Almost 50 years ago, Zilja Feldmann and her parents fled the Ukraine to Siberia, desperate to escape the advancing German army and its fascist sympathizers.
Last year, the 62-year-old Feldmann fled again, but this time, with her children, to Germany, a country she now sees as her protector against anti-Semitism and economic ruin.
Sitting around a rickety table in one of the faceless East Berlin housing blocks that hundreds of Soviet Jews are calling home, the Feldmanns recently extolled the virtues of their new state.
“I understand Europe. It is a place for European people, and I feel myself normal in Europe,” said Vera Feldmann, Zilja’s 34-year-old daughter-in-law.
“In Israel, there are many problems, with apartments, jobs. Here, we have a lot of help,” she said.
As hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews seek refuge in Israel, a comparatively small but steady number are trying to immigrate to Germany, attracted by the country’s wealth and standing in Europe.
Over the past year, about 5,000 Soviet Jews have settled here, most of whom arrived before unification last October, when the former East German regime was actively courting their presence.
Like the Feldmanns, these Jews came on tourist visas with the hope of being allowed to stay. After unification, the German government granted them residency but has since instituted a requirement that those wishing to settle here obtain immigrant visas.
While this new policy has had the effect of slowing down the rate of immigration, at least 11,000 visa applications have been filed in the past seven months, a government spokesman said.
The German government is very sensitive to any suggestion that it might be placing a quota on Jewish arrivals. Officials said there were no plans to institute such a policy, despite the government’s worries over the large wave of refugees flooding the country from Eastern Europe.
A TRICKLY ISSUE TO RESOLVE
But this immigration has also become a sensitive issue for Israel, which does not want to see Soviet Jews settling in Germany.
“Everyone is free to immigrate where they want to, but we would rather see them in Israel, like any Jew,” said Elan Ben-Dov, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Bonn.
“The fact that they are leaving the Soviet Union and just going from one Diaspora to another is a mistake,” he said.
German officials say they understand Israel’s position. “But the Jewish people, like every foreigner, can come here to Germany if they make an application,” explained Paul-Johannes Fietz, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
What to do with the 268 Soviet Jews who arrived here from Israel last January, fearing the Persian Gulf War, has been a trickier issue for the two countries to resolve.
Israel says the Soviet Jews, who all hold Israeli citizenship, should return to Israel. Although the German Interior Ministry has agreed, Berlin city officials are refusing to deport the Jews and have extended their stay an additional six months, said Peter Mayer, one of the lawyers for the group.
“Nobody wants to see Jews sent out of Germany, so the issue is just hanging in the air,” said an official of the Berlin Jewish community.
Soviet Jews say their interest in coming to Germany is simple: While they want to escape anti-Semitism, they also want to settle in a country where they can find work and apartments — both of which are in short supply in Israel.
“Israel is a Jewish state, and that’s very important, and I can’t say anything against that,” said Alexander Kogan, a doctor who left the Ukraine last year for Germany.
“But the most important thing is that Jews can leave the Soviet Union and feel that they are Jewish. Maybe later their children will find that Israel is their homeland,” he said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
