2023-09-06 21:11:24
A photo that shows how complicated it was with the Jews and the GDR hangs in the third room of the exhibition. One recognizes a person in the picture immediately, one would not have expected them here. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, wearing his scarf and sunglasses. The photo is from 1976. Arafat is not yet a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but a bitter enemy of Israel. He grabs a girl’s head, his hands resting on her dark hair. The girl is Marion Brasch.
Marion Brasch is the daughter of communists, her father Horst is a senior SED functionary. She is the sister of recalcitrant artists, her brother Thomas will emigrate to West Berlin in the year of the photo. Marion is 15 years old. And Jewess. Her parents survived the Holocaust, which ended just 30 years ago, in exile in Great Britain.
Someone invited the Jewish girl, of all people, to give a speech when Arafat visited East Berlin. That seems grotesque today, says Marion Brasch. And yet, the photos from that day are among her “favorite children’s pictures”. When curators from the Jewish Museum Berlin began looking for contemporary witnesses and objects that tell of Jewish life in the GDR three years ago, and also took a look at the famous Brasch family, Marion Brasch sought out the pictures.
Marion Brasch welcomes Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in East Berlin in 1976.Emmanuele Contini
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How did Jews live in East Germany, a state that declared Israel one of its worst enemies? When religion was considered the opium of the people? Who honored the victims of fascism and kept their memory alive, but always primarily meant the victims of communism?
The exhibition, which opens on Friday, tries to fathom that. Above all, by allowing people who lived as Jews in the GDR to have their say. In very different ways, with all their contradictions. Close to the state, critical of the state. Religious, far from religion. “Actor-centered” is what curator Theresia Ziehe calls the basic principle of the show. None of the three women who put together the exhibition grew up in the GDR. Maybe that was even an advantage. In any case, one wishes that the GDR would be told more often the way they do it.
The curators had an appeal placed in the newspapers, looked for eyewitnesses, and had “very, very many discussions,” says Ziehe. She noticed one thing in particular: “a great seriousness”. There was no banter, no idle talk. “It was always about something.”
The exhibition tells of the beginnings, the return of Jews to the Soviet occupation zone. Above all, those came who wanted to build a new, different Germany. communists. “Another Country” is also the title of the exhibition. Jews came who had survived the camps – including Stalin’s camps. But there were also Jews in the GDR who had survived in hiding.
Initially, Jews were still clearly visible in public commemoration, as shown by a wall with impressive photos taken by Abraham Pisarek between 1945 and 1948 at memorial marches for the victims of fascism between the rubble of Berlin. Among the participants are groups carrying signs painted with the Stars of David and the name of the Jewish sports club Hakoah. Or just one word, in capital letters: “star bearer”.
A menorah from the VEB Wohnwohnen, which belonged to the Jewish cultural association in East BerlinEmmanuele Contini
Nobody can say how many Jews lived in the GDR. There were eight parishes, the largest in East Berlin, and an entire exhibition room is dedicated to the city. The knife with which Károly Timár from Hungary slaughtered the animals for the kosher butcher shop on Eberswalder Strasse is in a display case. Timár traveled extra every time for this. Employees from embassies – from countries where the rules of Islam applied – also liked to shop in the butcher shop. Their rush was so great that a day was finally set that was reserved for Jewish customers.
Views of everyday Jewish life alternate with views of biographies. The contemporary witnesses have their say in quotations and audio installations. Sometimes object and life story are connected. In the room dedicated to the other seven communities – Dresden, Erfurt, Halle, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Schwerin – there is a small ceramic figure. An old woman, her shoulders slightly hunched forward, in a blue dress, a necklace with a Star of David on it.
The ceramic shows Henriette Schmager, a landlady who survived the Holocaust because someone hid her on a ship. When her 90th birthday was approaching in the 1980s, the GDR wanted to improve its relations with the USA. Among other things, by emphasizing Jewish life in the state. The old lady was given a ceremony resembling a state ceremony. And completely overwhelmed her.
It remained complicated until the end of the GDR. There were years when it was almost unbearable for many Jews. After the Slánsky trial, for example. At the end of 1952 there was a Stalinist show trial in Prague against 14 members of the Communist Party, including 11 Jews. Most of the accused were executed. The anti-Semitic agitation that accompanied the process was enormous, even in the GDR. A great wave of flight among Jews began.
In 1987, Mathias Brauner photographed the ruins of the New Synagogue on Oranienburg Strasse.Emmanuele Contini
The wooden skis belonging to Werner Kussy, whose family disguised their escape as a winter sports trip, can be seen in the exhibition. Kussy had survived several concentration camps, returned to Dresden, the city of his birth, and was involved in the small community there. Now he feared again for his life and that of his family. They fled to West Berlin, then to the USA, taking their skis with them.
What should you think after seeing the exhibition? That’s what a journalist asked at the press conference before the opening on Wednesday. Why are the curators so reserved with interpretations?
Four of the eyewitnesses who contributed to the exhibition and came to the press conference answered. Everyone would like to thank the organizers of the exhibition. For being listened to. Classify them instead of evaluating them. Renate Aris, who belonged to the tiny community in Karl-Marx-Stadt, where she struggled to be able to live a Jewish everyday life, asks back: “Do you know how often I’m asked whether we even existed in the GDR? Ruth Zadek says it’s not that easy to sit here with your own story and that of her family. Also with the dreams of the parents who have “gone shattered”.
Ruth Zadek can be seen in the photo used by the museum to promote the exhibition. As a Jewish child, she says: “as a Berlin plant”, holding the hand of her self-confident mother, in the sunshine on Stalinallee. Her father Gerhard Zadek had fought in the Jewish resistance against the National Socialists, had fled from them, then he too returned to help build the GDR. Ruth Zadek says she is very moved that her family’s slide was chosen to promote this exhibition. She sounds like she can hardly believe it herself.
Another country – Jewish in the GDR. Jewish Museum Berlin, September 8, 2023 to January 14, 2024, daily 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission eight euros, time slot tickets must be booked. A catalog for the exhibition has been published by Ch.Links (271 pages, 28 euros). information below www.jmberlin.de
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