisemite, was one of Adolf Hitler’s favourite musicians. Israelis still refrain from playing his music.

The production will now only be performed in concert.

Next week, the Wagner 200 festival will launch in London to commemorate the bicenturary of the man who wrote the antisemitic essay 'Judaism in Music' - likening the Jewish influence on culture to a "swarming colony of maggots" .

Wagner, who was said to inspire Hitler's concept of the "master race", once declared that "all Jews should burn to death".

The festival will launch next week and run until November.

Dresden gets rabbi back, 70 years after the Shoah

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:00:43 +0100

Last week was a historical one in Dresden. The Jüdische Gemeinde zu Dresden, the Jewish congregation in the city, finally got its rabbi back — more than 70 years after Rabbi Albert Wolf had to flee Dresden and Germany.

And as if to underscore that this is a moment of renewal, the new rabbi, Alexander Nachama, is just 29 years old.

How does Rabbi Nachama feel about it? “Good. But I don’t actually feel so young in this position,” he said. He was ordained by the non-denominational Aleph Rabbinic Programme in the US and graduated from the Abraham-Geiger-Kolleg Rabbinic Seminar at Potsdam University. “As a child in Berlin, I held pretend worship services and started to lead prayers in the synagogue when I was 14.”

Rabbi Nachama’s installation took place in the Dresden synagogue. The young rabbi is now part of a significant family tradition. His grandfather, Estrongo, who was widely known for his expressive singing, survived Auschwitz and became chief cantor for the Jewish congregation in Berlin after the war. Alexander’s father, Andreas, who was present at his induction, is a rabbi in the German capital.

Young Rabbi Nachama stresses that he stands on his own two feet as a congregation leader in Dresden. Before the Second World War, there were more than 5,000 Jewish inhabitants in the city. By 1945, only a few were left. Rabbi Nachama now aims to engage the younger generation of Jews so that the congregation, which today has 720 members, can keep growing.

The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dr Dieter Graumann, sees Rabbi Nachama’s installation as part of a positive trend: “The growing numbers of both female and male rabbis show how the Jewish congregations in Germany once more blossom. Seventy years after the Shoah, this is close to a wonder, and we welcome it from the bottom of our hearts.”

‘Auschwitz cook’ arrested on war crimes charges

Zoe Winograd — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:25:41 +0100

A 93-year-old alleged SS member was arrested in Germany last night.

Hans Lipshis, who was taken into custody from his care home near Stuttgart, was accused of taking part in murder and genocide at Auschwitz.

The accused has admitted to working at the camp from 1941-1945 but has denied any knowledge of the killings that took place. He told reporters that he was a “cook for the entire time.”

Mr Lipshis was allegedly a member of the SS-Totenkopf Sturbann, which guarded the camp. He fled to the US in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983 after being accused of being a Nazi war criminal. The Lithuanian-born man was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of wanted Nazis a few weeks ago.

Director of the Simone Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem Efraim Zuroff said: “We welcome the arrest. I hope this will only be the first of many arrests, trials and convictions of death camp guards.”

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, commented: “More than anything, the arrest of Hans Lipschis sends out a clear message that old age and the passage of time are no barrier to the prosecution of alleged Nazi war criminals – that is exactly as it must be.”

Poland and Germany row over Shoah guilt

Marcus Dysch — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:00:22 +0100

A German television series and a Polish magazine have sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries amid arguments over antisemitism and war guilt.

Polish news weekly Uwazam Rze caused outrage after it depicted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a concentration camp prisoner in a front page image.

The magazine showed Mrs Merkel behind barbed wire wearing a striped inmate’s uniform alongside the headline “Falsification of history — how the Germans made themselves the victims of World War Two”.

The image came in response to controversy over a German television series broadcast last month called Our Mothers, Our Fathers. It focused on the story of five German families during the war and portrayed Polish resistance fighters as antisemitic. Characters included two brothers, a nurse, an aspiring female singer and a Jewish tailor. Jewish themes were key to the show, with the nurse shown to be coming to terms with her betrayal of a Jewish colleague, and the tailor forced to fight his own countrymen for survival.

Jerzy Marganski, Polish ambassador to Germany, complained that the series was “extremely unjust and offensive”.

In a letter to ZDF, which broadcast the series, Mr Marganski said he was “shocked” that the £12 million production had not looked at the Warsaw uprising or considered the role of Poles who had helped Jews.

But ZDF said it was based on “historically vetted material” and had aimed to create a national debate about war experiences. Producer Nico Hofmann said the portrayal was justified due to widespread antisemitism in Poland during the war.

Making art to ease the pain in a city of sorrow

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:32:27 +0100

I first came to Dresden in 1985 as part of a family “restitution” visit to my father’s birthplace of West Berlin. It was before the re-unification, the “change” as they call it there, and we crossed the Berlin Wall into the German Democratic Republic at Friedrichstrasse.

My mother was traumatised from her encounter with the border guards, so reminiscent of her flight from Germany in 1936. The brief visit to her beloved home city of Dresden, bombed by her “saviours” the British and at the time still largely unreconstructed, was a disaster and she died the following year following a severe breakdown.

