{"id":607,"date":"2025-12-01T13:45:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=607"},"modified":"2025-12-01T13:45:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:45:51","slug":"monuments-to-memory-or-amnesia-the-struggle-over-remembrance-for-american-jews-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/monuments-to-memory-or-amnesia-the-struggle-over-remembrance-for-american-jews-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Monuments to Memory or Amnesia?: The Struggle Over Remembrance for American Jews in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Goldfrank was uneasy on his way to the German town of Neustadt \u2013 the same land his father had been forced to leave in 1933 for fear of Nazi persecution. 83 years old, he still wonders if his parents, gone for decades, would approve of this pilgrimage to their homeland almost a century after their escape.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon arriving in Neustadt, Jack and his wife, Jane, were greeted by the Mayor, who announced that they were the second Jewish Americans to return to Neustadt in connection with their family\u2019s history. Welcoming them into his office, he opened what he called \u201cThe Book of Remembrances,\u201d with the name of every Neustadt Jew who had fled Nazi persecution from 1933 onwards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Mayor then accompanied Jack and Jane to the town’s Jewish cemetery \u2013 a burial ground Jack called \u201cnot in pristine shape,\u201d but \u201cdecent.\u201d \u201cThere were a lot of Goldfranks in the cemetery,\u201d Jack tells me. \u201cBut the last burial there was in 1937.\u201d No Jews who escaped Nazi persecution had ever returned to live in Neustadt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jane adds, \u201cThe mayor was very nice. But, in my mind, I’m always remembering that these people, or their parents, were Nazis. It was always like, do they really feel this, or are they doing what they think is right? Does it matter? For me, it was confusing.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy big feeling was discomfort,\u201d Jack says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This trip was the first Jack Goldfrank took on his new German passport after reclaiming his German citizenship in the first months of 2025. This encounter with the mayor of Neustadt would fade in his recollection of the visit, overshadowed by lively memories of Berlin light festivals and museum tours. It wasn\u2019t until sitting with me, his granddaughter, that he and his wife began to revisit the feelings of unease they experienced in Neustadt.<\/span><\/p>\n

My family is just one of the many American Jewish families that have reclaimed their German citizenship in recent years. Since 2016, the German Consulate in New York City has reported a more than<\/span> 300% increase<\/span><\/a> in applications for citizenship reclamation, parallel with President Donald Trump\u2019s rise to power. Yet for some Jews who return to Germany generations after their ancestors fled Nazi persecution, the reality reveals that the nation has not moved as far from its past as they once imagined \u2013 encountering an overextension of Germany\u2019s \u201cmemory culture\u201d around the Holocaust that can manifest in instances of fetishization of Jewish culture and an overperformance of repentance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many recipients of reclaimed citizenship are two to three generations removed from the\u00a0 Holocaust themselves; these individuals do not connect reclamation efforts to a traumatic history, but rather an opportunity for smoother travel. Maya Shwayder, a journalist based in New England who reclaimed her citizenship in 2014, said she remembers thinking, \u201cThis is great! We can travel so much more easily. This is really, really useful.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Laura Moser, Texan author and former politician, laughs, telling me, \u201cWhy wouldn’t we want a second passport?\u201d Moser continues, \u201cThe people who were my generation immediately started applying once we got it because, once you have all the documents and the place, everyone can get it. The older people did not get it right away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack Goldfrank is only one generation removed from the traumas Nazi Germany inflicted upon his parents, yet for him too \u201cthe driving force was really to have the ability to explore other countries pretty easily.\u201d He continues, \u201cMy mother and father never talked about their life in Germany, and, shame on me, I never asked them. They never volunteered, and I never raised the issue\u2026 I’m not sure if my parents would be proud of what I’ve done, or if they would feel very negative.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Younger Americans, with a less vivid and recent recollection of the Holocaust, make up the majority of those with reclaimed passports who then decide to move to Germany permanently, mostly for job opportunities or the hope of an improved quality of life. Shwayder and Moser are in their ranks. Sitting in a noisy Berlin cafe, Moser tells me, \u201cThere’s definite practical aspects [of living in Germany], like the schools here, and it really does have a functioning social democracy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, upon moving to Germany, Moser did not necessarily encounter the socialized democratic utopia she expected. Instead, she describes a very different reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey fetishize Jews,\u201d she tells me. \u201cThe ones who don\u2019t are lying. They’re like, \u2018Oh, wow, it’s so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much.\u2019 They feel exonerated\u2026 like they’re forgiven. And I’m like\u2026no, I literally just wanted healthcare and like good schools\u2026I don’t volunteer that I’m Jewish anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Germany often receives praise for the ways in which the nation has memorialized historical wrongs and continues to acknowledge the mass atrocity of the holocaust in their lives. There is even a word for it, Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung, which translates to \u201cconfronting the past.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

