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facilities to follow their cultural interests: these were the main problems
facing them. In later years, when they had become rooted in the country,
many of them were enlisted for defense assignments, for organizing illegal
immigration from Europe, and later yet for the foreign service of the
young state of Israel.
Not all went to
kibbutz im,
and of those who had gone, not all remained
members. Some continued their education and made their way in the
groves of academe; Israel's nuclear program was staffed largely by young
Jews from Germany, from Ernst Bergmann to Shalhevet Freyer. There
were also a significant number of young German and Austrian Jews in the
senior command of the early Israeli army and security services.
Fewer autobiographies were written by those who went to Palestine
than by emigrants to other parts of the world; the indefatigable Teddy
Kollek was one notable exception, and Ehud Avriel, also a native of
Vienna, was another. What emerges from these memoirs is that most of
these young people were always very busy, and that with all the material
deprivations the basic mood was optimistic, at least until 1945 when the
full extent of the European catastrophe became known. But there was a
new wave of euphoria as the establishment of the state appeared on the
agenda and as the war of independence overshadowed everything else.
Broadly speaking, this lasted until the days of austerity in the 1950s, when
normalcy set in. In the meantime, most of them had found their way in the
country, married, and had children. They still faced problems, but living in
a Jewish country, they felt no self-consciousness about beingJewish. In this
respect there was no need to conform socially or culturally-their Jewish
problem had been solved simply by living in Israel. They did not have to
apologize or explain for being different.
Several thousand left Israel after the Second World War, not so much
because they disliked the country or found life there too dangerous, but
because of greater professional prospects elsewhere, or because of family
ties. But the same is true with regard to many other Israelis: according to
available statistics, the percentage of German Jews who left the country
was no higher than the percentage of those who had come from other parts
of the globe, or who had been born in Palestine.
Sixty years after the great exodus, some of the survivors in various
parts of the world have gathered to commemorate and to celebrate. Others
do not want to be reminded of a period in their lives which lies so far back
as to be almost unreal. Just as their recollections of Germany vary, so does
their interest in Judaism, and in the catastrophe which befell so many of
their families and friends who, unlike them, did not escape in time.
Memory is a fashionable concept among historians these days but not
everyone is a historian or wants to share in the cult of memory.