I returned briefly to the city after re-unification, and in 2001 started to consider the plethora of family photos, documents and artefacts in my possession. As a British citizen, a Jew, whose parents had fled from the Nazis, my father having lost his entire family in the Holocaust, I was more than apprehensive about exploring these issues. As an artist I found it difficult to transform this powerful material into meaningful pieces of art. It took another 12 years to find the clarity of mind to return to Dresden and make work there.

The former East Germany is the historical home of printmaking; the Dresden Grafikwerkstatt, owned by the city, is a remarkable example of how this tradition is sustained. The excellently equipped workshop is staffed by an exceptional group of men, all highly trained under the GDR as master printers. Radical in outlook, they are a fund of knowledge not only about printmaking but about the city and its history.

I am working there for four weeks, making five large lithographs about my family and their lives up to the spring of 1936, when they left for London. I am working in a demanding, unorthodox and time consuming process on a large old offset litho press, initially making monoprints which are like paintings and superimposing photo-based images.

Besides making prints, my project also includes visiting research archives and participating in the commemoration of the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers on the February 13 1945. The anniversary is Dresden’s diem horribilem, in which the horrors of the past are exacerbated by the neo-Nazis attempts to hijack the occasion. It is a tense day of demonstrations by the right and counter-demonstrations and blockades, largely by young people. I will make this, as well as the destruction of the city, the subject of further work.

I am invited by the City of Dresden as their guest for the official commemorations. The group includes members of the Dresden Trust and John Witcombe, the new Dean of Coventry Cathedral. We are taken out of town to the wooded Heidefriedhof, the cemetery where many of the 25,000 victims of the destruction are buried. Picturesque in the deep snow this is a state occasion, with uniforms, immaculate white roses, a sole violin player and a significant police presence.

The mayor Helma Orosz is fierce in her commitment that the city reclaim this day from the neo–Nazis. This is a divisive point, for the right-wing NPD party are allowed to attend the ceremony and so it is boycotted by members of the Left and of the Jewish community. Roses are laid at the memorial and at the Rondel, where 14 pillars commemorate sites of atrocity from Coventry to Auschwitz.

By 5pm Dresden is swarming and there are 3,500 police on the streets. Orosz gives an upbeat speech and the crowds disperse to form the Menschen Kette, the symbolic human chain against extremism. I walk to the synagogue, where many of the 800-strong Jewish community are standing, including the young rabbi, Alexander Nachama. At 6pm, for 10 minutes the entire city is silent and at a standstill, blockaded by a human chain of over 10,000 men, women and children with linked arms.

At 9.45pm I stand on the Neumarkt — the New Market square — besides the rebuilt Frauenkirche, a giant candle projected on the cathedral’s baroque facade. Then every church bell in the city tolls for 15 minutes. This was the time on a warm spring-like night in 1945 when the first of 1,000 British Lancaster bombers appeared in the clear skies over the city. I feel strongly that I am not interested in apportioning blame or taking sides, only to join the vast majority of the citizens in the need to move peacefully forward.

Two days later I am invited by Rabbi Nachama for Friday evening service. The community, which had dwindled to 60 elderly members in 1989, has grown over tenfold, with most of the newcomers of Russian descent. For them, as for many Dresdners, the other significant date for commemoration is November 9 1989, the day the wall came down.

Their new synagogue is breathtakingly sparse and beautiful, the service largely sung and transliterated into German as few of the community read Hebrew. The lengthy kiddush reflects their roots, with borscht, baked potatoes, stuffed egg, herring and piroshki, a kind of Russian sandwich.

Dresden has numerous archives and quangos dedicated to its recent history and I am doing the rounds. They were largely developed since re-unification and are increasingly digitised. At every encounter my hesitant German is met with helpfulness and interest in my project. At the Saxon Memorial Foundation Gabi Atanassow, who works on the archive of Jews deported from Dresden, shows me our family files, and provides new pieces of the puzzle and leads to follow. She puts me in contact with my mother’s former school, the Gymnasium in Plauen, which would like to have copies of archive material I have to develop a project with its students. We also discuss the profound importance of I Shall Bear Witness, the three volumes of diaries by Victor Klemperer, the Jewish literature professor who chronicled events of the Nazi period in Dresden. The diaries reveal much about my grandparent’s and mother’s lives from 1933-36.

With Susanne Ritschel I discuss the Stolpersteine-Project, a European-wide effort to place small commemorative stones in pavements to commemorate victims of the Nazis. I am interested to have a “stumbling block” — for that is what it means — in front of my grandparents’ and mother’s last home in Dresden. Neither the street nor the house exists, but the archives show where it stood.

Dresden is full of ghosts for me and a palpable sense of tragedy seems to permeate the city. It is my hope that the artwork which will emerge from this visit will help to exorcise some of those ghosts.

Fury over failure to ban German neo-Nazi party

Toby Axelrod — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:30:00 +0000

Germany’s top Jewish leader is furious at the government for failing to go the extra mile to ban the country’s biggest neo-Nazi party.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government will not submit a petition to the Supreme Court supporting proceedings to ban the extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany, it was announced this week.

