jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

18. TATYANA SMOLIANITSKI,
June 12, 2009, Düsseldorf
● You have been very active in Jewish adult education for more than 15 years, especially for immigrants
from the Former Soviet Union. At the beginning of the 1990’s you yourself were a Jewish immigrant to
Germany. Can you just say a few words about the period of your initial resettlement?
I’m a professional historian, have a PhD and graduated from Moscow State University as a historian. I then
worked as a teacher in a secondary school for five years in Moscow and also at the university in Moscow for
a few years before we came to Germany. We came here because my husband Prof. Dr. -Ing. Habil Alexander
Smolianitski was invited to work in a German academy of the university in Clausthal- Zellerfeld [near
Hanover]. Thus, we began our life in Germany in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in 1991. We thought we were just
coming for four months and then would go on to South Africa, but the project was extended and then with
support of the Jewish community of Dortmund we were able to receive another extension for another four
months. We did go on to South Africa as my husband had a lucrative job offer there.
The question then arose what should we do about Germany. Because we hadn’t considered it before, but my
husband said that this apartment is so small; we can actually just keep it. We don’t know what will happen in
South Africa, how long we’ll stay there, what the situation will be there for us. But here we have an
apartment, and then we have the possibility to return to Germany whenever we want, if something happens.
Then there were the political changes from a white government to a black government in South Africa, and I
was pregnant and we thought we should either stay in South Africa permanently or say, no, we’ll return to
Europe. That was a very difficult decision. In general, life in South Africa was fantastic. My husband had a
good job, we had a house and a garden, and everything was good, his salary, everything was good. But with
the baby, everything changed. Then we thought that now it’s time for a stable environment. That’s why we
packed up and returned to Germany at the end of 1992. At the beginning of 1993, Alex was born in
Dortmund.
● And when and where were you born?
I was born in Moscow, the former Soviet Union on February 23, 1963.
● After you decided to return to Germany for good, did you want to work in your field? Your husband is a
physicist and always had a lot of work, research, patents abroad and so on.
I understand your question, but I have to answer with a clear no. Not at that time. To be honest, he was and is
the love of my life. I didn’t care which country we lived in. My husband is a great research physicist. I never
thought I would have to work as well. I thought I’d be a housewife. I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t care, Germany or
Canada. South Africa was a bit far away and then there was the problem with our parents when you think
what will happen in the future and so on. With a baby, parents need to think about a future. I wasn’t thinking
about my career. I was happy as a housewife.
I never thought about it, not even when we left Germany for South Africa. We did end up missing out on the
chance to take the famous German-for-academics-course at the Goethe Institute. That probably would have
been great. We could have started our lives again as students. We lost this opportunity because we just
disappeared to South Africa, and when we came back [to Germany] I was hugely pregnant and a crazy
mother. I had no idea what to do with my baby in this foreign country without my family, my friends. For
me that was a very difficult time when we came back to Germany.
While we were living in South Africa, I did a lot with my husband in English. I could help him a lot. But we
were in a completely different position. We were top in society. We came here and I saw that people didn’t
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