Jewish in Germany

As a German major, I've often been asked how I, as a Jew, can immerse myself in the language, history and culture of a people who, 70 years ago, produced a movement that tried to eliminate my people from the face of the earth. I find myself confronted again with the same question this semester in Berlin.

The land is shaped here so that the people do not forget. The city of Berlin has been reconstructed with memorials large and small. The steles of the provocatively named Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, opened in 2005 near the Brandenburg Gate, and Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, opened 2001, are two better-known examples.

Smaller, subtler reminders exist, too. In the beautiful Grunewald Forest, where Berliners congregate on weekends with their children and dogs, stands a memorial marking the deportation of Jews to concentration camps from the Grunewald train station. In Schöneberg, a formerly Jewish neighborhood, small signs hanging from street lamps bear the decrees forbidding Jews from normal activities such as using public transportation and attending public school.

Remembrance is also codified into the German constitution, the Basic Law. Emigration policy here grants a German passport almost immediately to anyone who can prove that they lost their German citizenship as a result of the National Socialist regime. The treatment accorded these so-called "volksdeutsch" applicants — which problematically translates as "ethnic German" — provides a stark contrast to the status of immigrants of Turkish and Arabic descent, who find it difficult to gain German citizenship even after years of residence. Berlin now boasts the fastest-growing Jewish community in Europe, mainly as a result of Russian Jews who immigrated here under this clause.

The problem, though, is that these measures may not be enough. The positively-shaped landscape and law should not be applauded per se but instead must be judged by their effect on the population of Germany. There is always the danger that external monuments will produce internal complacence. Memorials are valuable only in so far as they provoke active memory: debate, discussion, even potential protests. Without this power, they are impotent. The citizenship clause, though seemingly the perfect political contrapasso to the sins of the 1930s, raises other questions. Will Germans subconsciously equate the influx of Jewish emigres with a "replacement" of the Jewish population that was destroyed, as an American I met at the Jewish community Seder cynically speculated? More importantly, given Germany's centuries-long inability to define itself, what does the state's willingness to make Jews "German" really mean?

Complacence can, however, be shaken in more ways than one, as I realized when I returned home a few days before Passover with my newly-purchased matzah and informed my roommate — who had just enjoyed showing me how to use the toaster to warm brötchen for breakfast — that I would not be eating bread for the next week. He asked if it was because of my religious beliefs. When I answered yes, he asked what religion I was. At my response, he proved to be very interested. After he made sure I knew that my Judaism was fine by him, we dispensed with a few stereotypes — all actors are Jews, for example — before moving on to more serious questions, which culminated in my normally so-composed roommate's flustered posing of "the question." What could I say to a born and bred German to clarify my decision to be in Berlin not despite of, but potentially because of, its history?

So I offered, in my best German, the answer I've always given but now am convinced is correct. It goes something like this. All people — Jews, Germans and others — have a responsibility to learn and teach about the Holocaust, to never forget. My generation, however, can no more decide whether to forgive or not forgive than should the equivalent German generation take onto itself the guilt of its parents and grandparents. Remembrance of past brutalities should not engender a false sense of personal accountability but should instead produce a firm stand against current and future maltreatment of any people, anywhere. As a Jew, I choose to predicate my identity on something other than historical victimhood. As a person, a Mensch, I choose to build personal relationships with the people around me based solely on who we are as individuals, holding the respective crimes and sufferings of our ancestors to be, if only in this sphere, just that: belonging to the past.

This kind of exchange is much more valuable than a visit to a memorial site. Jews choosing to live in Germany provide what no museum or monument can. Our presence testifies both that there is a future to German-Jewish relations after the Holocaust and, more importantly, that in the end, such a conception is actually a tautology. Jews are, will continue to be and always have been German. Emily Stolzenberg is a German major from Morgantown, W. Va. She can be reached at estolzen@princeton.edu.