THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

was fondly called Ben Maimon Strasse. Judges and senior officials called Rehaviahome in those days.Only much later did I come to understand that what I was witnessing as a childwas really lost glory on its way out. I saw it from its back; I did not have the privilegeto see its face. Indeed, the immigrant German-Jewish community had beenmagnificent. They erected factories and neighborhoods. They built the foundations ofthe Hebrew University, supporting its research and enriching the cultural landscape.But then Israel turned away from them and they, being refined and cultured, did notpush or elbow their way forward. Now even though their memory is almost gone andmodern Israel is different from their dreams and my own naive childhoodexpectations, I wish to hold on to them; to delay their departure just for anothermoment. It’s not just them I wish to understand, it is also myself, and us as a people.For many years I have lived an Israeli life: sheltered childhood, youth movement,schools, military service, studies, and a long public service. I was an Israeli in full, astrictly kosher sabra (a native-born Israeli Jew). Only much later in life did Iunderstand the miracle that my parents had fulfilled. They did not allow tragedies andtraumas to take hold of our lives. At the same time, they succeeded in bequeathing tous many of the values of a world that is now gone forever.My mother survived the Hebron massacre of 1929, and my father was a statelessrefugee, a German native who did not relinquish his gravitas or his heavy accent in hisnew home country, Israel. They did everything they could to ensure me and mysiblings would have happy lives. The secret language between them was Heine’sGerman; not the Holocaust German of the survivors. My parents often said thatcertain things should be done a certain way, as it was done “back in Saxony.” If theloud demonstrations in Jerusalem against German reparations and diplomaticrelations, even the well-publicized Eichmann trial, entered our homes, they did so onlyfaintly. I do not remember a single conversation on these matters. The Shoah industrythat would develop in Israel in later years would be foreign to me. I am not apsychologist and do not know whether my parents successfully repressed theatrocities they experienced in their youths, the horrors that erased their happychildhoods. Perhaps they built a new reality of their own and created a new world.Either way, as a child I was never exposed, emotionally or practically, to“Shoahization,” though this cultural movement has become second nature to usIsraelis.