Exodus to Berlin: The Return of the Jews to Germany - Hardcover

Laufer, Peter

9781566635295: Exodus to Berlin: The Return of the Jews to Germany

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566635292 ISBN 13: 9781566635295

Publisher: UNKNO, 2003

In the years following the Holocaust, the Jewish community in Germany was tiny, decimated by the Nazis and shrinking fast as most survivors died or emigrated. But once the Berlin Wall fell, the German government invited Soviet-bloc Jews to come make a new life in prosperous and democratic Germany. Exodus to Berlin tells the story of that migration. Since 1989 more than 100,000 Jews have accepted Germany's invitation, filling Berlin and the rest of the country with a vibrant subculture. Germany now wakes up to synagogues filling for services, bagels and blintzes in new restaurants, and the mournful strains of Klezmer music in clubs and street festivals. Jews are finding sanctuary in Germany from the anti-Semitism, violence, and economic chaos that plague the former Soviet empire. But almost simultaneous with the first flow of Jewish immigrants, and stimulated by the failure of German unification to deliver promised prosperity to the former East Germany, neo-Nazis have been on the march in Germany, vowing to reclaim "Germany for the Germans!" More than a hundred murders and countless acts of vandalism are blamed on marauding right-wingers. Peter Laufer brings this current history to life through vivid narratives of events he experienced in Germany and dozens of highly personal interviews he conducted with the participants―Jews as they arrived at Germany's border, neo-Nazis who want to send those immigrants to Israel. Exodus to Berlin is a book of uncommon interest about one of the more unnoticed developments on the European continent. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

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About the Author:

Peter Laufer, an international news correspondent, won the George Polk Award for his radio documentary on Americans imprisoned overseas. Mr. Laufer's other books include Wetback Nation, Iron Curtain Rising, and Nightmare Abroad. Laufer, along with Jeff Kamen, has produced a documentary film on the subject of this book, which was awarded the David Wolper Documentary Film Prize. He lives in Bodega Bay, California, near San Francisco.

From Publishers Weekly:

Germany's burgeoning Jewish population is one of the more compelling European phenomena during the past decade. Laufer, a former NBC News correspondent and award-winning documentary filmmaker, relies on dozens of interviews to paint a comprehensive-although less than compelling-portrait of the fastest-growing Jewish community in the world today. He scours the entire country and examines all the angles of the phenomenon: Holocaust survivors who never left; immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who have provided much of the growth; even Israelis of German descent who want to have German citizenship in case Israeli-Palestinian violence becomes too much to bear. All too often, one wishes that Laufer had probed a bit deeper into questions of identity; too many times, he asks only the simple question, "Do you feel German [or Ukrainian] or Jewish?" Laufer also explores the non-Jewish German side of the equation: he interviews German teens attending a demonstration against anti-Semitism and visits with a group of neo-Nazis and a rabbi who was taunted and then beaten for being Jewish. But the portrait that emerges is optimistic, of a society that is moving forward even as it struggles to deal with the terrible legacy of Nazism. Laufer even profiles Hellmut Stern, a Jewish musician who left Germany on the eve of WWII and has now returned to take up a chair in the Berlin Philharmonic. "They are dead," he says of the Nazis. "We are here. That is a triumph." The book is a partial triumph as well. B&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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