Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF): The Elephant in the Room (Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung) 3658342110, 9783658342111

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Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung Anja Ballis  Michele Barricelli Markus Gloe Hrsg.

Marc-Philip Hermann-Cohen

Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF) The Elephant in the Room

Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung Reihe herausgegeben von Anja Ballis, Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Deutschland Michele Barricelli, Historisches Seminar, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Deutschland Markus Gloe, Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Deutschland

Die Reihe „Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung“ verbindet inter- und transdisziplinär die beiden Ansätze von Holocaust Education und Menschenrechtsbildung, die sowohl im Bereich der Gesellschaftswissenschaften, der Sprachwissenschaften als auch im erziehungswissenschaftlichen Gesamtkontext der Vermittlung von demokratischen Werten in bildungspolitischen Zusammenhängen adressieren. Ausgewiesene Expertinnen und Experten aus verschiedenen Disziplinen, aber auch der wissenschaftliche Nachwuchs präsentieren in dieser Reihe neueste Forschungsergebnisse, theoretische Grundlagen und dokumentieren die aktuelle inter- und transdisziplinäre Diskussion. Der wissenschaftliche Beirat der Reihe setzt sich zusammen aus Prof. Dr. Sascha Feuchert (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), Prof. Dr. Jeanette Hoffmann (Technische Universität Dresden), Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke (Freie Universität Berlin), Prof. Dr. Tonio Oeftering (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg), Prof. Dr. Martin Rothgangel (Universität Wien) und Dr. Noah Schenker PhD (Monash University, Melbourne). Die Reihe „Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung“ wendet sich an Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, die sich mit Fragen der Vermittlung des Holocausts und Fragen der Menschenrechtsbildung beschäftigen, sowie historisch-politische Bildnerinnen und Bildner in Schule und außerschulischen Kontexten.

Weitere Bände in der Reihe http://www.springer.com/series/16330

Marc-Philip Hermann-Cohen

Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF) The Elephant in the Room

Marc-Philip Hermann-Cohen Haifa, Israel This book is based upon the dissertation which was written and approved within the framework of a joint PhD program at the University of Hamburg and the University of Haifa.

ISSN 2662-1878 ISSN 2662-1886 (electronic) Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung ISBN 978-3-658-34211-1 ISBN 978-3-658-34212-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Responsible Editor: Stefanie Eggert This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

Acknowledgments

Many advisors supported my research. I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Yotam Hotam and Prof. Tilman Grammes, for their guidance throughout each stage of the process. I would like to acknowledge Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger for inspiring my interest in Israelis that address their past and future with Germany. My special thanks go out to Haifa University and in particular to the Haifa Center for German and European studies for supporting this research. Prof. Helene Decke-Cornill was instrumental in defining the path of my research and career. For this, I am extremely grateful. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Prof. Brigitte HahnMichaeli, Prof. Joachim Warmbold, Finn Jagow, Andreas Zürn, Monika Hübscher, Lena Brandenburgsky and Gaby Goldberg for their support in operationalizing this research endeavor. In the final stages of turning this dissertation into a book, I would like to thank Prof. Anja Ballis for offering me editorial support and allowing me to publish in this series, and also Prof. Dani Kranz for writing support and guidance in general to navigate the academia. For emotional support I thank my whole family in Israel and Germany, most and foremost my mother.

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English Abstract

The Elephant in the Room: Holocaust and Other Conceptions of Germany by Israeli learners of German as a Foreign Language by Marc-Philip HermannCohen. The Holocaust is inseparable from the Israeli identities even seven decades following the atrocities during World War II, Israeli daily life is shaped by the horrible crimes committed by the Nazis. This research conceptualizes the intricacies of the Israeli Jewish identity in relation to learning German as a foreign language (GFL) in Israel throughout the course of history, which serves as the baseline analysis of this research. The second dimension of this research analyses a selection of twenty-five GFL language books which reflect the stigmatization and tabooization of the Holocaust. The third dimension of this research is the qualitative analysis of a subject pool of 105 learners of GFL. I find that identities are co-constituted by four individualized Thought Styles, a concept borrowed from Ludwik Fleck. Thought Styles capture the individual perspective of the language learner’s view of Germany and are categorized in this thesis as German Engineering, Cold Germany, Neo-Nazi Germany, and The Other Germany. I find that language learners’ Thought Styles take on a multidimensionality as the learner navigates their lived experiences while making sense of the new and old conceptions of Germany. I draw from discourse theory, critical psychology, and the oft-overlooked classical theory of Ludwik Fleck and his Thought Styles in applying a discourse theoretical framework. This allows for a profound understanding of the motivations, influences, and reasonings of German language learners in Israel. Although the relationship between Germany and Israel has been amicable for the last 6 decades, the choice for Israelis to learn the language that was used by a

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English Abstract

nation that once attempted to eradicate the Jewish people is emotive and infinitely complex. To teach German as a foreign language, we, the language teachers, must first acknowledge German history, learn from mistakes, and vow never to forget the travesties of the pasts. Keywords: German as a Foreign Language, GFL, Israel, Holocaust, German-Israeli relations

German Abstract

Der Elefant im Raum: Holocaust und andere Konzeptionen über Deutschland bei israelischen DAF LernerInnen von Marc-Philip Hermann-Cohen. Der Holocaust ist untrennbar mit der israelischen Identität verbunden. Selbst Jahrzehnte nach den Gräueltaten während des Zweiten Weltkriegs ist das tägliche Leben Israels von diesen Taten der deutschen Nazis geprägt. Dennoch lernen Tausende Israelis Deutsch an diversen Institutionen in Israel. Ziel der Untersuchung war es herauszufinden, welchen Veränderungen das Deutschlandbild unterworfen war: von einem Boykott von deutschen Gütern und allem Deutschen in den Anfängen des Staates bis hin zu Berlin als Ort der Sehnsüchte. Diese Forschung konzeptualisiert die feinen Unterschiede in den Deutschlandbildern der jüdischen Identität in Bezug auf das Erlernen von Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Die Forschung basiert außerdem auf einer Auswahl an 25 Deutsch-alsFremdsprache-Lehrbüchern, die die Stigmatisierung und Tabuisierung des Holocaust zeigen. Außerdem wurden aus Interviews mit 105 DAF-LernerInnen vier individualisierte Denkstile herausgearbeitet, ein Konzept, das auf Ludwik Fleck zurückgeht. Denkstile erfassen die individuelle Perspektive der Sicht des LernerInnen auf Deutschland und können sich in den Denkstilen: German Engineering, Cold Germany, Neonazi Germany und Other Germany manifestieren. Die Denkstile von SprachlernerInnen sind mehrdimensional, wenn die Lernenden durch gelebte Erfahrungen navigieren und dabei neue und alte Deutschlandbilder akquirieren. Ich beziehe mich bei der Anwendung eines diskurs-theoretischen Rahmens zusätzlich auf die kritische Pädagogik, kritische Psychologie und die oft übersehene klassische Theorie von Ludwik Fleck. Dies ermöglicht ein tiefgreifendes

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German Abstract

Verständnis der Motivationen, Einflüsse und Überlegungen von Deutschlernenden in Israel. Obwohl die Beziehung zwischen Deutschland und Israel heute bei aller Besonderheit freundschaftlich ist, ist die Entscheidung der Israelis, die Sprache zu lernen, die von einer Nation verwendet wurde, die einst versuchte, das jüdische Volk auszurotten, emotional und unendlich komplex. Um Deutsch als Fremdsprache zu unterrichten, müssen wir die Geschichte anerkennen, aus Fehlern lernen und die mörderische Vergangenheit und den Weg dorthin niemals in Vergessenheit geraten lassen. Schlüsselwörter: DAF, Holocaust, Israel, Deutschlandbild, deutsch-israelische Beziehungen

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Positioning of the I in Discourse and Definitions . . . . . . . . .

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2 Theoretical Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Period of Silencing and Absorption, 1940s Until 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 The Eichmann Trial, 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 The “Stalags”: Holocaust Semi-pornography . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 1970s Reoccurring Nightmares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.5 The 1980s and Individual Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.6 Falling Wall(s) and Intensification, 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.7 Refamiliarization and Keeping the Memories Alive 2000–2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Holocaust and the Education System in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Educational Textbooks and Images of Germany . . . . . . 2.2.2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.4 Civic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Cultural Policy and GFL in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 The Big Players in German Cultural Policy . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Learners—Figures and Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 GFL and the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 Intermediate Conclusion: Image of Germany in Israel Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 9 11 13 16 18 19 20 23 30 33 35 35 36 36 46 47 50 57

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3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Objectives, Justifications and Data Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 GFL Textbooks and the Absence of the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Design of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Results of GFL Textbooks Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 The Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Analysis of Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Type Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Reintroducing Ludwik Fleck’s Thought Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Pretest Empirical Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8.1 Pretest Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61 62 63 63 64 69 72 73 74 75 77 78

4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 About the Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 About the Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Gender and Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Time Studying German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Ethnicities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Individual Associations with Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Sentiment Analysis of Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Word and Topic Analysis of Associations . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Linguistic-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Contact-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Back to the Roots-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.4 Life in Germany-Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 History’s Influence on the Current View on Germany . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Role of the Holocaust on Today’s View of Germany: Two Conflicting Thought Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.1 Germany is the Holocaust—Thought Style . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.2 ‘Another’ Germany—Thought Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Role of German History in German Language Classes . . . . . . . . 4.8 Learners’ Interest in History and Current Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 Individual Assessment of How the Holocaust Influences Israeli Society and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10 Biographical Aspects of the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10.1 Not Affected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10.2 Affected—But How? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83 84 85 85 86 87 89 89 91 93 94 94 97 97 99 100 101 102 104 105 107 110 112 112

Contents

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4.10.3 Affecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Sound of German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Humor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GFL Textbooks and Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limitations of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LGBTQ Factor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Discussion—Thought Styles on Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 German Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Cold Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Other Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Neo-Nazi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15

List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7 Figure 2.8 Figure 2.9 Figure 2.10 Figure 2.11 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2

Photograph, Zoltan Kluger, Children arriving in Haifa port, National Archives, 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Courtesy of Heymann Brother Films, (in Kershner, 2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Can 11 (2014), The Jews Are Coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Can 11 (2016), The Jews Are Coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (Marc Hermann-Cohen) Israel stands still also on Ibn Gabirol Street Tel Aviv during the two-minute siren . . . . . . Pinn, National Archives, Protest in Tel Aviv . . . . . . . . . . . . Auswärtiges Amt (2015) Deutsch als Fremdsprache weltweit. Datenerhebung 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hebrew Speakers “Learn on Facebook” Groups . . . . . . . . . . Areas of Interest National Socialism. Data from Illy (1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Image of Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old and New Germany—Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example of History in GFL-Textbook Studio Funk et al. (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Process Empirical Type Building based on Kelle & Kluge (1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Word Cloud Associations Pretest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Original handwritten answer- Student pretest . . . . . . . . . . . . Original handwritten answer—Student pretest . . . . . . . . . . . Original handwritten answer—Student pretest . . . . . . . . . . . Where the Participants Study GFL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender and Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 17 25 26 32 41 49 50 54 58 59 67 75 79 79 80 80 84 85

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List of Figures

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 5.1 6.1

Time Span Learning German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . First Language of Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sentiment Analysis of Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Top 10 Tag list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Word Cloud Associations Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learner Types of Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Influence of German History on the Current View on Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of Holocaust in the View of Germany in General . . . . Influence of History on GFL Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nine topics with descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Areas of Interest Israeli GFL Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Influence of Holocaust on Israeli Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Word Cloud Holocaust Impact on Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . Personal Holocaust Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thought Styles on Germany in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion Infographic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87 88 90 91 93 98 99 103 105 106 107 109 111 114 121 129

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Introduction

…“Eviction” [GERMAN: Aussiedlung] = Destruction and robbery of property …“Dismiss” [GERMAN: Entlassen] = Murder …“Recreation” [GERMAN: Erholung] = Prison …“Farmhouses” [GERMAN: Bauernhäuser] = Gas chambers …“Major operation” [GERMAN: Großeinsatz] = Liquidation of the Jews (Terms from: Słowa niewinne (Innocent Words) by Nachman Blumental. Kraków: ˙ Centralna Zydowska Komisja Historyczna w Polsce, (1947. YIVO Library.). In addition, Klemperer (2006) in his work “Language of the Third Reich” also analyzed the stereotypical, euphemizing the diction of the Nazis and the resistance that the questioning of buzzwords can offer. In short, his analysis identified the following mechanisms of the language of the Third Reich: hierarchization, biologicalization, totalization, categorization, marginalization, maximalization, heroization, emotionalization, historization, sacralization and euphemization.)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_1

