Taking Initiative After Fifty Years of Cowardice

I was born and raised in Germany as the youngest child of a middle-class family, and I’m now thirty years old. I’m Gentile.

When I left Germany at the age of twenty-five, I didn’t realise I was running away from certain things. I just thought that London was a fantastic place.

In 1989 an English friend enthusiastically told me about RC, but I needed another four to five years before I was ready to give it a try. I attended a fundamentals class in the Haringey and Islington Area in the spring of 1994. Last summer I moved to the East End of London where I assisted a teacher in a fundamentals class. This fundamentals class became an ongoing class which I have started to lead. The class is open to everyone in the Area, and it is supposed to make it easier for people to make connections with others. I’m excited to be so involved in building the Community.

I have probably used RC most profoundly and efficiently in the work I’ve done on my German background. I have gotten to the point where I can say that I like Germany and German people. I wouldn’t have said that two or three years ago. I am now planning to move back to Germany for good.

Juli (a close ally of mine) and I recently attended a conference in Berlin for children of survivors of the Holocaust and children of perpetrators and bystanders. The conference was called “The Presence of the Holocaust in the Present.” It took place in the Rathaus Schöneberg in Berlin and attracted approximately 450 people of both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds. It included speeches by people who had scientific and intellectual approaches to the subject as well as presentations by groups in which Jews and Gentiles get together to work on their history.

Some of the speeches and presentations were very interesting, though it was more important for me to talk to people and make connections. I found that quite difficult to start with, but one particular incident made it a lot easier.

There was a discussion during which six or seven people on the podium introduced themselves and their viewpoints. One of them said he felt that people were often seeking comfort and wanted to “feel better” when they came together as Jews and Gentiles. When the discussion was extended to the floor, I got up and suggested that, for reasons of safety and because it doesn’t always make sense for the other side to listen to what feelings anyone has about the Holocaust, it might be good to get together in groups of Jews only or Gentiles only. The direct reaction wasn’t enthusiastic. I noticed that I didn’t earn any applause (like other people did), and people insisted on their successes within mixed set-ups (which I didn’t question). However, after that making contacts became a lot easier because people (Jews and Gentiles) started coming up to me, asking me questions like, “Are you based in Berlin? Would you like to get together?” or “Are you running a group like that?” etc.

I told them what I did and what my thinking was (with regard to my comment to the conference) without naming RC straight-away. But all the people I talked to finally wanted to know “where I was coming from” and in what sort of framework I had been working on the issue, so I got plenty of chances to practice talking about RC!

Juli and I took lots of addresses of people, both Jews and Gentiles, in Britain and in Germany, so there’s loads of follow-up work to do.

During the second day of the conference, I attended a guided tour through the Bavarian quarters of Berlin-Schöneberg, where one of the Jewish communities in Berlin could be found until the 1930’s. I was astonished to see that “memorial signs” with anti-Jewish laws had been attached to the streetlights. In front of the local supermarket was a sign saying, “Jews are allowed to do their shopping only between four and five in the afternoon.” In front of the post office one could read, “Jews are not allowed to have phones.” Underneath these words were the dates when these laws were enacted by the Nazis.

My first thought was that these signs didn’t look like memorial plaques at all. They had been attached to the street posts in cheap aluminum frames and in their outer appearance resembled party political posters or advertisements. Later, as we came across more signs like this, I realised that if Germans are to start looking at our history, then that process needs to have a certain place in our lives, just as Co-Counselling sessions have their place in the life of a Co-Counsellor. A lot of Germans are already saying, “How much longer do we have to look at this stuff?!” which is, of course, nonsense, because they haven’t yet looked at it. Nevertheless, it seems inappropriate to confront people with this issue every time they do their shopping. This will deter rather than encourage people from finally starting the work that needs to be done.

On the same tour, the guide pointed out a plaque (a real one this time) which reminded people of the existence of a synagogue in that place. The plaque mentioned that this synagogue had been destroyed by German authorities during the 1950’s because “it had become obsolete.” The guide informed us that only a few years ago an older plaque, which said that the synagogue had been destroyed by bombs, had been removed. This shows how little Germans have been willing to look at the issues and how much work remains to be done.

This was also underlined by a comment that Katharine Klinger, one of the main organisers of the conference, made in her opening speech. She said that after initial enthusiasm many of the organisations that were contacted in request for support suddenly turned silent.

Before I went back to Germany last month, I knew very little about present-day Jewish communities in Germany-whether they existed and how big and how visible they were. A few things that happened while I was in Berlin made me more aware of the existence of Jews in Germany in the present.

It was good to see that German Jews were so visible at the conference. They reminded people not to make the distinction between Germans and Jews but rather between Jews and non-Jews, because the former would deny their identity as German Jews.

During my ten-day stay in Berlin I developed a strong sense of the close connection between German and Jewish cultures. I spent a lot of time in bookshops and realised through browsing and reading that, apart from the Jews in Germany, many Jews in areas that haven’t belonged to Germany since 1945 used to speak and write German. A subheading of a chapter in a book that I bought is: “Judaism was our belief. We were Germans.”

I also noticed during the conference that some people from Israel speak German without the trace of an accent.

I walked through the streets of Berlin-Mitte, another area of Berlin where once many Jews were at home. I saw the synagogue that survived the Reichskristallnacht because a German police officer wouldn’t allow deliberate burning, looting, and destruction in his district. It is a fantastic building.

During my search for a hot drink I passed a Jewish cafe and, having walked twenty yards on, asked myself, “Why didn’t you go in?” I noticed my fear of being unwelcome but finally went in and spent a few hours there.

Today, both buildings-the synagogue and the cafe-are guarded by police.

Since I have become aware of the close connections between German and Jewish culture, lives, and history, I treat the loss of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust and who left Germany before, during, or after the atrocities as the loss of my people. This has brought up another burst of discharge.

Writing this last paragraph reminds me of how I met Leah Thorn (the City-wide Coordinator for Jews in London) just over two years ago. I was at my first London Regional workshop and I saw that Leah was singing along to a German song. I asked her what her background was and learned that her mum grew up in exactly the same village in Germany where my dad grew up, where my grand-dad was the doctor, etc. Leah’s mum had to leave Germany during the 1930’s. When I heard all this I was too shocked for words. It was fascism literally brought home.

So what’s next? Juli and I want to get together and talk about where we go from here. We have already agreed that we will follow up the connections that we made in Berlin. I would also like to make a connection with The Second Generation Trust, the organisation in London that brings together children of survivors and children of perpetrators.

The next step for me is to move back to Germany. I’m in the process of deciding to do this, not only as part of my liberation as a German, but also because it makes sense for me for other reasons at this stage in my life. Once there, I’d like to get in touch with similar organisations and also assist people there in building a powerful and stable RC Community.

Alfred Kux
London,
England


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00