Brotherhood Week, which fosters amicable relations between Christians and Jews, opened in West Germany yesterday. The principal ceremonies, broadcast on national television, were held in Worms where the first Jewish settlement dates back to Roman times.
They marked, among other things, the 950th anniversary of the first synagogue in Germany, an edifice constructed in 1034. Speakers stressed the need for Germans to outgrow once and for all the anti-Semitism that has ebbed and flowed throughout German history, culminating in the Holocaust.
Ingeborg Drewitz, a West Berlin writer, warned against the current phenomenon of anti-Semitism which she said is sometimes masked as anti-Zionism. Klaus Schuetz, a former West German Ambassador to Israel, criticized the Bonn government’s plans to sell arms to “enemies of Israel.”
Schuetz said that while there cannot be collective guilt among Germans for the atrocities of the Nazi era, there certainly should be collective responsibility toward one’s history.
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.
