Organizational structures and activities of the association

With their letter, “the undersigned […] [wanted] to communicate that they have founded the above Association of Former Jewish Hamburg Citizens .” The notice is written very formally in old-fashioned German. The signatories were Naftali Bar-Giora Bamberger , Daniel Cohen , Baruch Zwi Ophir , and Zeev Gotthold ( 1917 – 2009 ), all of whom were natives of Hamburg living in Israel at the time. They had already been in contact with their former hometown and emphasized this in their letter, for example, by referring to the request from the Cultural Authority to “make [themselves] personally available.” One can also read this as a reassurance of their own position as a counterpart vis-à-vis the Hamburg administration. Contrary to what the letter implies, the association was institutionalized only to a small degree. Baruch Zwi Ophir held the office of first chair , Naftali Bar-Giora Bamberger was his closest colleague . Abraham Seligmann ( 1915 – 2004 ) formally assumed the post of second chair , but he does not appear in the letter. The fact that the association was explicitly founded as an actor in the politics of remembrance distinguished it significantly from other German-speaking associations of former residents in Israel : These had been formed since the 1960s in the context of the political rapprochement between the two countries. There were 18 associations in total, which in turn were united under the “ Centra ” umbrella organization. They were a concern of the first generation of German-speaking immigrants , serving to preserve memories of destroyed living environments as well as to cultivate traditions and language, and they functioned as meeting places and spaces of remembrance. There were also other organizations of German-speaking Israelis, such as the aid and advisory association Hitachduth Olej Germania (today: Irgun Olej Merkas Europa ), founded in 1932 . The Jerusalem Association, as conceived by Ophir and the others, did not fit into these networks, but this was not the intention anyway. After all, there was already an Association of Former Hamburg , Bremen , and Lübeck Residents in Israel , based in Tel Aviv , whose main focus was on supporting its members locally. It hosted events, organized meeting places and excursions and was headed by Jonny Kern ( 1922 – 1995 ). Thus, initially, two associations of former Hamburg citizens existed. They addressed the same group of people and were known to each other (possibly already from Hamburg ), but initially remained separate in terms of location, organization, and content. While the Jerusalem group was active in Hamburg , the Tel Aviv Association was active in Israel . This remained the case until January 1, 1992 , when, after two years of discussion and various conflicts, the two associations merged under the name and chair of the Tel Aviv group. In 1995 , Abraham Seligmann , former second chair of the Jerusalem group, took over the merged association, which from then on had three areas of activity in Israel : the publication of a bilingual newsletter, the organization of events, meetings, and excursions, as well as the reception of guests from Hamburg . The work was made more difficult by the small budget – between 1995 and 1999 , the association received an annual grant from the city of Hamburg for this reason – and the declining number of members . It finally ceased work in 2007 .

From Hamburg to Palestine and in Israel

Given the experiences of their protagonists and members , it is not a matter of course that the associations of former Hamburg citizens in Israel formed and acted as such at all. They had experienced persecution, expulsion from the city , the murder of relatives, and, in some cases, imprisonment in camps. Three of the founders of the Jerusalem Association – Bar Giora Bamberger , Cohen , and Ophir – were among the approximately 1,500 of Hamburg ’s 20,000 Jewish residents able to flee from Nazi persecution to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine by various means between 1933 and 1941 . What they shared was that they had grown up in religious families in Hamburg , sympathized with Zionism , and managed to leave the country as teenagers or young adults before the start of the war . Their relatives who remained in Hamburg were murdered in the Shoah. Later, all three worked as historians at various universities, research institutes, and archives. Gotthold , the fourth signatory , was a rabbi and he immigrated to Israel in 1951 after fleeing to the USA in the 1930s . Together they founded the Jerusalem group when they were all retired. They intervened in debates on the politics of remembrance in Hamburg in a dual role as former victims of persecution and as academics , demanding to be heard collectively as former Hamburg citizens .