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Introduction

The Nazis used the German language to disguise their cruel agenda of the Holocaust: “where violence is inflicted on man, it is also inflicted on language” (Primo, 1988, p. 97). German was used to disguise the mass murder as more palatable and less cruel, but nevertheless every year thousands of Israelis decide to learn German as a foreign language (GFL) in Israel (Goethe-Institut, 2019). How do their conceptions of Germany reflect societal and political discourse having changed the focus from the boycott of everything German fueled by the dark German past to the appeal Berlin has on Israelis and the special relationship and Germany as the guarantor of Israeli security? This is the reason this research is based on three dimensions, the analysis of the discourses on Germany and GFL in Israel, an analysis of the teaching materials, i.e. the textbooks, and an analysis of the subjects themselves. German courses are offered by Israeli universities, colleges, schools, community centers and private teachers. However, the German language is still deeply connected to the suffering of the Jewish and Israeli people at the hands of Germans. German, to put it more radically, is the language of Auschwitz, or to be precise, the language of the chief perpetrators, because many languages were spoken in Auschwitz, and this history is inseparable from Israel’s past and present. Thus, teaching German is indelibly connected to a political and historical dimension. Learners’ identities are tied to the past and the political and social arena, bringing together language learning and subject-matter learning with the Holocaust being omnipresent which I would like to call the elephant in the room. By using this metaphor, I am to point to, what the learners bring to the classroom, i.e. their Thought Styles about Germany that are hardly ever acknowledged by GFL didactics. Sometimes the connection to the past is very direct, for instance when the language learner is a descendant of a Holocaust survivor. However, with each generation more historically distanced to the Holocaust, the collective memory of Germany and the way it is perceived is altered. The Holocaust has become the symbol of human evil and suffering, and in Israel this reference point lies at the very core of identities and is therefore inseparably connected to conceptions of Germany. This research is filling a gap that exists between the different approaches to GFL and its very special relationship with Israel by examining how much of the history still influences learners of German in their reception of Germany. This topic will be addressed with the forgotten theory of Ludwik Fleck, a doctor and philosopher whose life was shaken by the Nazi prosecution. Fleck’s theory of Thought Styles proposes a concept that can shed light on how Israeli leaners of GFL see Germany.

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Introduction

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Germany and Israel have a special relationship, manifested on both the political and social stages. Therefore, this research analyzes the current literature on the image of Germany from the inception of the state of Israel in 1948 until current times. This timespan reaches from a period of silence, of memory repression, to its eruption and change of collective identity during the Eichmann Trial in 1961. This was followed by a reshaping of the image of Germany on the individual and societal level the following years, with recurrences of terror in Germany and hate crimes committed against Jews and Israeli citizens bringing back the collective memories of the Holocaust, but also of completely different approaches to deal with the image of Germany finding its way into the literary subculture as Stalag Magazines, erotic and highly contested “Holocaust porn”, or as sketches on mainstream Israeli Television of the early 1990s asking if the Jewish people have not suffered enough. The image of Germany is also a stimulus for political and administrative decisions about learning German and the extent to which subject is integrated into curricula and promoted by governmental bodies. The research will address this topic by drawing upon a review of the literature about the ways in which Germany is represented in Israeli schoolbooks. Language learning cannot take place outside of discourses on culture and history. Especially in Israel, the Holocaust is the elephant in the room. One of the most central debates in language didactics of the last two decades revolves around the question of how much of the actual teaching in the foreign language classroom should be concerned with culture rather than with the language stripped of culture (Kramsch, 2013). As a result, and following the line of thought of critical pedagogy, this research sees language instruction aspiring to be emancipatory and “without essentializing cultures and teaching stereotypes” (p. 57). If GFL wants to be more than advertising a euphemized version of Germany, the question of accurate representations of Germany past and present becomes even more pressing when the mainstream textbooks have reinstated a tabooization of the Holocaust and Jewish life in Germany as shown by the analysis in this paper. In light of a resurgence of anti-Semitic sentiments and hate crimes in Germany, it is a matter of urgency. Contrary to what most GFL textbooks convey, the history of Germany does not start in 1945. Learning German and teaching in Israel is a political issue; it is connected to cultural policy, diplomacy, history and current political debates in Germany and Israel, especially on how the Holocaust is seen in this context. In the following the position of the I, i.e. the author and researcher of this paper, the discourses at play in regard to GFL, Holocaust, Germany and commemoration, research questions and definitions are offered.

4

1

1.1

Introduction

The Positioning of the I in Discourse and Definitions

Every [German] has at least two reasons to visit Israel: one which they admit and one they conceal. If you tell me: I came to lie on the beautiful beach, I know you are lying (Flohr, 2011, p. 11).

Discourse analysis is the central methodological element of this research and the relationship is twofold. On the one hand, we observe the scientific discourse which includes the literature produced on the different topics this research touches upon. On the other hand, there is the discourse produced by the research itself, manifesting as interviews, questionnaires and dialogues. I adopt Jørgensen and Phillips’ (2002) simple definition of discourse “as a particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world).” Then, I add on another important element dating back to one of the founding fathers of the concept, Foucault, i.e. the concept of discourse being defined or rather undefined and being constantly negotiated or even the object of conflict: This should not be very surprising, for psychoanalysis has already shown us that speech is not merely the medium which manifests – or dissembles – desire; it is also the object of desire. Similarly, historians have constantly impressed upon us that speech is no mere verbalization of conflicts and systems of domination, but that it is the very object of man’s conflicts (1971, p. 8).

The moment in which speech is not only verbalized but also documented, it poses an even broader definition of discourse which applies to physical objects and social practices as signifying sequences (Torfing, 1999). It is then crucial to make one’s position clear concerning a particular discourse because certain aspects of my identity potentially have an effect on my research or the presentation thereof (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). I am a German and Israeli citizen having been socialized in the German education system. I am married to an Israeli whose grandmother survived Auschwitz while a lot of her family did not. I have been highly influenced by the school of critical pedagogy during my university studies and have been teaching both in Israel and Germany. As the head of the German department of the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa,1 I was involved in several student exchange programs, organizing and also overseeing the inter-cultural encounters. This has given me insights into how cultural policy 1 The Leo Baeck Education Center is one of Israel’s leading institutions in the field of Jewish–

Arab programming of shared existence, promoting an all-inclusive society for all of the citizens of Israel. Internal estimations indicate that about 40,000 members of the community are reached by the educational programs.

1.1 The Positioning of the I in Discourse and Definitions

5

at the NGO level can have a direct influence on young Israelis and Germans and their understanding of one another. Speaking from the perspective of a language and teaching professional, I consider the role of the teacher to be between reproducing culture and criticizing it. As Giroux et al. (1996) argued, teaching always takes place in socially and historically construed power relations; education being on that intersection between reproduction and disruption, and thereby “education is an ongoing site of struggle and contestation” (Giroux et al., 1996, p. 43). Language learning is an educational practice, be it formalized in an educational institution or a private language school. This research focuses on the learners of German. Approaching identities2 as they are displayed by the language learners is based on critical pedagogy, and by that aware of the inherent predicament of critical theory that the subjects are subjected by discourse itself. Subjects always exist within a culture and this research is based on a Cultural Studies approach to culture and the subject as defined by Johnson on the ‘Ifeeling’ and ‘we-feeling’ of the culture: on individual and collective identities which are then translated into Thought Styles, a concept borrowed by Ludwik Fleck that will be explained in the chapter on Methodology. Subjectivity, the most important of all the structuralist insights, produces not simply given entities, or in this respect, research objects, but starting points or premises of research (Johnson, 1999, p. 145). As a teaching professional and as a researcher, I cannot think outside of the hegemonic discourse—as Adorno would phrase it, the “ghost is pulling at his own chains” (Adorno & Dirks, 1956, p. 230). Therefore, I am subject to the discourse and yet criticizing it. However, I consider it crucial that while evaluating current discourses, new perspectives on identities and teaching German are formed. With regard to this idea, Kordes has gone even further when he demanded that developing perspectives on identity is necessary to ensure discriminatory practices are avoided, so that “Auschwitzes are not repeated ever again”: And no matter how difficult or hopeless it may appear, the capacity of developing perspectives and identity is finally the most important condition to ensure that big or small Auschwitzes are not repeated ever again (Kordes, 1991, p. 305).

2 Identities

are defined in line with Hall’s approach from Cultural Studies. “Identity appears as a kind of unpopulated space or as an unresolved question in this space between a series of overlapping discourses.” (Hall, 1999, p. 87).

6

1

Introduction

In order to develop perspectives on identities, it is a prerequisite to know that the language learners are embedded in their own culture and history, and that learning German must influence their individual and diverse Israeli identities and conceptions of Germany. The types of language learners or Thought Styles about Germany are formed by trying to find a certain habitus and combining this with the methodology of critical psychology (Geffers, 2008). Critical psychology in line with Parker (2007) is based on the assumption that a group or culture do not behave or think like the model would predict but more importantly the awareness and reflection “on a process described by a psychologist changes that process” (p. 1). This methodology then generalizes the individual cases along dimensions that define the subject and his or her abilities to act in the world from a subjective space of possibilities (subjektiver Möglichkeitsraum) to a typical room of possibilities (typischer Möglichkeitsraum) in line with the argumentation of Geffers (2008). Firstly, a specific habitus, which is specific orientation to a case, an individual or a group, has to be reconstructed and identified. Then, adhering to the “explanatory understanding” in the sense of Max Weber (1976, p. 1), the question needs to be asked where, i.e., in which experiential space, the genesis of this habitus is to be sought, and this is then condensed into Fleck’s Thought Styles. Setting out on the research endeavor, I was looking for answers regarding these questions: a) How and to what extent are new discourses on Germany (like the new Berlinboom that attracts Israelis) and thus on the German language received in the language lessons? How have collective memories and traumas from the Holocaust changed so that some Israelis study the language of the organizers of the Holocaust? b) Are the years between 1933 and 1945 represented in any way in any of the GFL teaching materials? If not, what can we learn from this absence? c) Can certain types and Thought Styles be identified, which lead students to learn such a historically charged language as German in Israel? The current image of Germany in educational textbooks seems to be a rather positive one (Fuchs, 2017). Based on this finding, my research shall explore how GFL teaching materials relate to German history and society, and what they attempt to convey to the learner. This research considers the fact that German as a foreign language classroom is not the only place where the Holocaust is encountered in education in Israel. For Israeli pupils, Holocaust education is mandatory in the educational system and students undergo various socialization processes to “bring

1.1 The Positioning of the I in Discourse and Definitions

7

students to relate to it” (Lazar & Hirsch, 2014, p. 73). Continuously, Israelis face public commemoration events that certainly constitute collective memories. Weiss (1997) described it quite bluntly as “the Israeli culture of commemoration, or ‘cult of the dead’ that serves as a key symbol that cuts across historical periodizations and ethnic divisions” (p. 99). Therefore, the learners’ identities and views on Germany are not only shaped within the language instruction class as adolescents and adults, but certainly much more outside of it. Nevertheless, this research aims to identify types of narratives and knowledge from other experiences which may lie outside of the language learning classroom altogether, and yet may have played a significant role in choosing to learn German at school. If GFL also strives to include current events in the classroom, recent political debates might become a topic requiring address. For instance, in recent years and because of the strong rise of the German right-wing party, AFD (Alternative for Deutschland),3 words that used to be banned in the past due to strong neo-Nazi associations have been revived. ‘Lügenpresse’ lying press, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ and ‘Überfremdung’ being overrun by foreigners have become part of a political and societal struggle. These are just some examples of how Nazi vocabulary reappears and is used in contemporary German.

3 The AFD has supporters in Israel, this could be an interesting field of study, how these Israelis

perceive the holocaust-distorting aspects of that political party and yet support it.

2

Theoretical Implications

2.1

Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

The Holocaust has become such a universal reference point that even contemporary Chinese writers “who live thousands of miles from the place of Nazi brutality and possess only scanty knowledge of the details of the Holocaust, came to call their horrendous experiences during the Cultural Revolution ‘the ten-year Holocaust’” (Sheng Mei Ma in Alexander et al., 2004, p. 196). The Holocaust has become the symbol of human evil and suffering, and in Israel this reference point lies at the very core of identities and is therefore inseparably connected to receptions of Germany. A great deal of literature exists on the history of German and Israeli relations and on how the Holocaust is present in collective Israeli identities. The Holocaust stands out in its uniqueness of human atrocities.1 Auschwitz, as pars pro-toto, Oz-Salzberger notes: Was not the only extermination camp, and not the only place where Cyclone B gas chambers were deployed; but it was the largest death complex. In Israel and beyond it has sunk into collective memory as the ultimate abode and symbol of evil (2014, p. 190).

