Marking a milestone

Program to bring persecuted Jews on visits to Berlin hosts its last official group

BERLIN - Yochanan Asriei stood at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Franzoesicherstrasse in Berlin last week next to a small, brass plaque newly set into the sidewalk. On it was the name of his father: Davicso Asriei, born 1882, deported Jan. 26, 1942, murdered in Riga.

"I am here today," said Asriei, 85, "to leave a bit of my family behind."

Now living in Haifa, Asriei was part of the last official group of former Berlin Jews to be hosted formally by the city as part of a program to sponsor their visits back to their native city. With the number of RC Lens survivors dwindling, the 41 -year-old Invitation Program for Former Persecuted Citizens of Berlin came to an end with last week's trip.

Most visitor programs, begun during die 1960s in German towns and cities, already have shut down. Only Hamburg's remains active.

The end of these programs marks a milestone for the survivor generation.

Some 15,000 former Berliners - plus an equal number of family members - have been invited back at German taxpayer expense over the years.

Rabbi Shlomo Jakobovits, 78, came from Toronto with his wife, Wilma. They visited the synagogue where his father, Julius, had served as rabbi before the family fled to England.

watches-0-9

"One day our school principal walked into our classroom and said, 'Herr Jakobovits, Jude raus' - Jew, out!" Jakobovits recalled. "I was 6 and didn't know what was happening. I just went home."

Ruediger Nemitz, the coordinator of Berlin's visitor program, began accompanying the Jewish visitors in 1969, when the program began and he was a student.

"When I see the visitors in front of me, I feel a real sadness," Nemitz said. "It is different to read a book about what happened. But when you see someone who was persecuted as a baby, you can't understand."

In the small town of Weiden, the visit of former Jewish citizens in 1988 was "quite an emotional event" all around, said Michael Brenner, a professor of Jewish history and culture at the LudwigMaximilian University in Munich, who co-organized the visit. "It was 'the' event in the town. There were newspaper headlines, and of course there were former neighbors and people who did not want to meet them, and old Nazis were alive, too, then."

Emotions can run high, and just putting a hand on someone's arm "shows we feel with them, it shows that they are not alone in their sadness," said Carola Meinhardt, who coordinates the program in Hamburg. She expects the program will shift toward a greater emphasis on the younger generation.

In Berlin, Mayor Klaus Wowereit said a decision must be made soon about how to transition the program now that the survivors themselves are no longer coming.

In fact, Nemitz said, those who wish to revisit for the first time will be invited back, just no longer as part of a group.

For Asriel 85, the painful past has resurfaced in his dreams.

When he was 14, his parents took him to Berlin's Anhalter Bahnhof train station, where he saw them for the last time. His father was murdered in Riga, his mother in Auschwitz.

Asriei fled to Denmark and ended up in Palestine, where he joined the British army and served for four years. After the war, he married Agnes B
Other articles:
http://sdbjlpoi.insanejournal.com/8363.html
http://kkkkmilk.blog.com/2010/07/19/icicle-works-singer-has-fans-o/