American philosopher and Jew who relocated to Germany herself, Dr. Susan Neiman wrote a book in 2019 called <\/span>Learning from the Germans<\/span><\/i>, making the case that Germany had successfully faced its Nazi past and urging Western countries, the United States in particular, to follow the German example.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when I reached out to Dr. Neiman to discuss her thoughts on this topic, she told me that her views, and the world, had changed considerably since she wrote the book. \u201cI\u2019d have never written that book had I not thought that things were getting significantly better,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a stark contrast from her previous position, Dr. Neiman tells me that she believes German vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung has gone too far. \u201cIt\u2019s to the point that some of them call themselves the perpetrator nation. But, if that’s how you essentialize yourself, then there has to be a victim nation, and that victim nation is the Jews.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Psychologist Dr. Jasmin Spiegel <\/span>writes<\/span><\/a> that, \u201cThe need for historical \u2018closure\u2019 is greater for perpetrator groups, combined with the desire to \u201cget rid of\u201d the guilt\u2026These tendencies are reinforced the less contact (non-Jewish German) people have with minorities (here, Jews in Germany). This lack of contact tends to be the rule rather than the exception in Germany, given its current demographics. In the absence of contact, stronger stereotypes and prejudices as well as a layman\u2019s understanding of history are used to understand \u201cthe foreign.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, Dr. Spiegel hypothesizes that it is a lack of contact between Jewish community members and Germans that reinforces this idea of fetishization, fueled by stronger stereotypes and prejudices that cannot be disproven by in-person communication.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll these comparisons between America reckoning with slavery versus German memory culture\u2026\u201d Laura Moser hesitates. \u201cIt’s like we, everyone in America, has met a Black person before. Nobody in Germany has met a Jewish person before. So it’s completely a monument culture. It’s just, it’s like they think we are the things on the street\u2026 they don’t even engage with diversity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Neiman says it’s not only non-Jewish Germans who display this obsession with Holocaust remembrance. \u201cThe people who count as real Jews of the official Jewish community are constantly focusing on the victimhood of the Nazi Period,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her words jar me: \u201cThe people who count as real Jews of the official Jewish community.\u201d Did that mean that there were <\/span>fake Jews<\/span><\/i>? Or Jews who didn\u2019t count as part of the \u201cofficial\u201d community?<\/span><\/p>\n

Moser, explaining her feelings of relative separation from the Jewish community in Germany, tells me, \u201cAlmost all the congregations here are led by Germans who converted\u2026It’s a thing, and I find it really distasteful to sort of adopt this victim’s mentality when their grandparents were literally Nazis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When I begin to ask Dr. Neiman about Germans who adopt Jewish identities, she interrupts me. She exclaims, \u201cOh, the fake Jews? There are lots of them!… Half of the rabbis in the country!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While I could not find any data to support both Moser and Neiman\u2019s shared claim of a rabbinical space dominated by recent converts, their confident assessment does point to, at the very least, a common feeling of a strong convert presence within Jewish community leadership.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWho would you rather be, a child of a victim or a child of a Nazi?\u201d Dr. Neiman asks me. \u201cIt’s almost to the point where if someone starts really earnestly telling me that their great aunt was Jewish,\u201d she starts nodding uncomfortably and mimes walking away, laughing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Spiegel assesses the psychological motivations for what she calls \u201ctransgenerational posttraumatic identity confusions.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy choosing a victim identity, painful emotions of shame and guilt following the experience of collective trauma on the side of the perpetrators, as well as historical and moral responsibilities, do not need to be dealt with. The gain is the acquisition of a morally unattainable position\u2026.Anyone who can take refuge behind the protective shield of a \u2013 supposedly \u2013 Jewish identity can expect to be unassailable. The moral judgment of those who invent Holocaust victims is essentially a mockery of all those who really were tortured and killed by the Nazis.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1950s, following the end of World War II, there was a significant uptick in Germans who wanted to convert to Judaism. While there were approximately 25,000 Jews living in former West Germany and only a few hundred in East Germany, thousands of applications were submitted by Germans who Barbara Steiner \u2013 historian who penned a book called <\/span>Die Inszenierung des J\u00fcdischen<\/span><\/i> or \u201cThe Staging of Jewishness\u201d \u2013 says were burdened by feelings \u201cof guilt and shame and shock\u201d over the Holocaust.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany reported that, within the past twenty-one years, 1,697 Germans have converted to Judaism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou still cannot be there as a rabbi speaking the prayer for remembering Holocaust victims who were murdered, maybe by your own ancestors,\u201d Steiner is quoted as saying in an <\/span>article <\/span><\/a>for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cThere is definitely a red line\u2026You cannot give this [Nazi] heritage away with a bath in the mikvah,\u201d referring to the ritual conversion bath.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Neiman describes this phenomenon of the very Germans who once traced their lineage in an attempt to prove they had <\/span>no<\/span><\/i> Jewish ancestry now scouring their relations for proof of a connection to Judaism, leading to what she calls \u201cthese perennial Jew scandals.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Neiman tells me about several cases in which young Germans claimed Jewish heritage when their ties to Judaism were murky at best.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a big case a couple of years ago, a young writer named Fabian Wolf\u2026 he claimed his mother had told him he was Jewish, and it turned out that there was pretty definite proof that he wasn’t, and it turned very nasty\u2026There are just Jew scandals of various kinds that get a lot of attention from the press. And with Fabian, I think people were vicious towards him, but vicious because he took a fair stand on Israel and Palestine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Neiman asserts that it is oftentimes the voracity of one\u2019s support for the state of Israel, or rather lack thereof, that accrues media skepticism regarding one\u2019s Jewish identity, rather than the validity of their tie to Judaism itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other people, Max Czollek, for example,\u201d Neiman says, \u201cCzollek\u2019s claim to be Jewish is maybe just slightly better\u2026 but he explicitly stays out of any questions about Israel and Palestine. He says he’s critical of lots of things in Germany, but he says it’s antisemitic to expect [him] to have an opinion on Israel. Now. I think this is such bad faith\u2026I just don’t think that one can do that when this is a country whose government claims to represent us; you cannot just simply say, “Eh, not my problem.\u201d But anyway, hey, let me prop myself up on just a little bit of Jewish background and not a word on Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The larger issue of the tie between anti-semitism and protest acts committed by Israel seems to be very prevalent for Jews in Germany, with Germany\u2019s draconian guidelines for protest resulting in the arrest of Jewish Germans for the offense of anti-semitism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Neiman explains the irony here, \u201cPolls show that a great majority doesn’t like the German policy towards Israel, which is even more extreme than the U.S. and Trump’s. Okay. So people don’t like it, but they are\u2026 It’s just a complete taboo to say anything bad about Israel. And there’s a tendency to embrace any Jew whatever they do or don’t do, unless they criticize Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moser tells me that this dichotomy has caused significant discomfort for her during her time in Germany.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI don’t know how much you followed, but it’s insane. They’re like arresting Jews left and right for nothing. Phrases you can\u2019t say, like from the river to the sea\u2026 It’s like, get in jail. They don’t understand\u2026And that’s where they’re equating the anti-Israel with antisemitism. I mean, for millions of reasons, but they don’t really understand\u2026 They have no nuanced understanding of what Judaism is or what Jewish people are,\u201d she says. \u201cThat’s the thing that’s made me be like, why do I live here? Because these people have not learned anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of our time together, I ask Dr. Neiman the question that to this day plagues me, one that has become glaringly apparent throughout my discussions with American Jews: Can there ever truly be redemption for these historical crimes against humanity?<\/span><\/p>\n

