Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Anti-Semitism threatens Germany's Jewish life-rabbi
The first rabbi to be ordained in Germany since the Holocaust is so worried about being identified as a Jew that he often wears a baseball hat over his skull cap.
'It's a fact – it isn't smart to display I'm Jewish. This is a problem and we have to face it,' German-born Daniel Alter, 47, told Reuters in an interview.
He is worried about neo-Nazi attacks and says anti-Semitism in Germany – still tortured by memories of the Holocaust in which Nazis wiped out 6 million Jews – puts the growth of Jewish communities here at risk.
As a Jew he feels unsafe in several German cities, not all in former communist east Germany where the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) has made electoral gains recently.
Alter, whose father survived Auschwitz concentration camp, dismissed talk in the German media of a possible blossoming of Jewish life in Germany.
Jewish schools, theatres and shops have sprung up but Germany's Jewish communities will never compare to those in Britain or the United States, says Alter, who serves in the northern towns of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst.
'We are building something on the ruins, on the scars left behind but it'll be something different,' he said.
'I don't think there is any way to bring back the Jewish life and culture we had here. Ever.'
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070116-0506-germany-jews-rabbi.html
The first rabbi to be ordained in Germany since the Holocaust is so worried about being identified as a Jew that he often wears a baseball hat over his skull cap.
'It's a fact – it isn't smart to display I'm Jewish. This is a problem and we have to face it,' German-born Daniel Alter, 47, told Reuters in an interview.
He is worried about neo-Nazi attacks and says anti-Semitism in Germany – still tortured by memories of the Holocaust in which Nazis wiped out 6 million Jews – puts the growth of Jewish communities here at risk.
As a Jew he feels unsafe in several German cities, not all in former communist east Germany where the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) has made electoral gains recently.
Alter, whose father survived Auschwitz concentration camp, dismissed talk in the German media of a possible blossoming of Jewish life in Germany.
Jewish schools, theatres and shops have sprung up but Germany's Jewish communities will never compare to those in Britain or the United States, says Alter, who serves in the northern towns of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst.
'We are building something on the ruins, on the scars left behind but it'll be something different,' he said.
'I don't think there is any way to bring back the Jewish life and culture we had here. Ever.'
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070116-0506-germany-jews-rabbi.html
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