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| Europe |
| Germans' Attitudes About Jews and Foreigners |
| 2005-01-28 |
| From the German Embassy's website, a background paper titled "Jews in Germany Today," written by Susan Stern, a lecturer in English at the University of Frankfurt/Main and the author of the books Speaking Out - Jewish Voices From United Germany and From Horror to Hope - Germany, the Jews and Israel. The webpage address somehow prevented the posting of this article in Rantburg (the element "relaunch"?), so the posting's link is only to the home page. From there, follow these menu selections: Information Services --> Archives --> Background Papers --> More --> Jews in Germany Today. The Jewish population of Germany today [1995] is very small indeed. In a nation of 81 million inhabitants, it claims about 55,000, give or take a few: some 43,000 are registered, dues-paying members of the official Jewish community, and although nobody knows exactly how many unregistered Jews there are, 10,000 is an educated guess. Compared to the number of Muslim residents of Germany - around 1.4 million, most of them Turkish - the number of Jews borders on the insignificant. In the early 1930s, there were ten times as many Jews in Germany as there are now. ..... The Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy, a leading polling organization, recently announced its latest findings: 15 percent of Germans are anti-Semitic, and of these, 8 percent are "vehemently" so. These figures, alarming as they may appear, actually indicate a marked decrease in anti-Semitic sentiment, which is now, according to the Allensbach pollsters, at a postwar low. Moreover, they do not compare unfavorably to figures from neighboring countries or even from the United States. ..... Over the past few years, right wing radicalism has become a serious problem in Germany .... The culprits are generally young white males whose understanding of politics (or of anything else for that matter) is severely limited. On occasion, they have turned their attention to the Jews - not so much to the living but to the dead. Jewish cemeteries and memorials have been vandalized. .... More likely, they are looking for taboos to break to attract attention and know that any act against the Jews is considered particularly shocking. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #6 But those are children, Mrs. D. Why would anybody want to take the messy, noisy, demanding, messy little things? If someone actually wanted one, she would've had her own, and she hasn't done that, has she. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-28 10:46:47 PM |
| #5 I'm with you Mark. I'm surprised they don't offer parents the option of a wrist tattoo to assist in child identification in the event of an abduction. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-01-28 7:04:40 PM |
| #4 I can't get over the registration of religion thing. How odd. But I suppose it makes sense in a sort of German way. I suppose if I ever had to "register", I'd say my religion was "American". Let's see if they have a box on their form for that. |
| Posted by: Mark E. 2005-01-28 6:57:05 PM |
| #3 The actual URL without the session I.D./redirect stuff is: http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/info/archives/background/jews.html |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2005-01-28 6:20:57 PM |
| #2 Me! Meee! This is my question to answer -- me!! (ok. I'm all better now.) I was there then. One of the unregistered. Which took some doing, let me tell you -- when we went over, Personnel automatically registered the whole family as Jews, because they made assumptions about Mr. Wife based on what they knew about me. It took the better part of a year to deregister us. After all, not only is Mr. Wife not a member of the tribe, but both of us took the American approach that our personal beliefs are none of the government's damned business. Registered members of the three official religions in Germany (Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish) pay, if I recall correctly, a 10% bonus on their income tax, which the gov't then pays forward to the respective governing council -- for paying clergy salaries and building maintenance and such. In exchange, the registered members receive baptism, marriage and burial rites at the local church of their registered denomination. All very picturesque, which for most of the Christians there is more important than being meaningful anyway. I remember the official number of Jews there being about 30,000 a little earlier. This was just before the Russian Jewish influx. There are considerably more Jews there now, which is a bit of a sticky wicket because they know nothing about their heritage. As I recall, the gov't financed schools that the Jewish community set up to teach the newcomers about their religion. Do the Germans realize why the numbers are so low? Of course they do. Not that they talk about it -- everybody knows, so why bother? And I agree that at least part of the reason for idiots vandalizing graveyards, etc is to shock, just like wearing funny-coloured funny haircuts and bits of metal piercing uncomfortable body parts. But all the analysis about why the Germans have gone so pro-Palestine/anti-Israel are also correct -- its an easy way to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by resenting the Jews because of national guilt, etc and so on. The French reason is different; they just don't like Jews, never have, and so they let the Muslims in their midst act out the national will in this matter. Along,of course, with the decadent resolve not to bestir themselves to force the barbarians to behave. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-28 5:44:51 PM |
| #1 "The Jewish population of Germany today [1995] is very small indeed. In a nation of 81 million inhabitants, it claims about 55,000, give or take a few: some 43,000 are registered, dues-paying members of the official Jewish community, and although nobody knows exactly how many unregistered Jews there are, 10,000 is an educated guess." You're kidding, right? Have you asked yourself why there are only about 55,000 jews (remaining) in Germany today? It's cause all those people who would have been there today with their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were exterminated in the 40's. And what is this business about "registered" and "dues-paying" jews? I haven't payed mine yet; can someone tell me when the due date is and where I should mail it? Given Germany's track record concerning Jews, I'd be careful about "registering" with the government. |
| Posted by: Mark E. 2005-01-28 4:01:55 PM |