Behind the Headlines: Immigrants Bring New Jewish Life and Challenges to Eastern Germany

Dr. Alexander Kogan shrugged his shoulders and tried to explain himself once more.

No, he could not help the middle-aged, recent Jewish immigrant obtain a place in a hospital for her sick husband through his connections there. The German system does not work like the Russian one. You do not have to know someone to get a hospital bed.

On a recent warm Monday afternoon, this was just one of the many requests Kogan had to deal with.

As head of the newly formed Jewish community here, the 39-year-old orthopedic specialist from Chernovitz, in western Ukraine, has his hands full helping some of the 200 Jews who recently emigrated from the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union adjust to their new life here.

Several new Jewish communities have sprung up in eastern Germany after Jews emigrated in recent years from Russia, Ukraine and other states of the former Soviet Union.

Potsdam, a city west of Berlin that is capital of the state of Brandenburg, had a Jewish community of about 450 before World War II. After the war, Kogan said, there was no Jewish community here to speak of.

The same was true of Schwerin, in northeastern Germany, where new immigrants have revived Jewish life. And in Magdeburg, located near Potsdam in the heart of the former German Democratic Republic, hundreds of new immigrants have contributed to a growing Jewish community that struggled to survive under the former Communist regime.

By far, most Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union go to Israel or the United States. But curiously enough, thousands have come to Germany, the country that once sought to eradicate all Jewish life in the very towns where these newcomers have recently settled.

WAR VETERANS WHO LIBERATED AREA SETTLE HERE

Among the Potsdam Jews, there are Russian Jewish veterans of World War II who helped liberate this area from the Nazis. And in a further irony, the nascent Potsdam Jewish community has its offices in a complex of government-owned offices that also houses the local chapter of the Association of German War Wounded.

Many immigrants from the former Soviet republics came to Germany instead of America or Israel because it is convenient, said Kogan, who in 1990 simply packed up and drove here.

“You can’t just pack your car and head for Israel,” he said.

Despite the rise here xenophobic and anti-Semitic violence, the physician is not defensive about living here. “I feel at home,” he said.

Another factor that played a role in his decision to move here was the relative ease with which Germany recognizes certain professions, such as medicine and engineering. Compared to the United States, where qualification exams must be passed, getting a license to practice medicine in Germany for an ex-Soviet Jew is easy.

The Potsdam community leader has two things going for him that many of the more recent Jewish arrivals do not. For one, he speaks passable German, mostly learned here. Second, he has a job.

More than 90 percent of the Potsdam Jews live in the former lodgings of Soviet army officers who were posted here.

The apartments were renovated by the state government, and the new Jewish residents receive social assistance from the public purse as well.

“They’ve been good to us. We can’t complain,” Kogan admitted.

But economic support from the government is only one aspect of the help the new arrivals need. When it comes to doing business, the immigrants have to learn that Germany does not function like the old country.

Connections and bribes are not as important as signed and stamped forms. And the state, while providing food and housing, will not take care of all their needs.

Jewish community leaders are forever explaining that the new immigrants have to take the initiative themselves and not rely on community leaders.

On a religious level, too, the immigrants have much to absorb. Most of them have as much learning to do about Judaism as they do about how to function in a free-market economy.

“These people know nothing about being Jewish,” said Rabbi Ernst Stein, a Conservative rabbi from Berlin.

PROGRESS MADE IN RELIGIOUS SPHERE

While some complain that the integration of the new immigrants is taxing the small community’s resources, others note that progress has been made in the religious sphere.

Regular Friday night services have been instituted, and there even have been a few bar mitzvahs. There are hopes that the community may soon hold a Jewish wedding.

Finding a rabbi to lead the Potsdam community has been somewhat of a problem.

The community had a Lubavitch rabbi briefly, but he returned to Israel. The community now relies on the services of two Lubavitch students from New York, but the congregation is looking for a more permanent religious leader.

For the older and more-established German Jewish communities, the arrival of the immigrants has brought fundamental changes, particularly in the size of the community and its needs.

In the former West Berlin, for example, the Jewish community numbered about 6,000 before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now it is nearly double that due to the influx of new immigrants.

Just as before World War II, when streams of Eastern European Jews arrived in Germany, there is some resentment of the new arrivals felt by the relatively richer and more-established German Jews.

But there is also some tension among the immigrants themselves. Those who arrived from the Soviet Union in the difficult years of the early 1980s consider themselves a cut above the more recent immigrants.

“These problems would be normal anywhere else,” said Peter Ambros, spokesman for Berlin’s Jewish community. “But because they occur here, they attract a different kind of attention.”