1 In

this context I want to shortly refer to the Historians’ Controversy (Evans, 1987) reverberating a debate reaching into present times calling the uniqueness of the Holocaust into question given the alleged comparability of genocides and other atrocities in world history. See for example in Moses (2004). Regardless of the positioning of this paper in line of thought that the Holocaust was unique in human history, its focus of German-Israeli relations makes it all the more unique. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_2

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2 Theoretical Implications

This collective memory of the Holocaust can be traced throughout history and is closely connected to the new founding of a nation, an ongoing process that Israeliness defines and the views on Germany. This analysis will start in the 1940s when the first Holocaust survivors found their way to Israel, sometimes as children without parents. The new arrivers were raising interest in the Israeli public as the following picture clearly shows when young children are displaying their tattooed numbers for this photographer’s lens. Their physical needs were met with open arms and generosity (Solomon, 1995), however their psychological needs reflecting dark memories that they brought with them challenged the new self-image of a nation and led to a much more ambivalent approach to memory (Figure 2.1). Figure 2.1 Photograph, Zoltan Kluger, Children arriving in Haifa port, National Archives, 1945

This chapter focuses on the social, while the political, such as the history of German2 -Israel political relations, are addressed later. This does not mean that one does not influence the other and vice versa. However, presenting them together 2 This

refers mainly to West Germany due to the nature of which the Holocaust was dealt with in the German Democratic Republic by “blaming a few high ranking capitalists for the crimes in order to deviate attention away from questions about German guilt and individual involvement in Nazi crimes.” (Walther 2019, p. 272). Nevertheless, the view that the Holocaust has been only taboo in the GDR has been contested. Dahn (2019) claims that in light of a vast array of film productions with the topic Holocaust and Auschwitz it an untenable argument that the Holocaust was only a taboo in the GDR. And the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR) and the GDR (GDR) took very different approaches to the relations with Israel. The GDR

2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

11

would imply an immediate and unison effect of the political reality on the social, when in fact the impact can be delayed or can be more complex, confusing and contradictory (Zimmermann, 2014).

2.1.1

Period of Silencing and Absorption, 1940s Until 1961

The time from the first arrival of Holocaust survivors and the official formation of Israel in 1948 until 1961 is described as the period of silence or rather “myth of silence” as described by Lundwall (2014, p. 4). This silence regarded the personal experiences of the survivors and the rest of contemporary Israeli society, whereas this was less true for what was happening in the public sphere. Therefore, I would like to suggest the term period of silencing, because it highlights the active silencing of memories under certain conditions and in certain encounters. The official commemoration of the Shoah culminated in the Shoah Remembrance Day in 1951 and later the Yad Vashem law in 1953 by which the national Shoah memorial and central research organization were initiated institutionalizing the memory of the Holocaust (Hirschfeld, 2016). When looking at the private accounts of one survivor, Simha Rotem, recollects memories of the early years of the Israeli state when facing the blame for being alive: In almost every contact with the inhabitants of the country, the question would come up of how we had remained alive. It was asked again and again and not always in the most delicate way. I had a feeling that I was being blamed for having stayed alive. (Segev & Watzman, 2000, p. 160)

Another element of collective repression of memory by the native Israelis toward the Holocaust survivors was quite common that “European Jews were somehow partially responsible for their plight because they had allowed themselves to be passively victimized rather than joining the Zionist movement and migrating to the Land of Israel ahead of the calamity” (Oz-Salzberger, 2014, p. 199). The term “survivor’s guilt” (Hirschfeld, 2016) seems best to describe the psychological complex at that time, i.e., accusing the survivors as responsible for their suffering and their internalization of those feelings of shame which then led was of the opinion that the debt was settled by the reparations paid to the Soviet Union. Up to 1971 there was not a single official contact between both states. The GDR clearly sided with the Arab states in the following years which led the Foreign Office in Jerusalem to practice outmost reservation when dealing with the GDR. (Streppelhoff 2010).

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2 Theoretical Implications

to more silence banning the traumatic experiences of the past into suppression. And yet this suppression of memory was most true for the interaction among the new inhabitants of Israel, that is the ones that came from “Here”, and “There”, where the Holocaust happened. Doron (2017), a novelist, describes this as follows3 : At the beginning of the Fifties a new land was established in the state of Israel, the Land of “Here”. In this land lived a persecuted people, who came from the Land of “There”. Its inhabitants have not actively chosen to come here willfully, they were left with nothing but a strange language, peculiar customs, memories and nightmares (Doron, 2017).

The ones that came from “there” were also referred to by non-survivors who were mostly born “here” as rejects, banished, deportees, human dust, and even the colloquial term “sabon” (soap) was used, an allusion to the widespread myth that the Nazis made soap from the dead bodies of the victims (Lundwall, 2014). These derogatory terms show how the new culture and self-image of the Jews of “here” as strong, brave and resilient people clashed inevitably with the horrors the victims were subjected to during the Holocaust. A silencing or “collective amnesia” (Lundwall, 2014, p. 6) shaped the personal encounters between strangers of Israeli society, while Holocaust survivors in the communal and family sphere often sought each other’s company: “they wanted the comfort of others like themselves” (Cohen, 2012, p. 188). In the everyday language of Holocaust survivors’ references to the Holocaust—or Holocaust dicta, as linguist Wajnryb (2001) describes the phenomenon—the Holocaust is always mentioned but never explained. For example, when children were sent off to bed: “Children have to go to bed early to grow and their parents have to go to bed early to forget” (Doron, 2017, p. 54). The children may not understand what their parents wanted to forget but to be sent to bed with that motto can be disturbing without any explanation and the shadows of the holocaust lingering at bedtime.4 Oz-Salzberger (2014) describes this stage, the 1940s until the Eichmann Trial in 1961, as the stage of absorption. There are two senses of the term: “the arrival and reception of Holocaust survivors from Europe to Israel; and a slow, halting process of collective awareness among Israeli Jews of the enormity and horror of the Holocaust.” The new young nation had to face struggles with the absorption 3 All

translations unless otherwise indicated are done by me.

4 Amir (2018) identified four different modes of traumatic testimony, which for further research

can shine a light how the different Thought Styles of learners are related to the four modes as laid out by Amir.

2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

13

of all the new members of society with different backgrounds, with and without the holocaust lingering, making it almost a prerequisite to look forward. For this period of Holocaust, memory was predominantly influenced by the contemporary experience of Israeli society at that time (Zandberg, 2006). During this era, the Israeli society was occupied mainly by building a country with political and economic infrastructure and simultaneously absorbing millions of immigrants—not only Holocaust survivors but also from Muslim countries. It is marked by a future-oriented and even optimistic outlook allowing also the Holocaust survivors to participate in this endeavor to build a country and setting aside or suppressing the trauma and the horrors of the Holocaust at least temporarily (Oz-Salzberger, 2014) and “the enormity of the foundation of the State of Israel, as a historic moment, for a while eclipsed the enormity of the Holocaust” (Oz Salzberger, personal communication May 31, 2020). In Holocaust literature, however, that enormity was very present. Ka-tzenik was one of the most widely read authors of the 1950s. As a survivor and eyewitness collapsing on the witness stand to testify against Eichmann in 1961 (see next Chapter). His writings still pose questions concerning the role of testimony and the representation of the Holocaust and thereby given the reader access to “‘devastating insights’ about the Holocaust, or do the violent, sexual and even pornographic descriptions with their mixture of fact and fiction instead lead us away from understanding the reality of what happened?” (Wallen, 2014, p. 1). According to trauma theory, recovery unfolds in three stages. The main task of the first stage is the establishment of safety, followed by the second phase of remembrance and mourning. In the third stage, the reconnection with ordinary life (Herman, 1998). All three tasks might have been surfacing in parallel to the arrival in Israel and thereby in the more or less active participation of building a new state, while mourning and remembrance might have been the key issue defining the next years to come when the greater part of the Israeli public was ready to listen to the horrors endured by some of its immigrants finding safety in the newly established Jewish state.

2.1.2

The Eichmann Trial, 1961

It is a consensus that the Eichmann trial is one of the watershed events for the collective memory on the Israeli as well as the German side (Oz-Salzberger, 2014). The earlier period of “silencing” was broken by this widely transmitted trial in Israel. Eichmann (1906–1962) was a high-ranking German-Austrian SS officer

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2 Theoretical Implications

who played a major role in the execution of the ‘Final Solution’, the systemic murder of all Jews within the German grasp as set forth by the Wannsee Conference in 1942. He was ultimately caught by Israel’s secret service, tried in Jerusalem and executed by hanging June 1, 1962 (Lahav, 1992). Observing the trial, Hannah Arendt said it revealed the “banality of evil” (1963). She was criticized heavily for her reporting of the trial, and yet she discovered that considering this trial it seems inevitable to call the established ideas about moral responsibility into question. “He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness-something by no means identical with stupidity-that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is ‘banal’ and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace.” (Arendt, 1963, p. 287–288). Having failed to think for himself, the crimes Eichmann committed had become banal for him, a routine (Butler, 2011). The banality of evil manifests itself when subjects are relieved of their duty to morally question their decisions and the consequences of their actions on their own. This has been demonstrated by Neitzel and Welzer (2011) in their analysis of over 150,000 secretly recorded tapes of German prisoners of war in Britain (Trent Park) and the United States (Fort Hunt). The soldiers did not criticize or regret that the mass murder had taken place, but had complaints only on how it was operationalized, as shown in this translated account: Amberger: I once talked to a deputy platoon leader, who said: I am fed up with it, all this mass-shooting-of-Jews. This murdering is not an occupation. This should be done by rowdies (Neitzel & Welzer, 2011, p. 167).

The soldier quoted here does not see a problem with the murder of Jews in general, just the noisy and disorderly way it is done and believes it should rather be carried out by someone else. The Jews posed an objective problem to which a solution had to be found. How far removed from any real moral thinking or even remorse the soldiers were can clearly be demonstrated by the following translated dialogue: German pigs they are calling us. And we have the big people like Wagner, Liszt, Goethe, Schiller, and they are calling us German pigs. I do not understand that at all. Do you know why that is? Because the German is too humane and this humanity they are exploiting and are scolding us (Neitzel & Welzer, 2011, p. 167).

In retrospect, this quote about the German POW pondering the humane German nature appears even more cynical; however, it shows what these prisoners of war

2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

15

brought with them as ideological baggage to post-war Germany, given that about 18 million men served in the Wehrmacht during the war (Overmans, 2004, p. 215). The discourse of responsibility for the atrocities committed was consequently to the Eichmann Trial present in Israel as well as Germany. As for the German side, Krause (2002) analyzed the German press in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic during the trial and came to the conclusion that while the West German press at least tried to raise the question of responsibility for every German, in the East German press the collective guilt of the Holocaust was habitually rejected and the reporting focused on alleged Nazi hideouts in West-Germany. For the Israeli public, it was a first exposure to the somewhat mythical past and the horrors of the Holocaust and this started to influence the political, as Hirschfeld (2016) concludes: In effect, the Eichmann trial is the beginning of a process through which the Israeli horizons of expectations began to be organized around a catastrophic rather than a progressive meta-narrative. This, in effect, is the beginning of the politics of prevention that have, since the 1960s, increasingly characterized Israel.

Another important shift took place in the collective memory as the survivors of the Holocaust were no longer seen just as passive victims but as heroes, allowed and encouraged to break their silence and sharing their memories (Oz-Salzberger, 2014). Also, they were organized increasingly in survivors clubs spread all over the country amounting to 104 survivors clubs in 1961 (Kurths, 2008, p. 90). Oz-Salzberger (2014) describes the trial and its immediate aftermath as the second stage, “that of heightened awareness, shock, and reworking of memory” (p. 189) leading ultimately to the establishment of diplomatic relations (See next chapter). The threats from outside, mainly the hostile neighboring states’ militarization and the Palestinians forming political and paramilitary organizations making claims on Israeli territories, led to existential anxiety among young Israelis. This led to a resurfacing of the Holocaust, casting them back to “darker times” (p. 197). When speaking about Germany, the term the “Other Germany” appeared, reportedly coined by Ben Gurion himself. Yet, many Israelis still saw the old Germany, especially when ex-Nazis were still present in the German juridical system and light sentences were given to members of SS and Gestapo during that time (Elon, 1967). In Germany, the society was also confronted directly with the horrors of the Holocaust by the Eichmann court proceedings in Israel. Weingardt (2002) even describes this as the beginning of the German 1968 protest movement. The

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2 Theoretical Implications

1968 protest movement was a global anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-racism movement predominantly rebelling against military and bureaucratic elites and their silencing and covering-up of Germany’s immediate past. For Germany, it was mainly a generational movement that tried to come to terms with the Nazi past of their parents and contrived, at times, quite extreme ideologies towards sexuality, capitalism and privacy. Their enemies were the Nazi-teachers, Nazi-judges, Nazi-policemen and Nazi-professors. As Winter (2011) points out, there was a discourse calling the protest movement the “red SA” and threatening public order with their sexual revolution and disturbances. The 1950s in Germany were dominated by discourses of prudery, homeliness and the model family with their picket fence attributing sexual deviance to the former Nazis. Nazis were portrayed as sexually corrupt, hypersexual and homosexuals by the “morally intact” new fuddy duds (Spießbürgertum) (Winter, 2011). On the contrary, the 1968 movement tried to own this sexual deviance by taking a liberal stand on sexuality and relationships, and was fascinated by an abstract over-identification with the victims of the Holocaust and the heroes of the resistance (Winter, 2011).

