Judith Bernstein - I resist to the notion that the fate of my grandparents must serve as a justification for the fight against the Palestinians E-Book

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier (EN)

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 83

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Judith Bernstein's parents left Germany a few years after the Nazis came to power. Since emigration to the USA was denied to them, they fled to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and settled down in Rehavia, a suburb outside Jerusalem, like many German Jews at the time. In the "garden city" of Rehavia, Judith Bernstein was born in 1945 into a world shaped by the culture of its German-born residents, the Jeckes. Judith Bernstein was socialized into this German-Jewish society – and although her grandparents had been murdered in Auschwitz two years before her birth, she was strongly drawn to her parents' old homeland. When she received a scholarship from the city of Munich, she came to Germany in 1966 to study. She experienced the Six-Day War in 1967 from the Bavarian capital, a conflict that would have far-reaching consequences for the thinking of many Israelis and thus for the policies of Israel. Judith Bernstein did return to Israel, where she married and in 1973 and 1976 gave birth to her daughters Sharon and Shelly, but eventually, she concluded that Israel had ceased to be appealing to her. At the end of 1976, she returned to Germany, this time permanently. – Judith Bernstein has now been living for decades in Munich, where through her involvement in the Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group she advocates for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians. Her late husband Reiner Bernstein also supported her in this cause. Judith Bernstein discusses the experiences she and Reiner had to face due to their activism in the following conversation.

Leseprobe

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

In conversation with

Judith Bernstein

I resist to the notion that the fate of my grandparents must serve as a justification for the fight against the Palestinians.

E-Book

Imprint

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Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

Spiegelbrunn 11

D-84130 Dingolfing

First German-language e-book edition:

© Copyright by Heinz Michael Vilsmeier, 2024

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Photo collection of Judith Bernstein, used with permission.

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Introduction

Judith Bernstein's parents left Germany a few years after the Nazis came to power. Since emigration to the USA was denied to them, they fled to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and settled down in Rehavia, a suburb outside Jerusalem, like many German Jews at the time. In the "garden city" of Rehavia, Judith Bernstein was born in 1945 into a world shaped by the culture of its German-born residents, the Jeckes. Judith Bernstein was socialized into this German-Jewish society – and although her grandparents had been murdered in Auschwitz two years before her birth, she was strongly drawn to her parents’ old homeland. When she received a scholarship from the city of Munich, she came to Germany in 1966 to study. She experienced the Six-Day War in 1967 from the Bavarian capital, a conflict that would have far-reaching consequences for the thinking of many Israelis and thus for the policies of Israel. Judith Bernstein did return to Israel, where she married and in 1973 and 1976 gave birth to her daughters Sharon and Shelly, but eventually, she concluded that Israel had ceased to be appealing to her. At the end of 1976, she returned to Germany, this time permanently. – Judith Bernstein has now been living for decades in Munich, where through her involvement in the Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group she advocates for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians. Her late husband Reiner Bernstein also supported her in this cause. Judith Bernstein discusses the experiences she and Reiner had to face due to their activism in the following conversation. – For this, I deeply thank her.

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

"Behold, a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations." (Numbers 23:9)

Foreword by Judith Bernstein

Figure 1 Judith Bernstein, 2024

‏ הן עם לבדד ישכון ובגויים לא יתחשב

Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig translate the verse as: "There, a people dwells alone, it does not count itself among the tribes of the earth."

Starting from the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who spoke of a Jewish state and accordingly displaced the Palestinians during the Israeli "War of Independence," to the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to make Israel and the territories conquered in 1967 "free of Palestinians,"(Endnote I) a policy has been established that does not allow for a real peace solution.

Figure 2 Confrontation of Palestinian civilians with IDF soldiers, 1948

But can a people claim a land for themselves that is already inhabited? I don't think so. This was recognized by the members of Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace). They were primarily Jewish intellectuals from the German-speaking areas, such as Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Judah Magnes, who saw themselves as the "latecomers". In their 1929 manifesto, they wrote: Brit Shalom envisages a binational Palestine in which both peoples live in complete equality, both as equally strong factors determining the fate of the land, regardless of which of the two peoples is numerically superior. Just as the well-established rights of the Arabs must not be curtailed by a hair's breadth, so too must the right of the Jews be recognized, to develop undisturbed according to their national character in their ancient homeland and to allow as many of their brethren as possible to participate in this development. (Endnote II)

This manifesto could have been an opportunity for the Jews to settle in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the Israelis preferred to conquer their state through violence, instead of founding it together with the local population. Was it necessary to destroy Palestinian places and displace the population? This marked the beginning of the ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinians. All Israeli governments have thus accepted that Israel will always remain an alien element in the region.

