By Vera Meyer
MALDEN, Massachusetts — I became interested in German Jewish history and culture because these are my roots, this is my heritage. Both my parents came from Germany. Both their families were deeply assimilated into German culture; that is to say, they were proud to be Germans first and Jews second. The spirit of the Enlightenment, ‘hoch Kultur und Bildung‘ had formed them and lured them more towards “reason and rationality” and away from pious devotion. My mother was from Berlin and fled with her family to the US in 1936. My father was from the town of Bielefeld in Westfalia, and he fled to the US in 1939. Unfortunately his parents were left behind and were transported to Theresienstadt and murdered.
My dad arrived here as a young man of 19 and quickly joined the Army, where he was trained to be an intelligence officer and then sent to the German front to interrogate his countrymen (where he earned a Bronze Star for bravery). After the war, the Army sent my father to Harvard to learn Russian, as the Cold War was now in full bloom. He became Assistant Director of the Russian Research Center and then from there continued a long and rewarding life of teaching Political Science at various universities. He retired after a long career at the University of Michigan.
My mother had the good fortune to follow her entire family out of Germany early. Her uncle had been offered a job teaching Musicology at Harvard (Willi Apel – he’s the author of The Harvard Dictionary of Music), so the whole family read the tea leaves correctly and decided it was best to follow him and leave sooner than later. My mom and dad met on the steps of Widener Library. My dad saw a Dürkopp bicycle made in his home town and waited there for three hours, until the owner returned to get it. It was my mom; she had brought the bike with her from Berlin.
I have always been fascinated by the concept of “identity,” who we feel we are and why. And I was always quite aware that I had had quite a meshuggeneh (my one word of Yiddish) upbringing. I was raised as a secular agnostic, as both my parents (understandably) turned away from God after their experiences from the Holocaust and after my father’s parents were exterminated like vermin. So in my case the search for “identity” seemed complicated by the fact that I was given neither any cultural nor religious training at all. We celebrated Christmas growing up (secularized and sanitized of course, careful to exclude any mention of God or Jesus) in order to “fit in,” as there were few Jews in the Midwest where we grew up. I even remember praying each night when I was a small child before I went to bed (to what God or no God I never had a clue).
Müde bin ich, geh’ zur Ruh’,
schließe beide Äuglein zu.
Vater, laß die Augen dein
über meinem Bettschen sein.
(I’m tired and am going to sleep,
I will close both my sleepy eyes
Father, may your own eyes
Watch over my bed as I rest.)
But despite all these gaping “holes” in my upbringing, my connection to my ethnicity and my heritage still seemed so strong. It really was a mystery and I wanted very much to figure it out. What made the situation even more intriguing was that I frequently got the remark from people that I seemed like a Jew “through and through.” This despite not speaking any Yiddish, not eating kugel or latkes, and not feeling comfortable attending a religious service, which likely involved having to express my devotion to God and praise his name in Hebrew, all of which seemed foreign and alien to me.
I felt a driving need to understand what it might mean to be a Jew “through and through” and still not feel any religious or cultural connection. I speculated that the answer may lie more in being a Mensch and having Mensch-like attributes, an ethical and moral character, rather than merely eating certain foods or performing certain rituals. And if that makes sense I thought it might be interesting then to somehow further explore what exactly it means to be a Mensch. So in this way the early seeds formed in my mind, that perhaps if I started a group for people who shared the same background, it might help me to get some clues about this, by reaching out to others who have had some similar life experiences. And indeed I received confirmations that I was not alone; what I wrote struck some resounding chords in others. One member wrote: A rabbi once said that there was a whole generation, children of survivors, who were brought up with two conflicting ideas: “Be proud to be Jewish, your family died for it.” And “Don’t be too Jewish, your family died for it.” When I first heard this, I was in my forties and felt this very accurately described my upbringing. I do feel a strong cultural connection, but not a religious one.
So, I created my Facebook group, linked here, eleven months ago, which I named “JEWS – Jekkes Engaged Worldwide in Social Networking.” If you are a bit caught off-guard by the term “Jekke”, thinking you have only heard it used in a derogatory or pejorative sense for German Jew, you are indeed correct. You have. But we are trying to turn this image around and give the term a new positive connotation. If you are interested, you are all most heartily invited to join! As a basic description I wrote: This group is created with the hope of finding and networking with people of German Jewish heritage/descent (which is what a Jekke is).
Since a common language often correlates with engendering similar cultures, for my purposes here I expand the Jekke definition to include Jews from all areas where the language spoken was German (ie in Austria and parts of Poland and the CSR, like the Sudetenland) I would like to invite Jekkes in all parts of the world to participate. This will be a place to offer tributes to and memorialize our families through family pictures and stories, as a way to pay respect to and honor the loved ones who endured so much hardship and suffering by being victims of the Holocaust. This will be a safe place to share our own stories, as well as our thoughts and feelings about our common background, and to explore how our pasts may have affected our lives. This will be a place to learn from one another about our common roots, German Jewish history and culture.
As the group evolved and attracted more members, I saw that it was really positively affecting people’s lives, so this was extremely rewarding and gratifying to see. A genealogical aspect developed where detectives about family trees not only found information about member’s relatives but even made some real human connections, finding long-lost relatives. And a social network was created, where new friendships were developing. Many members found joy in using the site as a vehicle for emotional expression and self-discovery. Other came to the realization that they were not as alone as they thought they were, but there are others like them. In sharing similar pasts and experiences one can go from feeling like a disconnected soul in the universe, to feeling that one has a profound connection with others. I got a very big compliment once from the chief curator and head researcher of the Leo Baeck Institute in NYC, who is a member of this group. He said he thought what I started was very important. He viewed it as the “psychological arm” of the 60-year old and very prestigious repository for our family documents.
One thing which makes me proud is that my group is not exclusive to Jews. I invite Jews and non-Jews alike who have a common interest in German Jewish history and culture. I believe many of my non-Jewish German members have a great deal to contribute, and from whom we can learn. As well, I believe that there is much room for healing to be done on both sides. There is trauma for the victims of the Shoah and there is trauma as well for a younger generation of Germans who have to acknowledge and face up to the sins of their forefathers. No, it is not their fault, but neither can they simply ignore the reality of history. They should understand the face of evil, not to live their lives with guilt and shame, but just to be aware of man’s potential inhumanity to man and have a commitment for their lives of “Never Again.”
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Meyer works in the administrative division of Medical Information Technology, which sells hospital information systems. Her hobby is playing a glass harmonica, an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin.