Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: Memory, Identity, and Jewish-German Relations

Rapaport,Lynn.Jews in Germany after Holocaust: Memory, Identity, and Jewish-- German Relations. Cambridge Cultural Social Studies. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 325 pp. $59.95 hardcover. $22.95 paperback. Since late nineteenth century it has been an obsession for professors, writers, and journalists-in Germany and abroad-to consider question of German identity and to ask age-old question who are we? This, as well as tremendous body of research and literature on Third Reich and Holocaust, makes it no surprise that in post-- Shoah era there has been a flood of books about Jews in Postwar Germany, particularly since 1980 when Hoffmann and Campe published Lea Fleischmann's controversial autobiography Dies ist nicht mein Land: Eine Judin verlasst die Bundesrepublik (Rapaport cites title incorrectly, 301). Rapaport's study is a sociological inquiry into what life is like for second generation of post-Holocaust Jews living in Germany. She bases her findings on open interviews with eighty-three Jews living in Frankfurt, born ofter Holocaust, who, she feels, have a pattern of ethnic identity construction as Jews (13). In research, she repeatedly discovered the role collective memory of Holocaust plays in shaping these lives (10). For her, it is Holocaust as metaphor that provides the binary scheme that distinguishes Jew from non-Jew in Germany (66). The majority indicated they feel no connection with Jewish religion. Their strong sense of group identity comes rather from a sense of a moral distinction that, as victims of Third Reich, sets them apart from perpetrators and their descendants. While majority of their acquaintances are non-Jews, close friends are mostly from Jewish community. When Jews have non-Jewish friends or spouses, it is normally because they see traits in them typical of non-Germans. For several reasons, I hesitate to recommend this book. First, Rapaport draws general conclusions from a small population in Frankfurt and assumes this to apply to all Jews in Germany. It is certainly possible that Frankfurt community is different from smaller communities, from East or from Berlin and its population of recent immigrants. More importantly, Rapaport did interviews in 1984 before unification. She returned in 1994 for a few targeted interviews, but can her study accurately portray Jewish community in Germany, now, thirteen years later? …