2.1.3

The “Stalags”: Holocaust Semi-pornography

In Israel a new genre emerged that was bound to sexuality and until this day is much overlooked. The “Stalags” (Figure 2.2), as they were popularly called, were Hebrew pulp fiction paperbacks, a semi-pornographic series in which the Holocaust found perverted representations. It shines light on an interesting phenomenon of how subculture and here a sub-literary genre take up the mainstream discourses on Holocaust commemoration and break familiar patterns of representation. Pinchevski and Brand (2007) analyzed the Stalags that were first sold in April 1961, a few months after the court proceedings against Eichmann had started. The themes of the Stalags were sexual domination by female officers in Nazi uniforms, until tables turned and the former perpetrators were subjugated to sexual violence. The works are only semi-pornographic since the actual sexual acts are not portrayed in full detail and yet it was the only pornography that was relatively available during Israeli society that contained almost puritan elements (Kershner, 2007). Appearing against the background of a transformative event in Holocaust memory in Israel, the Stalags weaved fantasy and transgression into a cultural text that accompanied the trial. As such, they testify to the way initial revelations of the traumatic past were incorporated and imagined in the minds of young Israelis in the early 1960s (Pinchevski & Brand, 2007, p. 3).

2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

17

Figure 2.2 Courtesy of Heymann Brother Films, (in Kershner, 2007)

Many Stalags were written by a small number of Israeli authors though they were often marketed as translations from English, probably to avoid further outrage. Some of them acquired bestseller status selling more than 25,000 copies, while others were popular but hunted down by police. These sadistic-masochistic literary reflections may have been a way to deal with power relations, subjugated identities, and change in the collective memory of a nation. Such sexual power games are often bound to forbidden childhood memories (McClintock, 1993). With these Stalag booklets, a new generation of Israelis, often the descendants of Holocaust survivors, dealt with the imminent articulation of what could not be articulated. Fantasy formation can serve as overcoming trauma, in this case both personal and collective trauma. Here, in the Stalags, they find expression in the sadomasochistic sexual fantasy. As Pinchevski & Brand conclude: “new speech for sex and at the same time new speech for trauma.” One could even link these to a modality of resistance and survival: These S/M reenactments, as returns to lived trauma, actively engender—through witnessing, consensual violence, and merging—bodily renewal. Perverse sex, in its excavations and reworkings of shame and trauma, can be a modality of survival and kinship and is thus powerfully resistive (Hammers, 2019, p. 511).

This promising field of research questions how a society translates trauma into sexual desires and fantasies. More examples can be found throughout history and

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2 Theoretical Implications

should constitute its own research endeavor. They are to a great extent bound to renegotiations of identity. Such examples include French soldiers in colonial Algeria seeking a submissive relationship with black natives as observed by Fanon (1967). A more recent example is the refugee-porn that was a sought-after category in Germany on online porn websites in 2017.

2.1.4

1970s Reoccurring Nightmares

The following seven years were filled with terror and military confrontations leading into the early 1970s (Brog, 2003). The number of victims of terror attacks more than doubled from a total of 169 in the 1960s to 361 in the 1970s (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020). At least three events especially shocked the Israeli public in their view of Germany. One was the assassination of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich 1972, which prompted memories as well as suspicion that present-day Germany did little to defend the Israeli victims. The second event was the war of 1973 with pictures that reached the Israeli public showing Israelis handcuffed in Egyptian and Syrian camps, bringing back memories of the Holocaust (Brog, 2003) and total annihilation during the early days of war. Brog (2003) says that these events were slightly mitigated by the third event, which took place in 1976, with the stunning success of Operation Thunderbolt at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, when Israel successfully completed the mission over 4,000 KM away from Israeli territory. These hostages were passengers on a French airplane hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine External Operations, collaborating with the German revolutionary cells. Segev and Watzman (2000) argue that the separation of the Israeli passengers by the terrorists: “inevitably recalled the selection at Auschwitz where those who were fit had been separated from those to be sent to the gas chambers” (p. 395). Segev and Watzman continues to elaborate how Peres, at the time Minister of Defense, was influenced by his biographical reverberations of the Holocaust and cited the Holocaust among his arguments for the authorization of the rescue mission. Peres’s grandfather was burnt alive when Nazis barricaded a synagogue and lit it on fire in Poland. In conclusion, the successful Operation Thunderbolt at least momentarily revived the myth of resistance (Segev & Watzman, 2000) to a force that targeted and singled out Jews and Israelis directly.

2.1 Israeli Identity and the Holocaust

2.1.5

19

The 1980s and Individual Engagement

Despite some bumps in the road of German-Israeli political relations, the 1980s can be defined as the stage of individual engagement with the collective memory of the Holocaust and its relation to Germany (Oz-Salzberger, 2014). OzSalzberger sketches this stage by examining a book, a film and a musical album from that era, each of them taking a different and individual approach to the suffering during and after the Holocaust. She concludes that such individual pieces of art “enabled a generation of young artists and audiences to come to grip with the German-Jewish past through individual, informal and non-ideological prisms” (p. 213). The Holocaust also paved the way for some Israelis to reflect upon the reports that began to reach the Israeli public that a Christian militia force “had been introduced” (Burnett, 1985, p. 74) by the Israeli Defense Forces into a Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, and that 800 Palestinians were massacred by militia members. Shocked by the recent events, the poet Dalia Rabikowitz, for example, refers to them by clearly making allusions to the Holocaust: Back to camp, March! Shouted the soldier. To the screaming women from Sabra and Shatil I had orders to follow. (In Segev & Watzman, 2000, p. 412)

Even though the role and the responsibility of the Israeli military remain all but clear in this incident, it made apparent that the Holocaust was no longer merely a dark memory of the past, but always influenced views on current events. One personal life stands out during these years. Ralph Klein was an Israeli basketball star coach and Holocaust survivor. He was born in 1931 in Berlin. His family moved to Budapest and was deported to Auschwitz and he lost his father to the Nazis (Yad Vashem, 2020). In 1983, Klein was appointed coach of the German national team, explaining, “I saw it as my victory over the Germans, with the great and strong Germany inviting an Israeli to coach its team” (Cohanim, 2018, p. 12). This quote demonstrates the new image of Germany of greatness and strength, and this is juxtaposed by Klein claiming his private victory over it by being invited to lead the national team. From a passive role of being just a survivor, Klein took an active action and a deliberate decision to coach in Germany. In the same year, Ofra Haza, a young Israeli singer, won second place in the Eurovision contest on stage in Germany performing the song “Chai” containing the famous Hebrew line ‘Am Yisrael Chai’, the People of Israel is alive. During the round of applause, the audience was asked to remain seated in fear of terror attacks (Tragaki, 2013). Whether or not the yellow outfits of the Israeli performers were really meant to

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resemble the yellow stars is a Eurovision myth, the very discussion in the media at the very least shows the symbolic weight of this Israeli singer’s appearance on a German stage. Zandberg (2006) describes this period as “saturated with and interpreted by Holocaust commemoration” (p. 576). It was predominantly influenced by the second generation who have defined themselves and were defined by others increasingly as one cultural and sociological group not always able to fulfill the role of dealing with their and their parents’ memory of the Holocaust. The survivors still have the inner conflict of silencing memories to forget and the noise of the trauma forcing them to tell their story. This is what Wiseman et al. (2006) describe as the “background music” with which the second generation grows up and can lead to sometimes muted anger and guilt.

2.1.6

Falling Wall(s) and Intensification, 1990s

For the next period, Oz-Salzberger (2014) speaks of intensification of contact with Germany. An increase in quality of life led to more traveling and hence more individual encounters between Israelis and Germans beginning in the early 1990s and increasingly so in the years to follow. Israelis took more interest in Germany when the Berlin wall came down; also, slowly, personal walls between Israelis and Germans were torn down through more and more encounters. This was surprising considering apparently German-manufactured SCUD rockets were fired on Israel from Iraq in 1991 and intensification of the interest in reunited Germany was evident. The image of Europe and Germany “being a verbal and bookish memory: part-dream, part-nightmare” (Oz-Salzberger, 2014, p. 214) was to be explored by “history students, travelers of memory” and found manifold manifestations in the Israeli public sphere. Four areas shall be highlighted here. First, the Israeli press and its depiction of Germany, second, a newly emerging literary expression of the Holocaust, third, a TV show dealing with the memory of the Holocaust in a humorous manner, and fourth, a personal decision of a public figure. Browning (2004) analyzed the images of Germany in the Israeli press, namely the widely read papers Maariv and Yedioth Aharonoth, from Oct 1990 until 2000, and also examined how the Nazi past was represented. Most coverage was attributed to the German economy, followed by cultural stories about fashion, curiosities, and sex. The Holocaust came third and appeared more in context with Israeli politics than with the flaring up of right-wing extremism in Germany (Browning, 2004). Browning deduces that 80.1 percent of all reporting on Germany had no

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mentions of the Holocaust. His findings on how the perpetrators were mentioned is even more interesting and a tell-tale sign of how Germany and Nazi-Germany had become two separate entities in press discourse. Only in 6.2 percent of cases, the perpetrators are obviously marked as the Germans. In most cases, terms like Nazis or Nazi-Germans are used, and at the end of the period analyzed, it is almost exclusively the term Nazis referring to the perpetrators who are more and more “historicized” (Browning, 2004, p. 202). This adds to the effect of separation between the old Nazi Germany and the new other Germany. Since the mid-1990s another literary subculture emerged from the Mizrahi second-generation authors whose parents arrived in Israel during the mass immigration from the Mediterranean and Islamic world of the 1950s. They made the Holocaust a central literary theme in their works (Shimony, 2011a). Shimony explains that this literary theme was usually preserved for the second-generation writers stemming from some part of Europe which was associated with the Holocaust, whereas the descendants of the Greek survivors were usually faced with exclusion. This, despite the fact that up to 96 percent (Shimony, 2011a, p. 4) of Jews were murdered who belonged to the Greek Sephardic communities. This excluded and bereft, sometimes fragile identity manifests in their writing such as in the autobiographical account of Leah Aini: Small artisans in rented stores, and storekeepers living above their source of livelihood, or within walking distance of it, went to sleep in distress so as to wake up in the morning as weirdos. People you stay away from. Below a sky of changing colors lay the soot of depressing daily toil, and no one was promised a thing. They had the wrong ethnic origin, their party cards, which opened doors, bore the wrong kind of name, they did not pronounce the word Holocaust in the correct language, and the color of their skin was too much like that of the natives (Aini in Shimoni 2011b, p. 10).

This marginalization of a whole community of Holocaust survivors based on the color of their skin and voiced in literature sheds a different light on what Shimony describes as “Holocaust envy”. Sometimes the envy may seem justifiable when the horrors survived are the same, but the collective memory excludes and delegitimizes their narratives. This probably ties in with the underprivileged status of Mizrahi Jews reaching into present times. This interesting field of research in particular questions how the Israeli national identity is bound to the Holocaust and the methods of exclusion. Another culture had to be absorbed during the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians, as they are usually referred to. Some of them Jewish, some of them self-declared as Christian, maintained a borderline, sometimes blurred, new strategy of adaptation “distinctiveness and ghettoization” (Yakobson,

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2010, p. 224). Their relation with the Holocaust was mainly constructed around their ancestors having served in the Red Army to fight the Nazis and thereby contributing to the formation of the Jewish state (Roberman, 2007). In 1993, one of the first humorous engagements with the Holocaust can be found. In line with the argumentation by Steir-Livny (2015) the humorous representations of the Holocaust are not a sign of disrespect for the victims, but a coping mechanism of younger Israelis to come to terms with ever-present and powerful position the Holocaust has in their lives. Therefore, this research focuses on this cultural aspect to shine a light on what had been unthinkable to talk about a generation earlier now was being joked about. The famous “Chamber Quintet” comedy group (active between 1993–1997) played a sketch in which the Israeli delegates at the World Championship in Athletics asked for the small favor of moving the starting blocks for their runner a few meters forward (Zimmermann, 2014). Among many allusions to the reality of the Holocaust, the judge was asked to give the rather small and seemingly not highly athletic runner a sign of warning before the starting shot because his mother had been through so much and now was watching her son in Germany being humiliated. From this, a famous sentence was born: “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” The phrase is still widely used today. The makers of the rather anti-establishment comedy show belong to the third generation. Zandberg (2006) identified three criticisms that this comedy scene entails: “the contrast between the private experience of the Holocaust memory and its collective image; the politicization and commercialization of Holocaust memory; and the tension between the Holocaust and its cultural representations” (p. 469). He also proposes an interesting concept generalizing the generational shift in commemorating the Holocaust: 1. The survivors looking back in fear, 2. the survivors’ children looking back in anger 3. and the third generation looking back in critical self-reflectiveness. Even famous accounts of descendants of Holocaust survivors can be found during this time banning the Holocaust to the past. Zimmermann (2014) quotes Shlomo Scherf in 1997 at a sporting event where the German national team is playing the Israeli national team which reflects a new private approach to Holocaust commemoration. Scherf was born in the USSR after his parents had fled from Poland. When asked about his feelings after this encounter, he “answered in his typical laconic manner: What was was” (Zimmermann, 2014, p. 46). This is literally

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translated by Scherf from the Hebrew “Ma Shehaya, Haya” meaning “let bygones be bygones”. Zimmermann (2014) describes this as a well-known bon mot of Israeli society, back in the 1990s however, this was still rather the exception to the rule on how the Holocaust was presented. Yet, it foreshadowed the years to come where the image of the old Nazi-Germany and new Germany became more and more separated in discourses.