For the time being, this leaves the Bundestag alone in its efforts to ban the NPD, an anti-foreigner, antisemitic party that has some 5,800 members, according to recent estimates.

The membership numbers belie the fact that the NPD tries to influence a broad swathe of the population — especially disaffected youth — with its patriotic rhetoric. While some say court proceedings would only bring more attention to the neo-Nazis, others — like Dieter Graumann, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany - insist that the authorities must show brawn against anti-democratic movements like the NPD.

“The decision of the Federal Government is disappointing and politically completely wrong,” Mr Graumann said. “They chose hesitation and procrastination over courage and determination.”

Some lawmakers from opposition parties are now trying to gather enough support in the Bundestag to have a ban voted in, joining the Bundesrat, which decided in favour of a ban in December.

What irks many is the fact that the NPD, by virtue of having representatives two state legislatures, gets taxpayer cash. In 2011 they received about 1.32 million euros.

In 2003, the Supreme Court cancelled a probe aimed at banning the NPD after finding that government informants themselves had incited many of the illegal acts being investigated. Observers today warn that another failure would be devastating.

24 Hours in Frankfurt

Karen Glaser — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:00:36 +0000

Two hundred and twenty seven banks, countless skyscrapers and Europe’s third biggest airport. And it is the birthplace of Goethe, Anne Frank and Yiddishe sex therapist Ruth Westheimer. It is also the first German city to have a Jewish mayor.

MUST STAY: Maritim Hotel. Close to the historic festival hall and the famous Trade Fair Hall this hotel is an ideal starting point for a weekend city break. Its three restaurants offer some of the best dining in Frankfurt — miso soup and marinated pickles at 9am, anyone? Rooms are spacious, service is exemplary and there’s live music in the neon-lit cocktail bar. And because we are in Deutschland, the staff all speak English. www.maritim.de

MUST DRINK COFFEE: in Cafe Wacker in Kornmarkt 9, one of Frankfurt’s oldest coffee houses and the place where Frankfurt’s most famous son, Goethe, used to buy the family milk. Later in the day, have another caffeine shot in one of Frankfurt’s remaining literary cafes, The Laumer, which was established in 1919. The high-backed mahogany chairs and heavy linen table cloths are classic Old Middle Europe. And the apple strudel is to die for. www.cafelaumer.de

MUST EAT: Choose a restaurant on Fressgass or Schillerstrasse, Frankfurt’s car-free culinary mile, is a good place for lunch, but the Table Restaurant in the art gallery Schirn Kunstalle Frankfurt really is top-drawer. For dinner, amble down to Sachsenhausen, a historic district featuring pinched alleyways, half-timbered buildings and apple wine pubs. Frankfurt’s indigenous tipple has been quaffed by Frankfurters for 1,200 years. It is traditionally drunk with Handkas mit Musik, cheese simmered in cider and served with onion, or with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes smothered in Grune Sosse a sort of green bechamel made with seven herbs.

MUST DO: Large stretches of Frankfurt are as green as its aforementioned emerald sauce. Forests sprawl some 5,000 hectares of this city which has 48 parks and gardens. The Palmengarten, botanical gardens, has a wide range of exotic flora and in the summer months it hosts open-air jazz and theatre performances. Frankfurt’s long museum row stretches along the banks of the majestic River Main and includes world-class institutions such as the German Architecture Museum; the Stadel Museum (fine art); and the Museum of Modern Art.

MUST PRAY: Before the Holocaust, there were eight synagogues: only the Westend Synagogue, which celebrated its centenary in 2010, survived Kristallnacht. The large art deco building is used by all three communities – Chassidic, Orthodox and Reform.

MUST TAKE: A guided city walk, starting daily at 2.30pm. Alternatively, hop on and off one of the city’s red double-decker tourist buses to take in Frankfurt’s star attractions which include St Paul’s Church, Frankfurt Cathedral, Goethe House, the financial district, the Old Opera House, the museum embankment, Sachsenhausen and the Palmengarten.

MUST SHOP: from designer to high street, this city is an Eldorado for shopaholics. Goethestrasse is Frankfurt’s most exclusive shopping strip: more affordable threads are to be found on streets such as Schweizer Strassse in Sachsenhausen and Berger Strasse. Souvenir shops jostle for space near the Romerberg district.

MUST SEE: Frankfurt is famous for its skyscrapers, and you can scale one of them, Main Tower. On top of its 200 metre-high summit, you will be rewarded with stunning views .

MUST EXPLORE: Jewish Frankfurt. The Jewish Museum and its branch Museum Judengasse at Borneplatz examines the social and religious life of the Jewish community between the 12th and 20th centuries. Foundations of 19 buildings from the Frankfurter Judengasse, the Jewish ghetto which existed from 1462 to 1796, were excavated in 1977 and five have been incorporated into the site of the branch museum. You will gasp at the tiny footprint of buildings where multiple families lived atop each other. There is a Jewish cemetery on Battonnstrasse dating back to 1180. It served the community until 1828.