A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [217]
Helmut Kohl repeatedly said he would never accept a partnership with Republicans. Some of the local parties were less adamant. It almost happened in Hesse in the spring of 1993.
In that sense Zuriel was always prepared to leave Germany. “Wherever I go, I take my being Jewish with me, and if I ever at my age would leave, which I certainly don't think, first thing would be to search out a Jewish community that would be my point of contact.”
Moishe Waks remained in Berlin, and his brother remained in Israel. Ruwen, like Moishe, had offers in Germany, but he never took them. He joked that his wife would kill him if he did. Carmela had never lived in Germany and never had any interest in it. They raised their children to be Israelis. Ruwen lectured visiting Germans about the Holocaust, lectures that were included on the itinerary of many German vacation packages to Israel.
Looking back, Ruwen was disappointed in the German Zionist movement. “In my opinion it was a big failure,” he said. “We couldn't persuade people. We could not bring to them the message. Everybody was very involved. It was very active all over Germany, but if you look at the numbers of how many went—”
He talked of how German Jews would support Zionism, “until the moment they had to go.” His mother, Lea, still said she had no German friends and little contact with Germans, but she remained in Dusseldorf even after Aaron died. In 1991 both Lea and Moishe finally became German citizens. Nevertheless, Ruwen started shopping for an apartment to buy her in Israel. After all, she still said that she intended to move to Israel someday.
THE JEWISH COMMUNISTS who had returned from camps, hiding, and exile to build the GDR were now living in the Germany they never wanted to live in. One said, “Had I known in 1947 what would happen after forty years, I would definitely not have come back to Germany.”
Werner Handler remained broygez with God and quite a few people. He busied himself with the Sachsenhausen committee and went to municipal hearings to try to stop the city from removing Communist names from streets. He was trying to organize survivors abroad to stop Berlin from reverting to Prussian street names. “What kind of a message does it give to these young gangsters when they see it is Wilhelmstrasse again?”
Werner would occasionally go to the Rykestrasse synagogue if they needed a tenth man, but he was not involved in religion. One of his daughters was interested in her Jewish background and sometimes went to the Kulturverein. The other had no interest. His wife Helle, a social worker, retired. Her program which had given money and help to pregnant women, ended with the GDR. Now Werner and Helle could travel, and they went to Israel. He was impressed by how nonreligious most Israelis were. “Even though there is the theocratic state,” he said with wonder in his voice, “you find the same attitude as I have.”
They also visited the United States, where Jews expressed tremendous sympathy for their having endured the GDR. “Look here/’ Handler said to them. “The question is what I want to do with my life. If I think what I have to do is live decently with my family and raise my children, give them a good education and have a good living and get on in my life, then I must say I'm glad, I had a good life and I didn't commit any crimes. If I say that I want more in my life and look for a better future of mankind, then I must say that I feel sad that the first attempt at making an alternative society has failed. But I am not sorry that I participated in it.”
SIKTY YEARS AFTER she set out for Palestine, Mia Lehmann got there with her friends from the Antifascist League. At last she could understand the vexing Palestinian problem with which the party had always sympathized. But she didn't really get to understand them, to listen to their troubles the way she did with everyone else, because the first Palestinian she and her friends found was throwing rocks at her bus. After the group of old-time Communists got back from Israel, they thought about