2.1.7

Refamiliarization and Keeping the Memories Alive 2000–2020

Oz-Salzberger (2014) defines this stage as refamiliarization, since an increasing number of Israelis and Germans engage in dialogue about the past than ever before, allowing them to take “a closer look into the lives and mind of their interlocutors, the descendants of their grandparents’ worst enemies” (p. 214). A national identity struggling to find its stand on collective memory can be clearly exemplified by the Wagner debate of the beginning of the new millennium. The debate was whether this compositor, a “symbol of Antisemitism and spiritual father of Nazism,”5 should or should not be played on Israeli stages as it is still practiced until today. I agree with the conclusion and suggestion by Sheffi that it is of importance to assess every object of debate individually whether it is the right symbol to maintain Holocaust awareness in Israel. I want to, therefore, add the “keeping the memory alive” as one imperative describing this stage of German-Israeli relations in regard to the Holocaust. Since there are fewer and fewer witnesses to tell their story within the families and in the public sphere, it is inevitable to find ways in Israel as well as in Germany to keep the memories alive. These discourses of collective memory will always have to face the question of how much the German culture is still bound to traumas of the Holocaust, which is also an integral part of this paper, especially when taking into consideration that some GFL learner’s grandparents were themselves victims of Nazi terror. Marking 50 years of diplomatic relations, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2015 commissioned a representative survey of 1000 Israelis to measure attitudes toward Germany. Some of the key findings by Borchard and Heyn (2015) are presented here to serve as a benchmark for the image of Germany according to the Israeli public. Over 70 percent of Israelis have a very positive attitude toward Germany regardless of their age and only 23 percent think unfavorably about

5 As

described by a Member of Knesset Shaul Yaholom in May 2001 (Sheffi, 2004).

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Germany.6 Only 16 percent of Israelis have German ancestors and 19 percent have relatives currently residing in Germany. 65 percent would like to travel to Germany, 45 percent have done so, but 60 percent would not consider moving there. 60 percent think of Germans as straight and honest. 80 percent believe that Germany is a stable democracy. 83 percent understand the German government is taking positive actions to support Israel’s right to exist. The special status of Angela Merkel is also confirmed by this study; in 2007, 50 percent of respondents viewed her as favorable and in 2015, her popularity increased to 70 percent. Borchard and Heyn conclude: The differences between Arab and Jewish Israelis are relatively small. This similarity in attitudes points to a high degree of loyalty towards the Israeli state. Almost universally, Israelis of Russian descent have a more critical view of Germany. It seems likely that this is due to lingering stereotypes from the days of the Cold War. Israelis who are older or more secular take a more positive view of Germany and the Germans. Israeli men are more positive about Germany than women (Borchard & Heyn, 2015, p. 2). Holocaust and (Pop) Cultural References

Besides the political perspective, early in the year 2014, two more humorous pop-cultural references to the Holocaust appeared on mainstream television. Both were part of the fourth season of the Israeli comedy series “Ramzor”, rating over 30% (Abraham, 2014). In the first scene of the fourth episode of season 4, one of the main protagonists, Hefer is meeting the parents of his new girlfriend. He arrives all dressed up with a bottle of wine and a bouquet only to meet German hippies Stefan and Chantal, who were hoping for other flowers and offer a naked cuddling session for bonding. It does not get to that, but the German accent and nudist culture represented in this character shine a very different light on Germany. This image of Germany, captured during the late 1990s with the arrival of satellite dishes to Israel, became known for its late-night erotic films and sex commercials on RTL. Germany is portrayed as sexually open and with a thriving nudist culture. The Holocaust, however, resurfaces again two episodes later (season 4, episode 6), when Amir, the main protagonist, wants to jumpstart his baby daughter’s development and takes her to the pool, where Helga, former coach of the Eastern German team, is awaiting them with her assistant, Mr. Goering. Surrounded by red banner flags and Helga’s exclamations of “raus” ordering the parents out, Goering starts to fill the pool with ice cubes. Amir has seen enough, and all the other parents present during the scene do not even speak Hebrew, so he takes his daughter home only to find himself later in the hands of Helga who 6 The

authors of the study state a margin of error of 3.16 percent.

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will show the sissy Israeli man that a good German treatment will turn him into a “Trojan horse” as Helga announces. These clear references to the Holocaust and the German theories of resilience (“Abhärtungstheorien”) if not to the cruel experiments by concentration camp doctors testing the limits of the human body often leading to the deaths of the inmates, is a good example of how the memory of the Holocaust and the image of Germany have changed. Helga is a scary character, but her sexual references and heavy German accent, contextualized here in a comedic setting, almost invite for a self-reflectiveness on how the education of children can shape a nation. In 2014, another satire appeared. This time as a persiflage of Eichmann’s execution as it occurred in the third season of the “The Jews are coming”, a Can11 production (the former Israeli Channel 1). The scene is available on YouTube since November 2014 and has had over 234,000 views as of March 2020. The geolocation of these views cannot be defined further, but given that the original series is in Hebrew without subtitles, it is highly likely that it is Israelis who viewed this scene. The version with English subtitles even has over 2.2 million views. The scene starts by Eichmann being asked for his last words, saying he has nothing to regret. Then the Israelis are trying to execute the hanging, but their dilettantism leads to a comical effect. They do not know how to execute and forgot to tie the rope and close the noose. Eichmann himself is advising them on how the execution should proceed (Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3 Can 11 (2014), The Jews Are Coming

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In 2016, another persiflage by the “Jews are coming” can be found alluding to the Holocaust. This time, Hitler himself is taking the stage. The video received over 139,000 views on YouTube between March 2016 and 2020. The plot goes as follows: The Germans have lost the war but come up with a final solution of another kind, they sent sleepers to several European countries, “even to Luxembourg” to make sure that Israel will never get points in the Eurovision song contest. The meeting is closed with Hitler and his followers dancing to the national anthem Dschingis Khan, in reference to the German show contribution in 1979 (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4 Can 11 (2016), The Jews Are Coming

It is possible that to look back in humor is a new way to remember these horrors; not forgetting but raising above the victimization by laughing at it. Kuiper (2012) analyzed the effects of humor in a meta-study and even though further research is needed, the use of humor is related to resiliency and dealing successfully with traumatic and stressful situations. In the fall of 2014, the Milky Protests dominated the public discourse. An expatriate Israeli living in Berlin uploaded a post, on Yom Kippur of all days, of the chocolate pudding milky with a receipt from a supermarket showing that in Berlin the price is half what Milky costs in Israel, calling other citizens to make “Aliyah”. This sparked a public debate on Israelis moving to Berlin, some blaming the leavers as betraying the Zionist dream to have a cheaper life in the country

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where the Holocaust originated. Choosing the term of Aliyah, normally reserved for Jews immigrating to Israel, be it intended as a provocation or not, is interesting because it shows a changing attitude toward the holy refuge of Israel for all Jews. This comes as a continuation of Israelis speaking out against the extraordinarily high costs of living in Israel. When in 2011 it was the cottage cheese7 being at the forefront of discourse, now it was the chocolate pudding. Lancaster (2014) explains that there must be more push factors involved than the economic burden to leave your own country and by that, family, friends and comfort zone. She argues in line with one of the bloggers and Berlin expatriates. Hirschfeld describes processes in Israel as “silencing and repression of voices critical of the dominant discourse, and the normalization of the idea that anyone who protests the occupation or questions military action is an extreme leftist” (Lancaster, 2014, p. 58). This negotiation of the meaning of Israeliness, of allowing oneself to move to Germany and pursue a life there, is touching upon the core of the Thought Style of what it is to be Israeli and the way it entails looking at Germany. In this case, it coincides with the hype about the city of Berlin. Berlin plays a special role in conveying an image of Germany. 82 percent of all Israelis identified it correctly as the capital and for the popularity, two main responses are interesting. 26 percent mention the modernity of the city, followed by its historical significance (Borchard & Heyn, 2015). Papushado and Shifferman (2017) use the term “Berlin boom,” and say that this heightened interest in Germany’s capital led to an increased interest in the German language in general. Oz-Salzberger (2015) also says a common topic of Israelis in Berlin is that they distance themselves from the regular Jewish-German discourse and by that, also speak critically about Israel’s political and economic situation. She makes another interesting observation regarding the Arab-Israelis in Berlin. For the first time they felt “Israeli” having made Berlin their home like 15,000 to 20,000 other Israeli compatriots according to estimations. Oz-Salzberger rephrases her question of how Israelis can live in Berlin without relentlessly “hearing voices screaming from underneath the pavement stones, from the cellars, from the railway tracks?” (Oz-Salzberger, 2015, p. 122). In agreement with Oz-Salzberger (2015) they neither can, nor should they reflect on their choice constantly but Berlin remains problematic for them. It is exactly this ambivalence, this struggle for an Israeli identity abroad and in Israel that allows and demands “identity dialogs” (Oz-Salzberger, 2015, p. 118). By assessing one’s own spheres of belonging one can question monolithic cultures and the Thought 7 The comparison of prices between cottage cheese in Germany and Israel caused public outcry

on social media and whether it was “worth” it to move to Berlin given it was the capital of the Third Reich.

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Styles, the carrier of ideas and concepts the subject is forced to think within (Fleck 1979). Berlin is the former capital of the Third Reich, and that comes with a heritage to remember the screaming voices underneath the city’s façade. Yair (2015) conducted about 80 interviews with Israelis that live in Berlin and exposed the “suspicious Israeli habitus,” which seeks signs in contemporary German society that could explain what happened 80 years earlier. Yair describes this habitus based on terms defined by Bourdieu, Elias and Paul and complemented with a stronger emphasis on sensual dimensions, as: Contemporary Israeli visual and auditory perceptions of Germany are guided by a traumatized and fearful habitus that interrogates the present through the past in order to learn about possible futures (2015b, p. 256).

This re-surfacing memory of “their perpetrators” acquired as collective trauma, does not only influence the Israelis living in Germany but most likely also the Israelis that are exposed to the German language and people in Israel. Another recent example from popular culture8 of how the perception of Berlin is changing in Israeli and Jewish discourse is the new Netflix series Unorthodox (2020) based on the autobiographical bestseller by Deborah Feldman. As of March 2020, it is the number one on the top list in Israel. In this miniseries, the protagonists, Ester Shapiro, leaves her Satmar Orthodox community in Williamsburg, who were Holocaust survivors and their children of Hungarian descent, to find her path in Berlin. She is confronted with dark memories from her past because Berlin is wearing its trauma on its sleeve while at the same time is presented as a sexually and ethnically diverse place of tolerance Ester has her liberating, soul-searching experience in the city which was once the capital of the Third Reich. Given that this series is highly popular in Israel, this shows that at least for Jews, the image of Germany has changed. Most of the directing crew were of Jewish descent, including the two main Israeli actors, one of whom was even formerly from the Mea Shearim Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. Considering the positive image of Germany today, the different stages of the collective memory of the Holocaust are an essential element when trying to understand the collective trauma and its repercussions on Israeli identity. More precisely, the Israeli learner’s identity when learning the language of the former perpetrators might resurface at every stage and reoccur as Fleck would put it as a “Thought Style” (See Chapter on Methodology). 8 The Cakemaker

is another example of the dichotomies relating to heteronormativity, religiosity and individualism being portrayed on screen as “ambiguous tale of desire, displacement and dissimulation” (Engelberg, 2019, p. 1) unfolds revolving around the city of Berlin.