She laughs. \u201cI’m laughing only because it’s a question that I’m left with, having spent a good\u2026Thank God, not all of my work is about this, but I’ve certainly written two whole books on the subject and thought about it a great deal, and at this point, I don’t know\u2026. And I count as one of the people that ought to have an answer to it, but well, I thought I did\u2026I really did think I had an answer to your question, and I don\u2019t anymore,\u201d she tells me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Neiman hesitates for a moment. \u201cThere\u2019s a nice saying by an Irish professor who suggests we should build a monument to amnesia and forget where we put it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Is that really the way forward? Would erasing the past, with its guilt, shame, and persistent need for forgiveness, erase the labelling and fetishization that American Jews feel so deeply in Germany?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I speak to Maya Schwayder, an American Jew who reclaimed her German citizenship and worked in Berlin for years as a journalist, I ask what it felt like to live as a German there. Without hesitation, she says, \u201cThat is something that you and I never will be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Can amnesia truly bridge the chasm between \u201creal\u201d and \u201cfake\u201d Jews and between those who are allowed to be German? Or does forgetting simply make this dichotomy more hidden, intensifying barriers that are too etched into Germany\u2019s past and present?<\/span><\/p>\n

As we leave a Berlin cafe, Moser turns to me to tell me one last thing, \u201cI have no illusions about Germany\u2026 I don’t expect anything from the German people\u2026 But also, I have my bag packed. I’m not from here. I don’t care. I’m not gonna be, like, weeping over the earth that I was raised on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her grandfather, like my own ancestors, was forced to leave his whole life behind as Nazis stormed Jewish towns, homes, and businesses. He fled to the U.S., ready to begin a new, safe life for his family. How could he know that, about eight decades later, his granddaughter would move to Germany, escaping the threats of fascism seeping into her own home country? And, now, that she would be contemplating leaving Germany once again, with no idea where her next supposed safe haven may be?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think there’s something very Jewish about having exit plans,” Moser says. \u201cIt’s like keeping your bag packed by the door.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Goldfrank was uneasy on his way to the German town of Neustadt \u2013 the same land his father had been forced to leave in 1933 for fear of Nazi persecution. 83 years old, he still wonders if his parents, gone for decades, would approve of this pilgrimage to their homeland almost a century after<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6938,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6938"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}