The Reckoning: A German Jew’s Return Home

For the last twelve years I have been on a personal mission — to make Germany face how far it still has to go on the “Jewish Question.”

Photo Credit: Martin Schuette

There are few more senseless tragedies than the Holocaust. As a 2G, or second generation after the Holocaust, I, like many of my peers, was instilled, young, with a sense that I was responsible for never allowing the world to forget what happened to Jews in Europe a century ago.

It is one of the reasons why I decided, in my 40’s, to make the harrowing journey back to Germany, and to claim something that had eluded not only me, but literally two generations of Jews who fled the country in the 1930’s. Indeed, I am the first person in my family who ever got their German citizenship back. I am also the first returning Jew since the end of WWII to successfully challenge the government on a systematic level about gross discrimination in German repatriation policies.

Mentally prepping yourself to take on this responsibility is a lofty goal. But then again, I was trained to think this way. And then of course there is the fact that I had lived in two countries previous to this attempt. Changing locations on the planet is never easy, but it helps if you have a reason, if not a roadmap.

I have always felt like an immigrant, no matter where I have lived.