Jews in Germany and the German State from 1945 to Today

This article addresses the interrelation between the state and its ethnic minorities, and the ideological labor furnished by these minorities, as it applies to postwar German Jewry. The German Jewish community of today is not organically related to German Jewry as it existed before 1933; although, to ennoble its genealogy, its representatives lay claim to that Jewish past. There is a contradiction, therefore, between attempts to connect to prewar German Jewry on the one hand and, on the other, the community’s signaling, for many years at least, a rupture with this past with statements such as “this is not my country” and “sitting on packed suitcases.” However, with significant immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the late 1980s, a viable new Jewish community in Germany has come into being. It is increasingly characterized by uniform and central institutions as well as—especially since the war in Gaza and an escalation of antisemitism—an increasingly close relationship to German society and politics.