jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

20. ADRIANA STERN
June 22, 2009, Cologne
● Ms. Stern, could we just start with some information on your personal background?
I was born in 1960, and from the time I was 10 on, I lived more in the Netherlands than in Germany. That had
a big influence on me. Half of my family, or a bit less, are from the Netherlands. It’s the Jewish part.
● What is your educational background?
I finished secondary school and then first studied architecture before changing to social work.
● When did you first become interested in literature?
When I was 12. The reason was that I couldn’t talk about many of the questions I had at the time. So I wrote
everything down. The paper was my conversation partner.
● When did you become interested in individual Jewish institutions or activities? You’ve already listed a few.
That’s a good question and a difficult question. In my childhood it was taboo to say that we’re Jewish. It was
a secret and I only found out from my aunt, whom I’m named after, Adriana. She was in Bergen-Belsen and
survived, but her entire family was murdered there. She became very withdrawn. I was more or less her
godchild and she told me a lot about it. She also celebrated Shabbat with me when I was with her.
Unfortunately she died when I was 8. Then there was a break until I realized that my friends in school were
all immigrants. We didn’t call them migrants then, but they were. I had very few German friends. Then at
some point it occurred to me, but it was later, I think I was 19 or so, that I also had Jewish friends. My mother
is Jewish, but was christened as a Catholic, she was born in 1933. My grandmother converted to Catholicism
in 1927. She married a Catholic, it was also clear that it wouldn’t work the other way around. However, as
she said on her deathbed, she never forgot that she was Jewish.
There were certain family traditions, and I think that that made it clear to me that we really had Jewish roots;
for example, that we didn’t go shopping on Saturday. We didn’t eat pork and we lit two candles on Friday
nights. It was also forbidden to argue within the family then. Looking back, Friday nights were always the
most peaceful nights in the week. At some point I read the Diary of Anne Frank, I was maybe 12. I asked my
mother, everything that she described also happened to our family. Are we Jewish? I think that I had buried
everything my godmother had told me, and talking about it was taboo. She said that we shouldn’t talk about
it. She didn’t say no and she didn’t say yes, she just said we don’t talk about it.
Then I left the church when I was 16, I couldn’t do it earlier. This was the first step and then for a while the
confrontation with this wasn’t all that important to me. It became important when I was 24. That’s when it
began. I was living in Berlin at that time and went to the synagogue on the Fraenkelufer. I lived in Berlin for
a long time. There I heard the music and most of all the Hebrew language. That made me remember my aunt.
Then I started getting in to it. I realized that many of my friends were Jewish. You know how everyone says
they don’t know any Jews; I was always surprised. Why did I know them and other people at the university
or at work didn’t? That was a consolidation process that went on for a while outside of the synagogue, with
the Jews that I knew. Then when I was 28-29 I began thinking about what it would be like if I were Jewish
and I thought maybe I should convert. I thought about this for quite a while until a Rabbi told me that I can’t
convert; my mother is Jewish. He said that because I’ve been christened as a Catholic and my grandmother
converted, he would call a Bet Din which would decide to be certain. So the Bet Din was called and after 10
minutes said that according to the Halacha, I’m Jewish. In 1927 there were already strong anti-Semitic voices
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