jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

new immigrants. And that’s the second incentive, why I ran for office. It’s not that the others didn’t try to
champion on the immigrants’ cause. I just think that because they themselves are not immigrants, maybe
they aren’t as able to see the situation as clearly as someone who is an immigrant themself. That was the
second motivation for me, but I was approached, and the main thing is that I was also very young. I was
just 21 years old.
The political spread there is very clear, there is a fraction, and there are 17 seats [in the JC board of
Frankfurt]. 15 seats are taken by the fraction; honestly, there isn’t a lot of room for me to be active. That’s a
normal political process. I don’t want to criticize the process in and of itself. We can have different
opinions about politics, but the process itself is democratic, there were elections and many immigrants
voted for the non-immigrants. It’s a completely normal political process.
● Do you have the impression that with your generation something is developing akin to a kind of
patriotism for Germany?
I understand the question. I’ll give you a good, I don’t know if good, but fitting example. I applied for
German citizenship and was accepted, but I still haven’t taken it. Pragmatically speaking there’s no reason
not to take on German citizenship. However, I’m still hesitating, and that’s not only because dual
citizenship [Ukrainian, German] will probably not work. But people that are just a bit younger than me,
they handle it in a more relaxed way. For example, I also have a lot to do with younger people in our
organization who are 18, 19, 20 years old. They aren’t hung up on this. As soon as they turned 18, they
took on German citizenship. It’s a process that will work out over generations. Many former immigrants in
the middle age group and also the elderly take German citizenship.
But does German citizenship automatically imply a certain patriotism? That’s another question. I think that
the reservations towards Germany amongst the older generation, those over 50, will always remain. The
younger you are, the less reservations you have, and therefore the more open you are to patriotism. But you
also have to take into consideration that there’s a huge sociological debate about how patriotic Germans are
anyway. They also have problems with their own history. Then to demand from the Jews, that they are
more patriotic than the Germans, it’s too early for that.
● Are the relations of the FSU immigrants becoming more intense to their former home?
What do you mean with “home”?
● The former country of residence.
No.
● There is also low motivation for re-migration or second migration, or living a transnational existence?
The simplest answer to that question is when you have moved, this is simply the practical, the pragmatic
answer; then it’s very difficult to pack up and move again. I mean with acquiring a new language again, a
new culture, population, mentalities and so on - unless you go to Austria, but there you’ve also to accept a
different mentality. I can say for me and my friends that we might want to go out into the wider world, to
America, South America, Asia, but very few of us will really move again. And “back to the roots” will also
not happen, at least not on a large scale. There are always individual people who will come back from
Israel or from Germany, but a global “back to the roots” won’t happen.
● What do you think about the future Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany? Will
there be more?
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