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14. Juni 2018 Senatsfrühstück für verfolgte ehemalige Hamburgerinnen und Hamburger und ihre Kinder

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Rede der Senatorin Dr. Dorothee Stapelfeldt

Senatsfrühstück für verfolgte ehemalige Hamburgerinnen und Hamburger und ihre Kinder: Rede der Senatorin Dr. Dorothee Stapelfeldt

Dear Mrs Grymisch,
former citizens of Hamburg,
families of former citizens of Hamburg,
Vice President of Hamburg’s State Parliament,
members of parliament,
representatives of religious communities,
Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg it is my pleasure to welcome you to our city!

We are honoured that you have accepted our invitation to come to Hamburg. We appreciate your willingness and interest in spending time with us in your former home – or that of your parents.

Author Lena Gorelik, born 1981 in St. Petersburg, emigrated to Germany in 1992. She came to Germany from the former Soviet Union with her Russian-Jewish family as a quota refugee as so many Jews have. She lives in Munich today and writes about how to handle her family history:

“I don’t know what to do with my father’s briefcase that held all the documents he brought here to prove who we were in that other life. It can’t go in the damp basement, and I don’t have room for it anywhere else. So it now sits, temporarily – though the temporariness has become everyday life – behind the tiled stove. Just like that.”

Ladies and gentlemen,
This is a symbolic picture: What do we do with the old life? How do we deal with the inherited family history – especially if it is very painful?

You, ladies and gentlemen, have set out – from the United States, Israel, Canada, Great Britain, Argentina and Australia.

You have set out to encounter your hometown, or that of your parents or grandparents, personally. Maybe in the hope or with the intention to throw a glance into that symbolic suitcase. Our visiting program is intended to provide personal encounters for you with our city, with the history that connects us, and with Germany in 2018.

Yesterday, you went to visit the new memorial site at the Hannoverscher Bahnhof, which since 2017 commemorates the deportation of more than 8,000 Jews, Sinti and Romanies during the Nazi regime from Northern Germany and Hamburg. When we built the documentation centre which is designed to put the memorial into its historical context, we took special care to embrace the perspective of the young generation, of adolescents.

For more than a year, the department of Culture and Media together with the staff of the memorial at Neuengamme and 40 young people from Hamburg, discussed ideas and developed a vision of what remembering and learning should look like at this special place. The young people had one particular wish: they wanted a space where they can personally encounter history.

In order to learn about our Nazi past, they want to be able to talk about the meaning our history has for each one of them. To make individual access to history possible, is especially important in a city that accepts that its population is diverse and the collective references to German history are manifold.

Therefore, we must make individual access to this incredibly difficult past possible in teaching history and shaping commemorative culture. This past, which most of us have not personally experienced, but whose consequences are lasting and perceptible to this day in so many different ways. This past, which took place more than seven decades ago in Hamburg, in Germany, and in occupied Europe. This past, characterized by inconceivable and unprecedented crimes against the Jewish population of Europe and many other persecuted minorities, characterized by singular crimes against humanity.

Ladies and gentlemen,
In order to look for and to find vivid, forward-looking forms of remembering and learning, the city of Hamburg cooperates with several partners. I have already mentioned the project at the memorial “Hannoverscher Bahnhof”. Since 2013, Hamburg has also worked closely with the Yad Vashem memorial. In 2015, the department of education and Yad Vashem declared their joint intent to invigorate societal discussion about the history of Jewish life in Germany and especially Hamburg together.

Vivid recollection and imparting Jewish history and culture is the main purpose of the “Geschichtomat” – in Englisch you might call it “historymat”. The “Geschichtomat” is a school project that has been in operation in Hamburg since 2013 and is unique in all of Germany. It is a digital city map on the internet for individual search of clues. It allows for an individual and independent access to Jewish history, culture, but also to the Jewish present in their hometown.

We consider it especially important when conveying historical knowledge to generate a connection with the present and today’s mechanisms of social exclusion.

This is especially important at a time when xenophobia, racism, and even anti-semitism have come back to Germany and Europe – unfortunately, even represented in several state parliaments in Germany, and even the Bundestag.

Only a few days ago, one of the leaders of the right-wing, populist German AfD diminished the importance of the years of the Nazi regime as – and I quote – “bird shit before the background of 1000 years of German history”.

This atrocity was condemned by numerous public figures and all respectable German media outlets, and is considered a disgrace for the reputation of our country by the vast majority. Unfortunately, German right-wing populists try again and again to shift the borders of decency and human dignity. They are truly not representative of Germany today. Still, they strengthen our resolve to intensify our educational and networking efforts.

Counselling and assistance for those affected and their families, preventive measures in specific cases, continuous educational seminars and developing educational modules are the corner stones of our civic commitment against extremism – no matter whether it comes in a right-wing, left‑wing, Islamist or any other guise.

Together with many strong partners we are committed to working for a trustful social cooperation without prejudice or ostracism. I was very happy to learn that the Jewish community and Jewish life have confidently made their way into Hamburg society.

Only a few weeks ago, five students graduated from Hamburg’s rabbinical seminary “Or Jonathan” and were ordained in the presence of our Mayor Dr. Tschentscher and Chief Rabbi David Lau. These were the first ordinations in Hamburg since the Second World War. The rabbinical seminary is another pillar of Jewish life and education in Hamburg, besides the Jewish Kindergarten and the Jewish school.

The high quality of the teachers was demonstrated when students from the Hamburg school won first place easily at the “Jewish Quiz Duel, Volume 2”. 200 young people from all over Germany and Switzerland were invited by Youth Centre ‘Amichai’ to Frankfurt for two days. I hear that the Hamburg fan block supported the students from Hamburg as enthusiastically (and noisily) as normally only the St. Pauli soccer team supporters do.

This fall will see the publication of a Jewish cookbook which has been compiled by three Jewish ladies from Hamburg. We had asked you, too, to send in recipes, and maybe some of you have added to the Jewish cookbook from Hamburg.

Early in 2018, Sonja Simmenauer and her committed team of active volunteers celebrated the ten-year anniversary of the Jewish Salon in the Grindel quarter. This was a very emotional event – but we mostly saw tears of joy about what has been achieved and experienced: giving Jewish culture an inviting and sophisticated home in Hamburg. Still, in her opening words, Ms. Simmenauer could not avoid some sad notes. Life in Germany is still not free of struggles for Jews.

Ladies and gentlemen,
a couple of years ago, an American rabbi who had accompanied his wife on the visiting program, reported on the trip to his congregation.

What had impressed him most, was meeting two young students from a school in Hamburg. The two girls told him how they had gotten involved in learning about NS history, the persecution and murder of European Jews. This is what he said about his encounter: “After talking with Laura and Livia, my eyes can see the possibilities of remembering and honouring those who died because these young girls have a vision. My ears can hear their sorrow and their pain and their commitment to change the world. And my heart is starting to know that there can be healing.”

It is the hope that such encounters will continue to happen that makes this programme worthwhile and necessary to keep alive.

So, it is on behalf of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg that I hope that your family’s history will come alive for you when you visit former homes and school, gravesites and streets that you remember. Where this is painful I wish you strength.

Thank you again for coming, welcome to Hamburg and thank you for your attention!

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