19.12.2001 · Jews coming to Germany from the former Soviet Union often have to start all over, and they frequently struggle to find a sense of belonging.
The synagogue as a melting pot: Without immigration from the east, many Jewish communities would lack young members. (Photo: Rafael Herlich)
By Hans Riebsamen
FRANKFURT. Marina Chernyak and her husband, Peter, were stopped by German officials as they tried to enter from Austria. Illegally, the border police suspected.
At the time, in 1989, the authorities found Ms. Chernyak, a cultural studies specialist, and her husband, an engineer, pretty exotic -- two Russian Jews applying for residency in Germany. But many thousands have since followed the Chernyaks, who hail from Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Many of them came from Russia, but also from other former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Ukraine.
Unlike the Chernyaks, however, most did not have to sneak across the border: Jews from the former Soviet Union have been able to come to Germany legally since the start of 1992, when Heinz Galinski, then the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the then-German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, signed an immigration agreement. So far, more than 130,000 emigrants -- responding to Mr. Kohl's statement that Germany had a historical obligation to the Jews -- have come, as have a large number of non-Jewish spouses and children.
A few thousand more are still expected to come -- no matter what German Interior Minister Otto Schily's planned immigration law holds in store. But why did they leave Russia?
"We always wanted to go," though not out of economic need, Ms. Chernyak says. "We were well off." The reason, she adds, was pervasive anti-Semitism in Russia. Today, discrimination is often still a reason why Russian or Ukrainian Jews decide to emigrate, but the economic woes of the countries that once formed the Soviet Union has increasingly become a reason to emigrate.
In order to stay, the Chernyaks had to pledge in writing that they would not claim any social security benefits from the German government. They were so poor at first that they could not afford health insurance.
In contrast, today's immigrants have a right to social security and other state benefits if they are needy, securing them a standard of living -- even if they are unemployed -- that most Russians or Ukrainians can only dream of. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that every now and then an immigrant shows up in Germany who miraculously falls under the 1992 agreement -- thanks to the help of a corrupt Russian official.
"My heart was pounding," says Ms. Chernyak, who can remember exactly how she felt standing in front of the Jewish community center in Frankfurt for the first time. A house for Jews -- that had been unthinkable in Leningrad, where there was not even a Jewish community. Somebody was a Jew only because it said so in his or her papers.
Also, there was a weak Jewish identity among most Jews, who were for the most part brought up as atheists in Soviet cities such as Moscow or Minsk. Some families' relatives might come together out of tradition to share a meal on major Jewish holidays, but that was the full extent of Jewish life in the Chernyaks' former home country -- and to a large extent still is.
In Germany, Ms. Chernyak, who knew hardly anything about Jewish customs, was suddenly confronted by a Jewish community whose members strongly felt their ties to a religious or at least a cultural and historic group. The cultural studies expert from Leningrad tried to become a part of this community, and was even elected to the Frankfurt community council in 1998.
But she felt frustrated in her attempts to realize her ambitious plan of forging stronger links between the immigrants and the long-standing community members, leading her to resign as a member of the council a few months ago. It was not that the existing Jewish community here was unwilling to accept the newcomers, she stresses; the task was simply gargantuan.
Integrating the immigrants has been the greatest challenge facing the community since the end of the Nazi era, explains Charlotte Knobloch, vice president of the Central Council, adding that state support is needed to help this effort. Ms. Knobloch says that Jewish communities in only a handful of German cities have an infrastructure, such as a synagogue, a kindergarten, or a school and social service department, while some newly established communities, especially those found increasingly in eastern Germany, lack even the most basic economic means to create such a network.
The example of Frankfurt illustrates the enormous financial pressure that even large communities experience. In recent years, the community here has accrued debts of DM20 million ($9.1 million). Yet by comparison, Frankfurt is still in a relatively comfortable position, as the immigrants here only make up one-third of the Jewish community's approximately 7,000 members.
In other places, the ratio of long-standing members is one to eight, nine or, in the case of eastern Germany, even more "Russians," as they are called. "How can you integrate 1,000 people into communities of 100?" Frankfurt's Jewish community chairman, Salomon Korn, asks rhetorically.
Still, he is certain of one thing: "An immigrant will be at the head of the Central Council of Jews when it celebrates its 75th anniversary" in 2025.
Mr. Korn also points out the positive side of the immigration, since without the immigrants the Jewish community in Germany, with its aging membership, was set to decline.
"We would not have grown from 30,000 to 90,000 members since 1989," he says. "On the contrary, we would have shrunk by a third."
Ironically, it is now Germany, which under the Third Reich systematically murdered its Jewish citizens, that is the country with the fastest-growing Jewish population in the world, and this is thanks to the immigrants from the east.
Of course, in comparison with former days -- Germany's Jewish community numbered more than 500,000 when Hitler came to power in 1933 -- today's community remains hugely diminished. "What are 100,000 Jews in a country of 80 million inhabitants?" Mr. Korn asks.
The "Russians" do not have it easy in their new home, sometimes facing painful questions such as "Are you really Jewish?" from the old-established Jewish community. Others become depressed because their qualifications are not recognized or required in Germany. Those who were professors, engineers, and doctors in Moscow or Kiev are suddenly "nobodies" here, Ms. Chernyak says. Her husband, who was the head of a combine in Leningrad, could not find a job as an engineer in Germany.
Nonetheless, he does not burden the unemployment office: The trading company he founded when he arrived now supports him as well as his wife, who used to work at the Jewish central welfare office.
Often the elderly have the greatest difficulties, since their children usually made the decision to emigrate for them. Regardless of how closely knit immigrant families are, grandparents often feel uprooted. As with all peoples, the highest hopes for the future lie with the children -- in this case, those of the immigrants in particular.
"Can you tell Russian children from German ones?" Esther Ellroth, head of the kindergarten in Frankfurt's Jewish community center, asks rhetorically. She knows that it is impossible to do so.
Muss Norbert Röttgen auch als Umweltminister zurücktreten?
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