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Liebman et al. (1983) define the Holocaust as “the primary myth of Israeli politics and the moral foundation of a new Israeli civil religion” (p. 137). Since then, more than three decades later, Klar et al. (2013) contest that for a “vast majority of contemporary Israelis, the Holocaust is an acquired memory” (p. 125). They elaborate on how perceptions of the Holocaust have changed from “what Israeliness is not” in the 1940s and 1950s to a core element in Israeli identity. Inspired by Bauer (2002), they present four different and sometimes incompatible voices related to the Holocaust that greatly influence Israeli society. These are: “Never be a passive victim; never forsake your brothers; never be a passive bystander; and never be a perpetrator” (p. 126). Musolff (2016) adds another interesting perspective, i.e. how the Holocaust is instrumentalized within Israeli and Palestinian discourse and how false historical analogies are made. He concludes that these pseudo-historical analogies have a detrimental effect on any peace prospect and says that new analogies are much needed in particular in this conflict so that both parties can accept each other’s suffering and a different scenario other than genocide can become a possible outcome. Kellermann (2013) has made the claim that the cultural collective trauma is not only passed on through conscious and subconscious processes but that “nightmares” and related Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) can be inherited. This possible epigenetic transmission will not be addressed in my research, however, in light of the learner’s family history, this latest research cannot be neglected when given accounts of collective memory and transmission thereof. Despite the epigenetic influence, Kellermann (2013) reiterates the choice of the individual in dealing with the past: Even though such offspring might still be more or less influenced by their genes and despite their physiological predestination, they might realize that it’s up to them to decide what to do with all of it (p. 38).

How does that cultural trauma get reconciled with learning the language of the perpetrators? This is based on the assumption that for these language learners, as for most Israelis, the Holocaust signifies a “defining cultural trauma” (Lazar & Hirsch, 2014). This memory is “largely shaped by the educational system and the messages and symbols it conveys” (p. 73). How the Holocaust needs to be commemorated, whether one can joke about it and how it is related to a conception of Germany has changed tremendously during the last 75 years. It is for that reason that the next chapter shall be dedicated to taking a closer look at how the Holocaust discourse is shaped by the educational institutions.

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The Holocaust and the Education System in Israel

In order to highlight how the narratives of the Holocaust and thereby also the image of Germany are shaped by the educational system, it seems appropriate to give a short overview of the Israeli education system and its approach to the Holocaust. According to the Israeli Ministry of Education (2020), school is mandatory for children between the ages of 3–15. Formal education starts with kindergarten ages 3–5, and is continued in elementary school, grades 1–6 and continues in intermediate schools, grades 7–9 and secondary schools, grades 10–12. At the end of secondary school if the teenager did not enroll in vocational training, the students take their final exams (called Bagrut which translates as maturity), allowing them to attend university and colleges. The multicultural Israeli society is mirrored by the education system, thus students can attend three different tracks of schools. First, there are Jewish schools, where Hebrew is the primary language. According to the Israeli Ministry of Education (2020) most frequented track is the Jewish one with about 75 percent of all students in the Israeli education system. Secondly, there are Arab (18%) and Bedouin (5%) and Druze schools (2%), with Arabic as the primary language and a focus on Arab, Druze and Bedouin history, religion, and culture. Thirdly, there are private schools that are run by various religious and international organizations (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020). At the level of higher education, the students are reunited at the colleges and universities. The different tracks described apply to how the subject of the Holocaust is presented in the Israeli education system. According to Resnik (2003) during the first thirty years following the Holocaust—the period of silence—the state of Israel and the subject of the Holocaust was nearly neglected in schools. In the years to follow and especially since the 1980s ritualization, “sites of memory” blossomed in the education system (Resnik, 2003, p. 297). Resnik (2003) also argues that this commemoration serves a clear obligatory function of the education system: “the formation of national suspects attached to their nation, land and their state” (p. 314). Cohen (2016) maintains that very little research exists on how teaching the Holocaust in the Arab track is operationalized and with what impact and outcome. To this day, this remains unchanged and is an important area for further research.9 These state schools are obligated by the Ministry of Education’s requirements to 9 This

applies also to the German side where more research is needed on how the Holocaust is taught to different groups within the German society.

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teach the history of WWII and the Holocaust, and yet informal educational and extracurricular activities such as ceremonies or museum visits are not required and remain the exception in the Arabic track of the system. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education and Yad Vashem seek to expand and improve Shoah education in the Arab sector (Cohen, 2016). This is another interesting field for further research. In general, the Holocaust plays a great role in formal and informal curricula in the Israeli educational system, ranging from schools, youth movements, community centers, and military training to regular youth delegations visiting former extermination camps mainly in Poland (Leon, 2016). This identification “remains a source of consensus among Jews in Israel and for this reason is regarded as a bonding element that connects different parts of Israeli society” (Auron, 2012; Leon, 2016, p. 472). A Holocaust Memorial Day is also observed alongside the memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims killed by enemy actions. These days are ritualized not only in every school or educational organization but are part of annual ceremonies in manifold Israeli organizations and even some workplaces. This commemorative action is initiated and ended by the sound of the nationwide siren system during which the whole country stands still in remembrance evoking in every bystander a sense of awe (Figure 2.5). The whole school or other educational community usually gather for ceremonies. “Socio-political rituals are often used in society to help promote group solidarity and identity” (Lo et al., 2019, p. 1). On these days the community revolves its existence around the memory of the fallen (Ben-Amos et al., 1999). Faircloth (2014) traces the views on the Holocaust Memorial Day throughout history, who the heroes are, and how remembrance is reaffirmed. In 1963, the Ministry of Education created a curriculum that allowed the schools some independence on how the commemoration is to take place with the prerequisite of candle lightings and poetry readings. When Israel was facing existential threats from the outside during the Six-Day (1967) and Yom Kippur (1973) war the emphasis shifted from the ghetto fighters that were perceived as heroes resisting the Nazis to now include also the camps and the survivors as heroes for merely surviving. Keynan (2018) mentions another interesting effect which is marked by changing the perception of war trauma: “The Yom Kippur War bolstered rejection of obsolete beliefs in the negation between war trauma and patriotism and heroism and began a long process toward recognition of war trauma as injury” (2018, p. 111).

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Figure 2.5 (Marc Hermann-Cohen) Israel stands still also on Ibn Gabirol Street Tel Aviv during the two-minute siren

Nevertheless, the memory of the Holocaust and its representation in the education system is also shaped by different groups in Israeli society not always in consensus about the national commemoration of the Holocaust. For example, looking at Mizrahi,10 Haredim (Ultra Orthodox) who struggled with what Shimony (2011b) describes as “Holocaust envy,” which is the envy of the symbolic and economic privileges owned by the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel and awarded by Holocaust commemoration. This was played out on the political stage, when the spiritual leader of the Shas Mizrahi Haredi party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in the summer of 2000, “explained that the Jews who perished in the Holocaust were the 10 The ones now called “Mizrahim” include descendants of Babylonian Jews from modern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, Syrian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Georgian Jews, Mountain Jews from Dagestan and Azerbaijan, Persian Jews from Iran, Bukharan Jews from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Sometimes the term Mizrahim is also applied to descendants of Maghrebi Jews and Sephardi Jews, who had lived in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco).

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reincarnated souls of Israelites who participated in the sin of the golden calf as recounted in the bible” (Leon, 2016, p. 471). This led to public outcry and later to an apology and explanation that this idea was integral to his ultra-orthodox perspective on Jewish history. There are some contemporary critical voices against the instrumentalization of the Holocaust, one example is the famous Israeli philosopher Ophir, who was one of the first to question commemoration practices in the late 1980s. His work, Speaking Evil: Towards an Ontology of Moral thematizes the “new religion in Israel” with a pilgrimage to its “holy site” Auschwitz and a hierarchical religious establishment, as Yad Vashem describes, “that deals with memory and immortalization for political purposes” (2009, p. 24). This paper cannot give a full account of the struggle for collective memory, national commemoration, and translation into curricula thereof; however, this incident is important given that in all unity grave importance to the Holocaust is attached. There is similarly a discursive struggle here: for inclusion, the truth and the right way to commemorate. It is this struggle for collective memory, whom it includes, what to remember and what to forget, that can be shaped by the educators and this gives them an important role and great responsibility.

2.2.1

Educational Textbooks and Images of Germany

The image of GFL learners is shaped not only by discourses on Germany in the family, the media and personal encounters but also by educational materials that the learners encounter during their course of study in the education system in Israel and the GFL textbooks that they use. Textbooks are by no means neutral vehicles for knowledge transmission, but almost always serve to transmit social norms (Apple & Christian-Smith, 2017; Kizel, 2017). Ever since becoming an independent state, Israel has deemed textbooks “a central means of shaping the collective memory of pupils” (Kizel, 2017, p. 160). They embody an ideology that is endorsed by means of the subjects they cover (what is included and what is excluded), the form in which the material is presented, and the space devoted to it (Kizel, 2017, p. 160).

Germany is mostly encountered in History, Geography, and Civic Education, which are also the fields the international schoolbook commission examines. This is part of the second dimension of analysis which shall focus on the educational textbooks and what representations of Germany and German history are

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prominent there. This shall be done by first rendering the results of the IsraeliGerman Commission for Textbooks Research and, second, by looking at current and widely used GFL textbooks used in Israel, which are identified and then analyzed regarding their representations of the Nazi past of Germany. This focus is necessary due to the sheer amount of GFL textbooks and multifold representations of Germany, and the analysis thereof could be an area for further research. A second argument for the emphasis on the dark history of Germany is that it seems to be omnipresent in the GFL classroom in Israel: the elephant in the room that is almost entirely ignored by the GFL textbooks, as was and will be shown by the literature analysis and also the empirical results. The first part of assessing the image of Germany in educational material is a meta-analysis of the literature on the topic in general, while the identification of frequently used GFL textbooks in Israel and the examination as to how the Nazi past of Germany is represented is part of the empirical research. It is for that reason that the results of the metanalysis shall be rendered here, while the analysis of the GFL textbooks shall be addressed in Chapter 3. The Israeli-German Commission for Textbooks Research (Deutsch-Israelische Schulbuchkommission) presented the results of their five-year research in a monography that was published in 2017 (Fuchs, 2017). Their analysis included how the respective other country is represented in schoolbooks for the subjects History, Geography, and Civic Education. An earlier research endeavor of this kind was last conducted in 1985. While in Israel there were 100 schoolbooks to be analyzed, for the German side over 1200 books had to be evaluated, forcing the researchers to select a sample in Israel. This included schoolbooks for the Arab and Druze sector of which for Geography and Civic Education mainly translated versions of the Hebrew are used and for History they have original schoolbooks. The analysis included the education tracks under the Ministry auspice, i.e. the Jewish-secular, Jewishreligious and Arabic sector. Relevant for this paper, the results of the analysis of the Israeli schoolbooks shall be given here, but the findings for the German schoolbooks are also highly informative. Deliberations on how the Israeli image in the textbooks reflects or is able to change common misconceptions of Israeli and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict might be drawn from German schoolbooks and are a field for future research.

2.2 The Holocaust and the Education System in Israel

2.2.2

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History

For the subject of history, the conclusion (Fuchs, 2017) is that Germany is indeed present in more historical contexts apart from the Holocaust. Students are informed about the Middle Ages, modern times and mostly up to the year 1945. There is a deficit in learning about the modern Federal Republic of Germany or the German Democratic Republic when topics like the Cold War or the reunification are hardly touched upon. This can be explained by the chronological organization of the history curricula ending in class 12 by focusing on the history of the state of Israel. When post-Holocaust Germany is mentioned, it is evidently referred to as a “Western Democratic Germany.” The authors of the research attest that this is deliberately done to counter a demonizing image of Germany. Kizel in 2017 also took a closer look at how the representation of Germany changed between 1948 and 2017. He identified three themes that stayed relatively unchanged by different times: Firstly, the Nazis rose to power and the horrors of that regime, war, and the consequences for the Jewish people are presented as an inevitable consequence of the failing of the Weimar Republic. Secondly, the closure of German history ending in 1945 and only finding a few mentions when reparations are paid by the German post-war government to the World Jewish Congress for confiscated Jewish property, forced labor, and prosecution. Thirdly, the Holocaust as catastrophe caused by Germany led to the creation of the state of Israel “that will give security to all Jews and legitimize their right to self-defense” (Kizel, 2017). Kizel (2017) concludes that in Grade Eleven, 70 to 80 percent will have studied totalitarianism, World War II, and the Holocaust. All this seems to lead to the conclusion that while Germany is the origin of the Holocaust, the abrupt ending of teaching its history in 1945 leads subtly to the idea that the Nazi Germany and Germany of today must be ideologically and historically remote from one another.

