MARK KURLANSKY
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two Jewish parents. "I always thought it would be my job to close up,"
he said. But instead, Germany allowed in Soviet Jews, and
250
former
Soviets with no religious background have become the majority of the
Dresden community, still led by its aging elected President, Roman
Koenig, a concentration camp survivor.
A group of Protestants raising money for the Frauenkirche felt
strongly that it would be wrong to rebuild their church and not the syn–
agogue. They formed a "Christian-Jewish friendship group." Lappe
said, "As always happens with such groups, they were entirely Christ–
ian." They approached the Jewish community about rebuilding the syn–
agogue and, to their surprise, found that the Jews did not want it
back-the Baroque palace that was their parents' failed experiment in
assimilation. They wanted to add something different to the cityscape,
something that was not there before the bombing.
"It
is friction," said Lappe.
"It
should be a needle in the town. Noth–
ing aggressive. But people should see it and say, 'What is this?'" The
Jewish Community has commissioned a concrete block, slightly twisted
to face Jerusalem, with a courtyard that marks the outline of the origi–
nal synagogue. By Dresden standards it is cheap to build, a mere ten mil–
lion dollars . But Lappe is upset by efforts to raise the money in the
United States. "I don't like this. I think it is a German thing. Germany
has the idea that American Jews are rich, they can pay. Again the idea
of the rich Jew.
It
is no problem for German companies to raise this
money. The Germans destroyed the synagogue. There is no reason they
shouldn't pay for a new one." But the new proposal offered by the Jew–
ish Community is not the German idea of how to rebuild Dresden.
Not all Germans want to forget Germany's history. In
1995,
Klem–
perer's diary was published.
It
is the journal of an aging academic work–
ing on his history of French literature while the German government and
the people of Dresden slowly strip him of his rights and dignity and even–
tually almost his life-he, too, was saved by the bombing. Though
1,500
pages long,
140,000
copies of Klemperer's diary were sold in Germany.
Other curious controversies have arisen. The Dresden Castle was to
be restored to its
1733
condition, the way August left it. But as stone
fragments are fitted together, missing parts resculpted, and a fresh bright
layer of gilding laid on, an argument has emerged. Should it look bright
and shiny the way it did in
1733,
or antique and historic the way it did
in
1945
before the bombing? A similar issue has arisen in the
Frauenkirche. Should they install a Baroque organ, the kind of light
crisp, harpsichord-like instrument for which Bach and other Baroque
composers wrote, an organ like the original installed when the church