Ambivalent views of the old homeland

They were ambivalent about the city of their childhood and youth , which is reflected first and foremost in the chosen name of the association. At first glance, the arrangement of the attributes “former Jewish” is irritating, as they did not want to distance themselves from their Jewishness, which, on the contrary, was of great importance to them. Apart from that, the name makes it clear above all that they were once Hamburg residents – and “ citizens ” or “ fellow citizens ” in the legal and moral sense – and that they no longer were, but that they still felt connected to the city as “former.” They thus implied a closer and more exclusive bond with Hamburg than those who were organized in the Tel Aviv Association, who called themselves exclusively “former Hamburg residents ” and at the same time included Bremen and Lübeck residents . In fact, what they all shared was connecting their own memories, family roots, language and experiences of persecution during the Nazi era with Hamburg . In Israel , they lived in a society that largely despised Germany as a country of perpetrators and everything associated with well into the 1980s . Accordingly, the German language was not welcome in the public sphere. Within this network, former Hamburg residents and other Jewish Israelis from Germany developed self-images and constructs of home that were as complex as they were individual, somewhere between preservation and adaptation. All of this in turn had an effect on their work in the association and ultimately on its establishment itself. This was preceded by the fact that Ophir and his fellow campaigners had already made many contacts in Hamburg and visited the city again in some cases. Naftali Bar-Giora Bamberger described this in an interview in 1990 as follows: “To this day, I walk through the city like a sleepwalker, memories and images keep coming back, the neighborhood, my family. […] At some point, we decided to do something.”   (i) It was probably the same or similar story for his colleagues and their supporters , to whom the letter points in closing. Who and how many these were is not known, as the “first preliminary list” of supporters in the appendix has not survived. However, one should bear in mind that ultimately only a minority of the former Hamburg residents living in Israel became involved in the associations or joined them. Both were an expression of a certain closeness to Hamburg that many no longer had and, in view of their experiences, did not wish to have.

Museumization of Hamburg ’s Jewish history

The Jerusalem Association and the signatories were primarily interested in “having a share in the consultations and preparations toward the concept of the planned exhibition.” According to the first draft, which they co-authored, a history of contribution and loss was to be shown, as was customary at the time, to inform non-Jewish visitors about Judaism and to commemorate the Hamburg victims of the Shoah. In a period when National Socialism and the Shoah were more present than ever before and several museums and exhibitions on Jewish history were opening their doors in the Federal Republic of Germany , the intention at the time was to make this chapter publicly visible in Hamburg as well as part of the city ’s history. The Museum of Hamburg History was in charge of developing the exhibition, which was ultimately also shown in its premises. The Cultural Authority provided support. The protagonists of the newly formed Jerusalem Association were actively involved in the preparatory process from the outset, acting as providers of ideas , researchers , and critical observers . They also spoke out in other, parallel debates on the politics of remembrance. However, as they wrote in their founding letter, they saw such an exhibition in particular as a “special assignment that has now become topical.” This applied not only to the urban society, but also to themselves personally, rendering the implementation all the more a matter close to their hearts. During the preparations, the protagonists of the Jerusalem Association were in contact with the Cultural Authority and were repeatedly present in discussion rounds. Naftali Bar-Giora Bamberger in particular got involved. He was also the person who found the damaged Hanukkah chandelier from the Altona synagogue in the museum depot, which was to become the central motif of the exhibition. The first interim results were presented in 1986 / 1987 in the exhibition entitled “Formerly at home in Hamburg . Jewish life at Grindel   "Ehemals in Hamburg zu Hause. Jüdisches Leben am Grindel" . The exhibition called “Four Hundred Years of Jews in Hamburg ”   "Vierhundert Jahre Juden in Hamburg " was finally opened on October 25, 1991 at the Museum of Hamburg History , attended by Ophir , who also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg , as well as by Bar-Giora Bamberger and 35 other members of the Jerusalem Association . Illustrating the prominent and committed role they played in the process, this involvement was very much in the interests of the city , as a memorandum issued by the Cultural Authority five years later shows. It states, “The Association of Former Jewish Citizens in Hamburg considers the realization of the exhibition to be a success of its continuous efforts.”   (i) It also suggested further steps such as lending and translation. Ultimately, the Authority concluded, “This can only be in Hamburg ’s interest.”   (i) The exhibition was on display until March 1992 . The question then arose as to whether and in what form it should continue to be shown. The newly merged association first sought to loan it to Tel Aviv , then to set up a separate Jewish Museum, neither of which was realized. Instead, all of those involved agreed to set up a permanent section on Jewish history in the Museum of Hamburg History / Hamburg Museum . It was shown there under the title of “Jews in Hamburg ” from 1997 until the museum was closed for modernization in 2023 .

Conclusion

With this compromise, a few years later all those involved returned to the beginning, so to speak, when the exhibition project constituted the reason for the founding of the Jerusalem Association . The protagonists of the group pursued the realization of such an exhibition with great commitment and ultimately, with success. They formed a separate association specifically for this purpose. The letter in which they informed the Hamburg administration of this sheds light on a central moment in the history of the associations of former Hamburg citizens and, in particular, on the work of the Jerusalem group as a translocal protagonist of remembrance in Hamburg – the city from which members had been forced to flee half a century earlier.

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