2.2.3

Geography

According to the schoolbook commission (Fuchs, 2017), in grades 7–9, Germany is present in all schoolbooks that were analyzed and is mentioned in different contexts 33 times. Also, in all the schoolbooks for grades 10–12, Germany can be found in several units, and is mentioned 131 times. It is represented more than

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any other middle or western European country. However, it is mostly mentioned as a part of listings with other countries. A deeper or more complex focus on Germany cannot be found. And yet, Germany is always presented with a positive connotation as technologically, economically and ecologically highly developed. The authors of this commission conclude that the picture of the new, modern Germany is painted in the schoolbooks without the shadows of the past.

2.2.4

Civic Education

Germany is not a central topic in the schoolbooks for Civic Education according to the researchers of the commission (Fuchs, 2017). This applies to all schoolbooks for all the grades (7–12) included in the analysis. When it is mentioned, it only appears as a progressive, western and democratic state without historical or international contextualization. The researchers criticize this overly reduced representation of Germany, for it does not allow critical reflection on German democracy. The Holocaust appears separated from the other representations of Germany and is more connected to the founding of the State of Israel. This once more points toward the establishment of the image of the “other Germany” also here stripped of its history. In conclusion, the image that is painted of Germany in Israeli schoolbooks seems to be a positive one referring to Germany as a western, progressive and economically strong democracy. There seems to be a certain separation between the old and the new Germany and the Holocaust is dealt with as the key event leading to the founding of the State of Israel without contextualizing it more in German history. This separation between the old and new Germany might be intended not to demonize Germany after 1945, but it also bereaves the students of the chance to analyze which events can lead to a failure of democracy, one of the main topics of civic education.

2.3

Cultural Policy and GFL in Israel

German as a language in Israel is still a heatedly-discussed topic and researchers and stakeholders are very careful to go on record if they make themselves available for an interview at all. The Ministry of Education’s officer responsible for German was not at liberty to inform me of concrete numbers of how many students learn German in the Israeli school system and it was exactly for these bureaucratic hindrances that I widened the subject from analyzing German

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taught at Israeli schools to all forms of formal and informal education focusing on persons over the age of 18. German courses are currently offered by a variety of institutions in Israel. It also is an elective in high school and can be part of the final exams as a subject. Notwithstanding the extensive work on the history of German and Israeli relations, almost no research seems to address the question of how GFL fits into a larger picture in Israel. A research gap exists when it comes to the dimension of cultural policy addressing the question if educational policies which relate to the memory of the cultural trauma are shaped only by public opinion (Alexander et al., 2004) or by various education agencies including foreign actors. To understand the special relationship between GFL and Israel, one needs to observe the political dimension. It is a widely-acknowledged example of a special relationship reflected by the frequency of official political interactions, Germany’s role as the second most important supplier of arms to Israel, its support in international organizations and multilateral forums, and also, Israel is Germany’s most important trading partner in the Middle East. The special relationship also manifests on a civil-society level with multiple and diverse co-operations (Oppermann & Hansel, 2018). That said, the political does not exist without the social; moreover, the political can sediment and become the social as proposed by Laclau and Mouffe (Smith, 2012). It is for that reason that in the former chapter, the social, which in this case was the collective memory of the Holocaust, was analyzed while in this chapter, the focus lies on the political. The political here describes the German-Israeli relations which led to decisions on both sides that reverberated similarly in the public. GFL is promoted as a part of a greater cultural-political agenda (Kulturpolitik).11 This promotion might be met with resistance or welcome or both. To promote GFL in other countries is normally described as language politics (Sprachpolitik) a subcategory of cultural policy. German foreign cultural policy operates between concepts of public diplomacy and soft power. Germany’s cultural policy is the third pillar of foreign politics. The organization is decentralized with The German Foreign Office taking orchestrating and financing measures (Lettau & Knoblich, 2017), and, in comparison with other European policies, it is marked by remoteness from the state (Schwärzl, 2007, p. 85). Even though the German constitution (Grundgesetz) defines in Article 32 that relations with foreign states is a federal affair, the federal 11 This paper focuses on the efforts of German cultural policy. Analyzing the differences between German, Austrian and Swiss politics could worthy of a different research endeavor, especially considering the special Swiss role.

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states themselves have cultural sovereignty and it is due to that fact that every state in Germany maintains cultural- and educational exchanges for pupils, students, teachers, scientists and local government officials with Israel. Even on the communal level, foreign relations might exist. Germany currently shares 89 twin cities,12 with Israel which is more than with any other country. Schneider and Gad (2014) describe Germany’s intentions in foreign cultural policy as Germany wanting to “secure German influence in the world and to use education, exchange and dialogue to persuade people to view Germany in a favorable fashion, and adopt our [German] values and ideas” (p. 23). The favorable fashion might make the Holocaust and Nazi history a less appealing topic to talk about when promoting cultural policy, however, that is a necessary evil to face when the aim is to convey a self-critical image of Germany. The only in-depth analysis of German cultural policy in Israel and the image of Germany it conveys was done more than a decade ago by Schwärzl in 2007. And yet, since newer research is missing, sketching the historical findings of that research can shed some light on this complicated relationship. In light of the former-Nazi regime, one of the declared aims of cultural politics has been to convey a balanced, realistic, and self-critical image of Germany (Schwärzl, 2007). It is exactly that realistic and self-critical image, and especially relating to its past, that this research tries to examine in teaching German and about Germany. As for cultural politics, Haeneggli (1994) concluded that because of its history, Germany cannot play an active part and it is rather up to the Israeli side to accept certain conditions. This conclusion stems from the mid-nineties when bilateral relations were “at a low” (Schwärzl, 2007, p. 21). However, still today, German cultural policy in Israel, i.e. German language politics, remains a sensitive issue in German-Israeli relations. Despite the complicatedness of this relationship, it is astonishing how fast relations have been established regardless of setbacks and irritations on both sides (Schwärzl, 2007, p. 26). Investigating the formation of political relations as Schwärzl (2007) analyzed them, they shall be sketched here.13 At the beginning of the new state of Israel, the societal feelings of hate and revenge led to an official boycott of German products and culture. The consulate in Munich was only accredited by the Allies and was ordered not to initiate contact with the German authorities. Also, tourism was strictly limited: Germans 12 https://embassies.gov.il/berlin/Relations/Pages/Staedtepartnerschaften.aspx,

accessed on Jan 18, 2020. 13 I am aware that this recollection of diplomatic German-Israeli relations is a highly condensed and simplified account of over 70 years of history and political relations, and yet it is necessary to inform the reader of the broader influences that might have dictated cultural policy.

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were not allowed to enter Israel and Israeli passports contained a clause that it was invalid for Germany until 1956. Economic relations were established more quickly, resulting from the reparations paid to Jewish organizations. The conditions were established on the grounds by Konrad Adenauer on the evening of the Jewish New Year in 1957 by confessing the crimes in the “name of the German people”14 committed against the Jewish people and the responsibility of moral and material reparations. These reparations were highly detested on both sides. In Israel especially, they were seen as an inacceptable payoff in blood money or Blutgeld. On the German side they were seen as unnecessary (Schwärzl, 2007), which can be seen as a strong indicator for the denazification having failed in Germany. Marwecki (2020) highlights Adenauer’s, agenda as whitewashing the German image worldwide and reminding the German people of the powerful Jews in the United States in 1966 when Adenauer addressed the German public on Television defending the reparations. This can be seen as an employment of an anti-Semitic stereotype which was heavily spread by the Nazi regimes earlier. This research can only touch upon what happened on the German side of history, but as it influenced German foreign policy, it is symbolic of the next few years. Kogon (1947) summarizes in 1947: The so-called denazification in all four sectors has failed. ... If these assumptions are true: One does not need a Hitler to be a Nazi and to have a hundredfold influence on the further developments of the public affairs, and you do not need an army as a militarist waiting for the chance to seize power. (I think the assumption is true.) Hitler is dead, but he lives, the Nazi army is destroyed but the spirit stays (and more than just her spirit). What has then been denazified? (p. 4)

In light of this quote, it seems rather understandable that only 11 percent of the German public was in favor of paying reparations (Schwärzl, 2007). At the same time, another actor was called to the field: Some Arab states15 threatened to cease relations if reparation agreements were made. Schwärzl (2007) explains that due to the personal efforts by the two heads of state, Adenauer and Ben-Gurion, the reparation agreements were established. Adenauer was supported by the opposition, whereas Ben-Gurion faced a deeply-divided Knesset and society, which triggered one of the greatest protests in Israeli history. Lastly, agreements were made resulting in the Luxemburg Agreement of 1952 and the Conference on

14 It is somewhat telling of that time for the Germans to distance themselves from perpetrators which can be seen here also in the anonymizing term: “in the name of the German people” 15 Please see Hünseler (1990) for argumentation of Arab States against reparation agreements.

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Jewish Material Claims against Germany setting payments at about the equivalent of 1.74 billion Euro for the next ten years and an equivalent of 230 billion Euros for victims outside of Israel. Some of the payments were rendered in material goods. In return, these payments also benefited the new German economy, however, German politicians tended to provide only moral argumentation, as elaborated by Schwärzl (2007). For the foreign policy of Germany, the HallsteinDoctrine prevented official diplomatic relations, but other covert channels were found resulting in the supply of goods and also weapons. While on the political stage a game of smoke and mirrors was played regarding the secret supply of weapons for the state of Israel, it is also during that time that societal actors began establishing the first relations and exchanges. During the 1960s, three major events occupied diplomatic relations. First, the Eichmann Trials of 1961; second, the involvement of German scientists in the development of Egyptian weapons between 1962 and 1964; and third, the debate of the statute of limitations of Nazi crimes (Verjährungsdebatte) (Schwärzl, 2007). The Eichmann trials led to a new understanding of victimhood and led to an identification with the victims which had been suppressed or denied earlier (see Section 2.1 on the Holocaust and Israeli identity). Even though Adenauer and Ben-Gurion had not managed to establish official relations, they paved the way for trust and understanding. In 1963, Levi Eshkol took office as Prime Minister and together with his and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Golda Meir, were less prone to maintain good relations with the Germans, now being represented by the chancellor Ludwig Erhard. Israel learned of an Egyptian weapons program in which German scientists were involved and while Germany questioned that involvement and saw no legal basis to prohibit its citizens to work in Egypt, Israel was threatened by the Egyptian regime. Germany could, in the end, avoid further deterioration with financial means recruiting the scientists into its service (Schwärzl, 2007). In 1964, another crisis in the relationship occurred that harmed Germany’s image not only in Israel. The German government of the Federal Republic debated whether murder, including that of the victims of the Holocaust, was prosecutable after 20 years. Only in 1979, the debate came to an end when a law was passed that stated that the crimes of the Holocaust were not subject to the statute of limitations. Official diplomatic relations were only established in 1965. Conflicting interests in Middle Eastern politics with the Hallstein-Doctrine on the one hand and interest in Arabic countries on the other led to an “inevitable escalation” (Weingardt, 2002, p. 399). This culminated when the secret German weapons supplies to Israel became known publicly and the Egyptian regime threatened the Germans to

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acknowledge the GDR (German Democratic Republic). Also, other Arabic countries threatened to cut diplomatic ties with West Germany. The West German government nevertheless decided to establish official diplomatic relations with Israel which led nine Arabic nations to sever diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1975 (Schwärzl, 2007). Mutual embassies were established in Germany and the state of Israel in 1965. Ralf Pauls was appointed the first ambassador to Israel. However, his appointment was met with a great public outcry due to his past as an officer in the Wehrmacht. This can be seen in the following figure from the Israeli National Archive which depicts a protest with signs saying (Figure 2.6): “Hitler’s officer Pauls not wanted in Israel.”

