Two major Gedenkstatten (remembrance memorials) have recently been put in place here, the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), that specificially commemorate the great Jewish leader, philosopher and mathematician, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), and those “thousands of Jews” who were deported from Hitler’s Berlin to their deaths in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.
A striking, haunting group of figures — men, women and children, 13 in all, in varying size and attitude — has been erected on a large marble slab on the site of what formerly was Berlin’s home for the aged in the Great Ghetto.
The July 13th issue of the GDR’s Communist newspaper, Neues Deutschland (New Germany), official organ of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), prominently featured a picture of the sculpture by the late artist Will Lamert, under a two-column headline, “Remembrance of the Jewish Victims.”
In part, the story reads: “This group of figures serves to remind us of what took place on the Grosse Hamburgstrasse when thousands of Jewish citizens were deported to the fascist extermination camps.
“These figures have been placed on the spot where once stood the oldest Jewish cemetery, destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Only the grave of Moses Mendelssohn and a few stones are left here.
“Today this is a place of both admonition and remembrance. The Gestapo used the home (1942-1943) for the elderly as a collection point for the Jews’ death-transportation to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt’
‘NEVER FASCISM AGAIN’
On the day that this reporter visited the site, fresh flowers had been placed at the base of the memorial. One bouquet, covered with a vivid red sash, read in both German and Yiddish: “Forget this Not! Never fascism Again!”
Some 50 paces to the left of the Jewish Victims Memorial was a large plaque to the memory of Mendelssohn. Under an engraving of Mendelssohn’s bust was the following quotation:
“Seeker of truth, lover of beauty, working for the common good, doing one’s best.”
This was followed by: “Moses Mendelssohn, philosopher and friend of Lessing, Founder of the first Jewish School in Berlin. He was born 6 September 1729 and died in Berlin on 4 January 1786.”
ELABORATE CEREMONIES PLANNED FOR 1986
The GDR is already planning elaborate ceremonies for the 1986 celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s death.
Both Gedenkstatten were erected by “the city government of Berlin in cooperation with the Jewish Gemeinde (Community) of the GDR.”
Mendelssohn of course was the founder of what became the Reform movement in Judaism. There are plans for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations to send representatives to the GDR to participate in the Mendelssohn celebrations, starting with the High Holidays of 1985 and continuing through 1986.
An official of GDR’s Anti-faschiste Aktion Komite, the country’s single-most prestigious organization of resistance fighters during the Nazi period, told me in detail of the relationship between Lessing, the German philosopher, and Mendelssohn. Lessing’s play, Die Juden (1749), had portrayed a “noble-hearted Jew” that caused much negative criticism, I was told. In Mendelssohn, Lessing found the “embodiment” of his own “lofty bourgeois ideals,” said my companion.
In rather detached terms, I was told, “Lessing influenced Mendelssohn who in turn led the Jewish people of Germany into bourgeois assimilation.”
NO OVERT TRACES OF ANTI-SEMITISM
My companion, himself a Jew and raised in a religious home, expressed “no problems whatsoever” with devout Jews — of whom there are very few in the GDR. As for himself, a survivor of the camps and a Communist,” I am an atheist but I think it important to study, appreciate and honor Mendelssohn for his contributions to humanity,” he said.
While there is not an overt trace of anti-Semitism in the GDR or, most certainly, no single expression of neo-Nazism (indeed, it is forcefully outlawed), many visitors to the GDR remain skeptical of how deep is such a commitment. There are inconsistencies, most by omission.
In the several handsomely illustrated and moving brochures marking the 40 years of the liberation of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Ravensbruk, and Brandenburg-Gorden concentration camps, there is but one reference to Jews as victims categorically singled out by the Nazis.
In the Buchenwald commemorative booklet — published in the millions in German, English, French and Russian — there appears on page 8 the following:
“We honor all victims of fascism, our Communist and Social Democratic comrades, our fallen comrades from the resistance put up by the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The flowers of our wreaths stand in tribute to thousands of people of the Jewish faith who were driven to their deaths in Buchenwald by the racial madness of the Nazi hangmen.”
In the other camp commemoratives, there is no such language. Some critics in the West see such omission as tantamount to anti-Semitism.
This is vigorously denied by many in the GDR, especially the leadership of the Anti-Fascist Committee. In conversation with its leadership, I was told that Hitler’s victims were honored by nationality.
SITUATION AT RAVENSBRUK
At the Ravensbruk concentration camp memorial site — an especially moving place of memory where more than 90,000 were murdered, mostly women and children — there are plans now for extending special memorials to the “peoples of 20 nations who suffered here.”
When I asked if a special memorial for the Jewish victims of Ravensbruk might be included, there was an expression of uncertainty and a reassertion of the customary procedure regarding nationality.
I then pointed out that modest yet nonetheless specific commemoration of the Jews were already in place at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, I also pointed out by way of questions the patent inconsistencies in the commemorative booklets.
“Die Endlesung” (the Final Solution), I noted, “was a deliberate fascist genocide which precisely singled out the Jews of Europe, and surely that had a great role to play in the massive terror which the great resistance fighters battled until victory over fascism was accomplished. Is it not proper to acknowl- edge this basic fact for the sake of what was best in the anti-fascist resistance?” There was no disagreement, but there was an uncomfortable discomfiture on the matter yet to be fully resolved.
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