The fate of the displaced Palestinians interested no one after 1948.

Ultimately, the failure of the international community during the Nazi era and their consequent guilt played a significant role in the establishment of the State of Israel. For Israel, the time span from 1945, when Jews came out of the concentration camps, to the founding of the state in 1948 was too short. The victims of the Holocaust had hardly any time to overcome their traumas and suddenly found themselves in a situation where their struggle for a safe homeland led to other injustices. They failed to recognize that the local population had initially welcomed the "latecomers" benevolently, although they had to give up part of their land.

The destruction of houses and entire villages shows that the Jewish population was not interested in coexisting. They were not looking for a solution for both peoples, but were solely concerned with the security of the new Jewish state.

Over the years, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have repeatedly shown that they were willing to coexist with the Israelis. Today, after this horrific war in Gaza, I cannot imagine that a trusting coexistence is possible at all.

Therefore, the talk of a two-state solution or a one-state solution is just a mantra that the West carries out of embarrassment because it has never seriously dealt with a proper solution to the conflict. After this brutal war, I see no solution anymore. Israel now bears the mark of Cain on its forehead.

The West still supports Israel out of its own interests. However, it is evident that even today, for example, the Global South would adopt a different policy in the Middle East.

My fear is that Jewish history will repeat itself once more. There have been repeated attempts by Jews to settle in the Holy Land, but ultimately, they have always failed - as with the Greeks and Romans, for example. It prompts the thought that it might be a Jewish fate to not find a lasting peaceful homeland. Judaism has only survived throughout history because there has always been a group somewhere in the world that carried on Judaism. As a minority, they were persecuted, and as a majority in the Holy Land, they turned from victims into perpetrators. Perhaps the biblical verse is indeed true: "a people, it dwells alone - it does not count itself among the nations."

Figure 3 Capture of Palestinian civilians by the IDF, 1948

However, I hope that those Israelis who have been striving for many years to coexist with the Palestinians, and even have to endure reprisals from their own population and government for it, will not be forgotten.

The current Gaza war has also led to radicalization and a departure from democratic principles within Israel itself. Not only do the government and the military fail to inform their own population about what is happening in Gaza, but the media (with the exception of the liberal newspaper "Haaretz") also barely report on the death and destruction in the Gaza Strip. Consequently, the Israeli government has declared the broadcaster Al Jazeera to be a Hamas channel and has banned it in Israel. The Qatari broadcaster had reported what is supposed to be withheld from the Israeli population.

The majority of the Israeli population is only concerned with their own victims, but not with the more than 35,000 dead Palestinian men and women and the destruction of their homes, hospitals, universities, and mosques.

Therefore, one cannot speak of the majority of Jews in Israel as a "light unto the nations" (Isaiah 49:6). Rather, the quote fits here: "A people, it dwells alone. It does not count itself among the nations."

Judith Bernstein in conversation

HMV: Dear Judith, the camera is rolling – I am very glad that after many, many months of talking about doing an interview together, we are finally sitting down today and it has worked out so we can discuss the questions I have thought about.

I have two interests. The first, and very major one, is you, as a person.

The other interest concerns the perpetual and sadly unresolved issues of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. We are currently witnessing the terrible war in Gaza, and I suppose we cannot avoid talking about that either.

Judith Bernstein: Of course.

HMV: But my first question relates to your family history. Your parents fled from the Nazis in Nazi Germany and were not accepted by the USA or any other country at that time.

They had no choice but to go to Palestine, what was then the "British Mandate," and build a new future there. What was that like?

Judith Bernstein: Well, my parents were neither religious nor were they Zionists. And, as you said, they went to Israel, or at that time Palestine, because no other country would take them. One needed an affidavit at that time, which they did not have.

Figure 4 Affidavit (Latin: he or she has assured) is a sworn declaration for other countries. Example: Affidavit for Paul Dessau

And, willing or unwilling, they then went to Palestine back then. My mother had even heard Hitler in Bayreuth, and then she said she was leaving.

Her parents, typically, said, "No, this will pass and we will stay." Later, she tried to bring her parents to Palestine too. But then the war broke out and it was too late. - And then they ended up in Auschwitz.

Figure 5 Lotte Strauss, née Stein, between 1940 and 1944

HMV: But at that point, when the war broke out, your parents were already ...?

Judith Bernstein: ... they went to Palestine in 1935, independently of each other, both in 1935.

HMV: Did they meet there?