Behind the Headlines the Jews of West Germany

This is the site of the infamous Nazi death camp. A visitor to Dachau who knows something about the Holocaust wonders. He thinks. He is nonplussed. Suddenly, he sees a written sentence in the booklet distributed at Dachau today in the 1980’s, that reassures him, that reminds him why he come: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it..” (George Santayana)

They say that among the visitors from the various nations to Dachau, Americans are among the leaders, thousands come each year, many of them wearing yarmulkes. There are German youth from the schools as well as students arriving on the tour buses from Italy. There are English men and women on holiday. They all come to Dachau.

What goes on in their minds? While they say Dachau is not as gruesome in its preservation as say, Auschwitz, one gets the message at what happened here. Perhaps one hopes that the world will be better, that there were righteous Christians even in Germany who saved Jews.

‘TO REMEMBER THE PAST’

Today, several miles away from the camp in the town of Dachau Itself, Johann Waltenberger, is principal in the Josef Effner high school whose student body numbers 1,500. It seems that Waltenberger who is not Jewish, was moved by the TV film, “Holocaust.” He immediately set out on his own to bring two peoples, Germans and Israelis, together “to remember the past.”

Waltenberger is a religious man. He always has been interested in the Bible and in the Holy Land. He has visited Israel several times. He is fond of Israel. He talks like a Zionist. Several years ago, with some help from the Jewish community of Munich, he wrote a long letter to a number of Israeli schools and asked them if they would be interested in an exchange program of students and teachers.

The Israelis answered back politely, in effect, “thank you, but no thank you.” Waltenberger said the Israelis wrote that he should teach the Holocaust in his class and drop the matter.

Waltenberger says he understood their reaction, but was not deterred. On his next trip to Israel, he visited several of the Israeli educators and personally talked to them again about the program.

He was persistent. He says he had to try. Over and over again Waltenberger keeps saying, “Did we learn about the Holocaust?” After a year of negotiations, six Israeli teachers were scheduled to come to Dachau for a week to exchange ideas, discussions and methods regarding teaching the Holocaust.

In Waltenberger’s school, of course, the Holocaust is taught. Unbelievable though it seems, there is one Jewish family in the town of Dachau. This family has lived there since the war. Their children went to Waltenberger’s school. His pupils visit the camp which contains a museum, a sample barracks, and several memorials, as well as a synagogue and two churches.

This year, Waltenberger and a group of his teachers are scheduled to return the visit of the Israelis. Their group will be in the Jewish State, including a stay at Kibbutz Givat Brenner. “Emotions” Waltenberger says, “are not enough; dialogue is important. We must do these things.” He set up the whole program himself. All of this could of course be brushed aside as infinitesimal to the thousands upon thousands who perished at Dachau. True. But there are those in the American Jewish community and the German Jewish community who believe that Jews should never cease to remind the world about the Holocaust, and that as emotionally trying a visit to Dachau becomes, homage should be paid to the six million Jews on the soil where they died–and to remember.

In a speech several years ago, in the presence of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Werner Nachmann, chairman of the directorate of the Central Council of Jews in Germany made several observations which in effect portray the philosophy of the German Jewish community.

The first was that “We do not burden the young generation with the guilt of their fathers. However, we hold their fathers responsible if they fail to tell the young generation about that part of history which they themselves lived through. Howelse should this young generation become more knowledgeable and hence more resilient?”

Nachmann added: “One thing must, however, be clear to all of us: those who committed murder and other terrible crimes must be punished. We passionately contradict those who believe that this period of German history should be buried and forgotten. We must remember because that will help to sharpen our conscience and to be ready jointly to fight off any attack on this democracy.