American Jewish Committee Executive Director Reviews German-Jewish Ties In Lecture Series

American Jewish Committee
Tuesday, 12 January 1999

Germans and Jews are "joined at the hip" by historical circumstance and therefore are destined to work closely to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said today in an address here.

"We are joined at the hip not only by the horrors of the crimes perpetrated against the Jewish people during the Third Reich, but also increasingly by a common vision of the future," David A. Harris told a German audience in the first of three public appearances during a weeklong visit to Germany.

That vision is one in which democratic regimes, such as the Federal Republic of Germany, protect their minorities and work to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten.

The burden of memory becomes even more challenging to both Jews and Germans as the aging eyewitnesses to the Holocaust - survivors, liberators and Righteous Gentiles, are "rapidly disappearing from our midst," he said.

"It is impossible to close the chapter on the Holocaust - the single worst crime in recorded history," Harris said. He criticized those in Germany who say "enough already" or assert that Auschwitz has been "instrumentalized," suggesting that Auschwitz is now used as a Jewish "weapon" against Germans.

Notwithstanding such discordant voices, Harris said, the Holocaust will remain a "central element in the conscience and identity of Jews and of Germans."

But given the passage of more than 54 years after the end of World War II, Harris said that Germany now stands at a crossroads and the paths Germans choose will have profound implications.

Three challenges lie ahead regarding Holocaust memory, relations with Israel and Germany's rapidly growing Jewish minority.

On Holocaust memory Harris said Germans face two choices: continue to incorporate the 12-year Nazi period into the national consciousness in ways that are powerful and meaningful, or yield to those who would allow the notions of responsibility and remembrance to grow increasingly stale and stilted with the passage of time.

Harris proposed that Germans and Jews stand together "as an early warning radar system" to prevent future atrocities anywhere in the world and to jointly promote the values of democracy, human rights and mutual understanding.

"Imagine the potential impact, substantive and symbolic, of such German-Jewish collaboration," the American Jewish Committee leader said.

Commenting on German-Israel relations, Harris pointed out that Germany is Israel's closest friend in Europe, but the process of European integration could pose challenges to that special relationship. As the members of the European Union move toward greater coordination of foreign and security policy, Harris urged Germany to "remain steadfast in its special relationship with Israel" even as it faces challenges from its EU partners who are not as close to Israel.

With the Jewish minority in Germany now the fastest growing Jewish community in the world, Germans face the "twin challenges both of Germany's relations to Jews and also of an increasingly multicultural Germany," where other minorities, including Turks and Kurds can be expected to become more assertive on their interests, he said.

"Idealizing exterminated Jews, or bemoaning the disappearance of German Jewry" is far different from the challenges of "living with an ever larger number of Jews - overwhelmingly from the former Soviet Union - who now call Germany their home may be another," Harris said.

Harris' address was part of a series of lectures organized by the American Jewish Committee's Berlin office in recent months. Harris, who addressed the subjects of American Jews, U.S. foreign policy and German-Jewish relations, also is speaking to groups in Bonn and Trier.

Harris recounted the long-standing relationship between the American Jewish Committee and Germany.

That relationship began shortly after the horrors of World War II at a time when few American Jews wanted anything to do with Germany.

"The American Jewish Committee, unlike other international Jewish organizations, understood early on the importance of engaging the new Federal Republic of Germany," he said. "The country was simply too consequential, as history had amply shown, to be ignored. We therefore wanted to be involved in seeking to shape its future orientation."

Over the past five decades, the American Jewish Committee has created "valued relationships" in Germany's national and state governments, the Catholic and Evangelical churches, the military and the media.

"We at the American Jewish Committee recognize the remarkable strides Germany has achieved in these past 50 years in creating a stable, democratic society. And over these past five decades, Germany as a nation, to its credit, has largely sought to come to grips with its past" unlike some other countries.

This record led the American Jewish Committee to support German unification in 1990, and to open its Berlin office last year.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org