Exhibit of Jews in Germany raises interest, ire

Updated: 03/29/2013 11:09 AM KSTP.com

(AP) BERLIN - "Are there still Jews in Germany?" `’Are the Jews a chosen people?"

Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany’s 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.




Since the exhibit _ "The Whole Truth, everything you wanted to know about Jews" _ opened this month, the "Jew in the Box," as it is popularly known, has drawn sharp criticism within the Jewish community _ especially in the city where the Nazis orchestrated the slaughter of 6 million Jews until Adolf Hitler’s defeat in 1945.


The exhibit is reminiscent of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann sitting in a glass booth at the 1961 trial in Israel which led to his execution. And it’s certainly more provocative than British actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at a recent performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Eran Levy, an Israeli who has lived in Berlin for years, was horrified by the idea of presenting a Jew as a museum piece, even if to answer Germans’ questions about Jewish life.

"It’s a horrible thing to do _ completely degrading and not helpful," he said. "The Jewish Museum absolutely missed the point if they wanted to do anything to improve the relations between Germans and Jews."


"With so few of us, you almost inevitably feel like an exhibition piece," volunteer Leeor Englander said. "Once you’ve been `outed’ as a Jew, you always have to be the expert and answer all questions regarding anything related to religion, Israel, the Holocaust and so on."

Museum curator Miriam Goldmann, who is Jewish, believes the exhibit’s provocative "in your face" approach is the best way to overcome the emotional barriers and deal with a subject that remains painful for both Jews and non-Jews.

"We wanted to provoke, that’s true, and some people may find the show outrageous or objectionable," Goldmann said. "But that’s fine by us."


One includes a placard that asks "how you recognize a Jew?" It’s next to an assortment of yarmulkes, black hats and women’s hair covers hanging from the ceiling on thin threads. Another asks if Jews consider themselves the chosen people. It includes a poem by Jewish author Leonard Fein: "How odd of God to choose the Jews. But how on earth could we refuse?"



"I asked him about the feelings he has for his country and what he thinks about the conflict with Palestine, if he ever visited Palestine," visitor Panka Chirer-Geyer said. "I have Jewish roots and I’ve been to Palestine and realized how difficult it was there. I could not even mention that I have Jewish roots."






"I feel a bit like an animal in the zoo, but in reality that’s what it’s like being a Jew in Germany," Porat said. "You are a very interesting object to most people here."


"They associate Jews with the Holocaust and the Nazi era," he said. "Jews don’t have a history before or after. In Germany, Jews have been stereotyped as victims. It is important that people here get to know Jews to see that Jews are alive and that we have individual histories. I hope that this exhibit can help."


Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal from the Jewish Chabad community in Berlin said Germans who are really interested in Jews and Judaism should visit the community’s educational center.

