Israel Revisited – Encounter in Berlin

 

In the wake of some 280 study trips to Israel, the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) has now hosted a major conference for the alumni.

 

There are those moments when things go really quiet, even in an auditorium with 250 people. And this is what happened specifically in Berlin’s Jerusalem Church when Lydia Aisenberg, who is now almost 70 years old and has lived in Israel for half a century, cast a glance back at her relationship with Germany. Only 20 years ago, she said, it would have been quite inconceivable for her to show Germans around her country. And when she did, a few years later, indeed begin cautiously, hesitantly her fellow residents in the kibbutz initially went up in arms, protesting: “Please don’t bring us even more Germans!” However, today, or so she concluded her remarks, “I have German friends, travel to Germany, enjoy being here”. Then she added another sentence that sums it all up: “Yes, something has changed.”

There are many reasons that this is the case. And without doubt, a strong role has been played by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB), which organised the first study trips to Israel two years before the first ambassadors presented their credentials in Israel and in Germany respectively. In 1963, just 18 years after the Holocaust some 30 Germans set off for Israel. It was a time, as Grisha Alroi-Arloser recalls, when “it was not normal to give someone your hand by way of greeting and it was unthinkable to speak German in Israel – even if it was the mother tongue of all those present.” At any rate, back then there was no real dialogue, adds the Managing Director of the German-Israeli Chamber of Industry and Commerce, who also introduced himself as “the longest-standing speaker still alive” to have served on the BpB study trips: “The Germans told the Israelis what they wanted to hear. And the Israelis showed the Germans what they wanted to see.” Gradually, down through the years, a relationship that initially “was difficult and a real burden” changed into one that is “close and able to withstand strain”.

 

“Israel Revisited – Encounter in Berlin” was the name of the BpB Alumni Conference. Held on the first weekend in December 2015 it attracted around 250 former participants and 30 speakers. Apart from looking broadly back at the past, attendees also cast a glance at numerous current areas of interaction today: at German-Israeli relationships, media coverage and cultural positions, but also at how younger people commemorate the Shoah. Another topic was Jewish-Arab-Palestinian coexistence, an area where Lydia Aisenberg provides intensive insights during her talk in Berlin: For the non-profit educational institute Givat Haviva she walks groups along the “Green Line”, which demarcated the Israeli border until 1967.

 

That said, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a key focus on the trips themselves (of which there has now been a total of 280, with over 8,000 participants). President Thomas Krüger explains that the BpB acted from the outset “out of a sense of moral responsibility”, and “took the Holocaust as its starting point”. The fundamental aims of the study trips have been to “discover Israel as a country that has to do with Germany”, and to encourage enduring engagement and self-reflection. In pursuit of this objective, the participants on the trips meet an immense range of people from artists and authors via feminists, refugee activists, member of the Jewish Orthodox faith and settlers through to Arab-Israeli professors and members of the Israeli army reserves. The agenda also includes a day in Ramallah, for example in talks with young journalists and representatives of the Fatah Youth Movement. Most of the items on the programme are characterised by something that fosters mutual understanding and learning, yet is by no means standard on study trips: namely personal stories and encounters.

 

On the whole, and that is also evident in Berlin, the trips are full of lasting impressions. Not perhaps so lasting as they were for Christiane Wirtz, today Deputy Government Spokesperson in Berlin. As she explained at the conference, after her BpB study trip she became so intensively involved with Israel that she decided to live there for a time. Moreover, not all the alumni have ended up establishing school textbook or commemorative projects, but some have! That said, soon everyone who takes part in the trip will be shaken up in a constructive sense. Tagesthemen news presenter Pinar Atalay puts it as follows: “All of us were really perplexed to begin with.” Lydia Aisenberg responds that if that is achieved then so has the key goal behind the programme: “If you are perplexed it means we are doing a good job. Fifty years on I am still perplexed.”

     

The author took part in a BpB study trip for journalists in 2013.

www.bpb.de/veranstaltungen/format/studienreise