jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

I wouldn’t call it active, but we participate in Community life. However, the opportunities are limited
because I have a lot of other obligations.
● The current state of relations between the veterans and the Russian-speaking immigrant Community
members is probably not a problem for Beth Shalom, but rather for larger Communities, isn’t it?
Not really. And even in the bigger communities, I do not consider cultural differences and language
difficulties as being the core problem between veterans and newcomers.
The German lobby isn’t tied to any state support and it can’t be passed on, so it’s clear that the people go to
the Communities that receive state support.
● It’s human nature.
Probably I would do the same.
● When did Ha Galil start?
It was in 1995.
● How is it financed? Is it still completely by donations? For over 14 years?
Mainly through donations. There was some state support within the framework of the Uprising of Decency. 7
That was limited and then there were certain problems in continuing the allocation. At some point it stopped.
It’s hard to understand as no reasons were given for cutting the support. One reason is that they didn’t
understand how the Internet works, and secondly how pluralism and democracy work. If I’ve got a CDU
clerk and I brought down the CDU MP Hohmann 8 , then suddenly no one answers the phone anymore.
● I can remember in 2005-2006 it was a big deal and they were saying that Ha Galil can’t continue because
the state cut off financial support.
That’s right. That was already in 2004.
● Yes, but this sounding of the alarm…
That continued for a relatively long time afterwards. There were petitions, TV reports and no one could
understand why this had happened. There was a report about it on Monitor [investigative reporting program
on state TV]. The Zentralrat (Central Council of Jews in Germany) attempted to intervene on our behalf, but
7 After an attack on the synagogue in the German city Düsseldorf in 2000 and an increase of radical right-wing activities
in several parts of Germany, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder initiated a program for more civil courage,
the Uprising of Decency. The program included funding of projects against right wing extremism and xenophobia and
also supported projects for more tolerance and democracy, which included financial support for Ha Galil.
8 Martin Hohmann, a former member of parliament and member of the Christian Democratic party suggested that the
Jewish people could also be considered a nation of perpetrators (Tätervolk, a term usually used to describe Germans for
their crimes in the Holocaust), as opposed to always having been innocent victims, referring to the involvement of Jews
in the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath during a speech made on German Unity Day in 2003. A critical article in
Ha Galil first made this speech public, arguing that Hohmann’s speech would lead to a belittlement of the Holocaust and
a relativization of Nazi crimes in World War II. In the aftermath, Hohmann was kicked out from the CDU fraction in the
German Bundestag, and later also excluded from the Christian Democratic Party itself.
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