Published: 20 October 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The 10,000 Israelis living in the German capital don't know where to turn, what they can say in public and what to tell their children.
On that damned day the number of victims only continued to rise and there was no response from the IDF. The biggest act of terrorism that Israel has known, the end of which is still unclear, with 199 hostages still in the hands of the Hamas terrorists, has broken the national morale of Israel.
I feel that the Israeli community in Berlin is also broken. Both the radicals and the moderates, the leftists and the rightists, the Jews and the Palestinian-Israelis feel this fracture. They all feel that something was lost and will never again be found.
A Berlin synagogue was attacked with Molotov cocktails on Wednesday, the most extreme of the antisemitic incidents in the German capital following the violent escalation in the Middle East.
In all circles of my life in Berlin people are trying to deal with it. A good friend with a child consulted asked me last Saturday about whether to go to Friday night's Kiddush in Fraenkelufer synagogue in Kreuzberg. She told me that she spoke to the organisers of the Friday prayer, and they told her that they were not bringing their own daughter because it was going to be very emotional and sad.
They added that they didn't tell their daughter that there was a war. The friend stayed at home with her daughter. I did tell my daughter about the war. She wanted to see the photos of it. I told her they are not pleasant. I told her not to worry but I am sure she senses the fear inside of me. I said no to the photos. Most of my friends still hide them from their kids. And like them, only at night, do I break down in tears.
The radicals and the moderates, the left and the right ... all feel the fracture.
On Shabbat people Fraenkelufer synagogue held pictures of hostages and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke. He said, among other things: “Jews in Germany should never again have to fear for their lives. Protecting Jewish life in Germany is part of the self-image of our democracy. The safety of Jews is written into the foundation of our democracy. And only if our Jewish fellow citizens live in peace and security, only then can our entire country do so." Later, hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish people came to the synagogue to form a kind of symbolic human protective shield.