Figure 2.6 Pinn, National Archives, Protest in Tel Aviv

He was somehow able to turn the skepticism of the Israeli public into respect due to his professional and solemn political persona (Hansen, 2002). According to Schwärzl (2007), starting from 1966 with the forming of the Great Coalition in Germany, a new foreign policy strategy was born. The Hallstein Doctrine was abandoned. Schwärzl identifies three major events as influencing policy strategy. First, the Six-Day War; second, the Yom-Kippur war; and following shortly after, the oil crisis in 1973. During the Six-day War, Israel lost

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one of its important allies, France, but the United States stepped in as a protective force. Also, in Germany, Israel was seen as fighting its David-Goliath war against the Arab neighboring countries for its survival. In 1969, the Germans turned towards the Arab countries and tried to balance Middle Eastern politics. This new policy toward Israel, according to Walter Scheel, when speaking of a normal relationship between the two countries was very critically received in Israel and was appeased by symbol-political gestures like Brandt falling on his knees 1970 in Warsaw to honor the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Brandt was also the first chancellor to visit Israel and reiterated that nobody should be exempt from the burden of history and that Israel’s right to exist is never to be questioned (Oppermann & Hansel, 2018). This was especially important since another deadly attack was carried out against Jews in Munich in 1970. Seven people died, among them Holocaust survivors. It is still unclear who committed the act by placing the explosive device in the stairwell of a residential Jewish community center. Some experts blame right-wing extremists, whereas others point their finger at the new antisemitic extreme left (Kistenmacher, 2020). One of the victims, Kistenmacher (2020) quotes, was desperate to leave Munich. And in fact, it was the beginning of two more deadly attacks of Jews committed by German citizens. The Six-Day War led to the dissolution of the pan-Arabic alliance with Israel emerging as a victor. At the same time, Israel was not militarily invulnerable. The PLO was born and was focused on the conflict in the Middle East. The Germans, now part of a greater European foreign policy network (EPZ), learned how dependent Europe was on the oil supplying nations of the Middle East and tried therefore to establish good relations. The assassination of Israeli athletes in 1972 in Munich overshadowed German-Israeli relations once more when Germany failed to protect Israelis in Germany and embarrassed itself by unprofessionalism during and after the hostage-taking and also the release of three terrorists during the hijacking of an airplane, of which Israel heavily disapproved (Schwärzl, 2007). The coming years between 1972 and 1975 were dominated by a Middle Eastern policy that would grant Germany access to oil. Germany became a stronger actor in Europe and tried to improve relations with the Arab countries in the Middle East. Chancellor Schmidt and Foreign Secretary Genscher both emphasized the responsibility to support Israel. However, policy decisions were not made exclusively on that basis. In 1974, the German UN ambassador supported the right for the self-determination of the Palestinians16 for the first time. Until 1977, the 16 The struggle for the term Palestinian is as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. For an overview from the shift from “I am a Palestinian” by Golda Meir (1999) to Barak’s statement (1999) “we are sorry for their suffering” see Kampf (2012).

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relations with Rabin was defined as driven by understanding the subject matter rather than the emotional atmosphere and the wish for closer cooperation (Weingardt, 2002, p. 290). This led to the visa waiver program in 1975 for German nationals that were born after 1928 and the first twin city partnerships between Andernach and Dimona. It also led to further delegation visits between Germany and Israel. Rabin spoke of his visit: “My visit is of a special kind, for I come on the one hand with the burden of the past, but on the other I am attempting to build bridges to the future” (Feldman, 1984, p. 186). In 1977, Menachem Begin, who witnessed the terrors of the Holocaust, was elected into power by heading the right-wing, conservative Likud party (Schwärzl, 2007). Schwärzl describes the relationship as Begin and Schmidt holding antipathies for one another, but other events strained the German-Israeli relationship on the diplomatic stage. The pro-Arabic statements about Middle Eastern policy, the Israel military campaign in Lebanon in 1978 the debate about the limitations statutes of the crimes related to the Holocaust, Israel-critical president Karl Carstens, the handshake of Brandt with Arafat in 1979, the discovery of German chemists in Libya, the annexation of Jerusalem by Israel in 1980 and 1981 and the debate about German weapon supplies to Saudi Arabia which “was a horror scenario for the Israelis that their enemy is to be armed with German weapons, of all things” (Der Spiegel, 1981, para. 44). Weingardt (2002) deems this episode as the most severe crisis in German-Israeli relations. Schmidt failed in 1981 to mention the European Jews when speaking about the crimes committed by the Nazi regime against other countries and then Begin’s reaction when not only publicly pronouncing Schmidt as a former commander of the Wehrmacht,17 but additionally holding the whole German people responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime (Wolffsohn, 1988). The German public responded by siding increasingly with the Palestinians in the conflict and Israel lost even more support when it started its offensive in June 1982 in Lebanon leading to the massacres committed by Christian-Lebanese militias in September of that year without Israeli intervention (Schwärzl, 2007). From 1982, the German chancellor Helmut Kohl continued a balanced middleeastern foreign policy. Trying to decrease a degree of responsibility for Nazi history was met with irritation in Israel. Weapon deals with Saudi Arabia further strained the relationship and Wolffsohn (1988) describes Kohl’s handling of the 17 A picture of Helmut Schmidt in Wehrmacht uniform that is on display in the German army university of Hamburg caused a public debate on Schmidt’s personal involvement and also on extremism in the German armed forces in general. Without going into further detail, the Wehrmacht biography of this very popular German chancellor still leads to more questions than it gives answers.

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German past as plump and inconsiderate. A positive influence on German-Israeli relations came from the visit by German president, Richard von Weizsäcker in 1985. During the visit, he claimed that every German during the Nazi regime was able to witness what happened to the Jewish countrymen. During that era, there were no further deteriorations in Israeli-German relations; moreover, Kohl found more sensitive ways to address the relationship so that from 1987 onwards the relations were stabilized and strengthened (Weingardt, 2002, p. 324). The early 1990s were characterized once again by disturbances in GermanIsraeli political relations. Israel feared Germany could once again fall into its old habits of antisemitism and totalitarianism. The reunification sparked fears of a Germany too strong in the middle of Europe that may foster hostilities toward the Jewish people. During the Gulf War in 1991, Israel was attacked with SCUD rockets by Iraq that contained German hardware. These led to associations of the German industry with technology for mass murder (Schwärzl, 2007). The German Minister of Foreign affairs, Genscher, tried to get more support for Israel during that time but was heavily criticized for his “checkbook policy” in the Israeli media which did not alter German-Israeli relations (Zimmermann, 2015, p. 463). The rising xenophobia and acts of violence committed against foreigners at the beginning of the 1990s in Germany led to a call to boycott Germany by some Israeli ministers, among them the Israeli education minister, Shulamit Aloni. However, head of state Rabin, condemned the attacks, and rejected the calls for the boycott of Germany by his ministers (Pallade, 2005, p. 334 f.). Schwärzl (2007) states that the peace talks of the 1990s enabled the German government to take on a new role as a mediator between the conflicting parties. The Federal Republic was very important for the Israelis as an access point to the European market. The balanced politics continued and became more accepted by the Israeli government. A German government office was established in Jericho and German aid was given to the Palestinian side. Going forward, Germany served as a mediator in the exchange of hostages and the fallen with the Hezbollah. Associative agreements with Europe were also established and Israel was treated almost as an EU member state from then on, becoming a member for the Western and Others Group of the United Nations. Some politicians positively influenced this new high time of German-Israeli relations, i.e. when President Rau spoke in the Knesset in 2000 in the first speech in German; or Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Secretary, received international recognition in the conflict talks (Schwärzl, 2007). Also, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who took office in 1998, stressed the duty toward the security of the state of Israel. Translated from the original German speech: “Israel gets what it needs to uphold its safety—and will get it when it is needed” (Schröder in Asseburg & Busse, 2011).

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Elected in 2005, Merkel defined Israel as matter for the boss (Chefsache) personally, and continuously stated the historical responsibility of Germany for the Holocaust: to fight antisemitism, safeguard Israel’s security, and foster close relations. This is surprising given the fact that Merkel was socialized in East-Germany which never really dealt with the legacy of the Holocaust. She was the first head of the German government to address the Knesset in 2008 in German. Since March 2009 and the conservative, right-wing government led by Netanyahu, there have been a few differences of opinion mainly regarding the Gaza offensives and the settlements (Asseburg & Busse, 2011). A few deals, including the delivery of German submarines, were also not easy negotiations for the German side leading to only minor concessions on the Israeli side. What is clear from these episodes is that German decision-makers, in each particular instance, were unwilling to engage in conventional bargaining with Israel and to risk a breakdown of the negotiations. This would have triggered a major crisis in the GermanIsraeli special relationship to which Germany’s ontological security is indissolubly tied (Oppermann & Hansel, 2018, p. 99).

Zimmermann (2015) says that the “special relationship” must be reassessed and that the premise of the causal relationship of the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel must be called into question if not every act of German policy involving Israel was seen as an act of redemption. Drawing on other historical experiences—Germany living peacefully within Europe with its former archenemies—may open a door for a German Foreign policy that fights anti-Semitism and racism in the whole Middle East and promotes democracy and human rights. This call for the reassessment of German-Israeli relations is an ideal for future efforts, however, as long as security and the existence of Israel is threatened, the fears of falling victims to being “wiped off the map” 18 dominate Israeli policy and hence also determine German-Israeli relations because of memories of when Jews faced systematic annihilation. Even though the cultural-political relations between German and Israel are for neither a matter of national security, it may follow a very similar logic. Germany is bound to a more reserved negotiation strategy and limited assertiveness of its cultural-political agenda in Israel. 18 This quote is attributed to the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel must be “wiped off the map” and that attacks orchestrated by Palestinians would destroy it as reported by the New York Times (2005). The Iranian president never used these exact words, but the press agencies spread this faulty translation, what he said was: “in rezhim-e eshghalgar bayad az safhe-ye ruzgar mahv shaved” which translates as “Dieses Besatzerregime muss von den Seiten der Geschichte (wörtlich: Zeiten) verschwinden.”

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2.3.1

The Big Players in German Cultural Policy

There is a great abundance of players in the field of cultural policy and today it is nearly impossible to maintain a clear overview of who is active in this field. Schubert (2004) identified about 400 actors involved in cultural exchange in Germany and Israel. The exchange takes place in a more coordinated manner once the German Foreign Office is involved as a sponsor. This applies to the Goethe Institute and the DAAD as main actors in promoting German cultural policy. The Goethe Institute was founded in 1979 in Tel Aviv and another was established in Jerusalem in 1985 (Schwärzl, 2007). This alone is remarkable because it is uncommon that two institutes are present especially in a small country like Israel. The library has the highest volume of German literature in the Middle East and includes the private collection of the doctor Walter Hirsch who fled Nazi Germany and donated his literary treasures. The Goethe Institute in Israel has three main duties: cultural programming, language instruction, and providing information about Germany (Schwärzl, 2007). In a representative survey conducted by Borchard and Heyn (2015), 12 percent of the respondents had heard about the work of the Goethe Institute. This can be considered as quite an outreach. Since 1960, the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) administers research grants for Israeli researchers in Germany and vice versa. Israel has been one of the most funded countries in the Middle East (Schwärzl, 2007). In addition to granting long and short-term individual research funds, DAAD also sponsors several positions as academic staff at universities and DAAD centers.19 Since 2007, two centers for German and European studies have been funded. In Haifa, it is the Haifa Center of German and European Studies (HCGES), in the framework of which this dissertation was developed. Students can study modern Germany in all its aspects: culture, politics, and society, while at the same time learning German. A focus lies on the social, legal, economic, and cultural developments since 1945. In Jerusalem, there is a Center for German studies which highlights. the role of Germany in the EU and European integration; Germany’s contribution to global economic, political, scientific, and technological transformations; Germany’s place in the contemporary cultural and artistic scene; the political and statutory constitution of the German Federal Republic (the Basic Law after 1945); the social market-economy 19 A correspondence between the German embassy and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives a good overview of existing funding opportunities for Israelis: https://mfa.gov.il/MFA HEB/GeneralInfo/Documents/info_letter_milgo_Germany2013-1.pdf.

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model; problems and perspectives following the reunification of 1989; and the German language, its past glory and new significance (DAAD Center for German Studies, 2020).

This direct reference to the German language is interesting given the horrors with which the language is associated. History, in general, is not mentioned and the focus lies exclusively on “contemporary processes”. It remains to be seen whether a focus on contemporary Germany as laid out by both DAAD centers can be established without addressing the past. To this effect, this research indicates that when thinking about Germany in Israel, the Holocaust is always present as the elephant in the room. In 2014, the DAAD Information Center Tel Aviv was founded. According to their website they seek to strengthen the relationship between German and Israeli academic bodies and provide information for students and academic staff about studying and research in Germany. Economic considerations are also at play. Germany subsidizes German courses, i.e. by the Goethe Institute, and funds language instruction at Israeli schools, indirectly also by funding various DAAD activities. Stakeholders were very hesitant to talk about concrete numbers of funding. During some informal meetings it was conveyed that too much advertising of Germany and the possibilities to potentially live, study, and work there with financial benefits was at least viewed critically from the Israeli side as too many highly-skilled, young Israelis leaving the country leads to fears of brain drain.

2.3.2

Learners—Figures and Numbers

Several figures about Israeli learners of German in Israel exist in the literature. Statistics have been collected dating back to 2005, when a report indicated 2079 learners (Ammon, 2011, p. 261). Newer numbers from 2015 published by the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, 2015) indicate about 3,000 German language learners (see table below; not including the digital/online learners), which will be addressed at least partly by my analysis of Facebook groups. They also assess an increasing number of German-language learners in the future under constant conditions and considering demographic developments. The Federal Foreign Office researchers faced the same difficulties to get verifiable data about student numbers. They relied on local taskforces that included the German Embassy, the Goethe Institute, and the Central Agency for German Schools (ZFA) and local partners. Also, these

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numbers are to be used with caution since they rely partly on estimations and are dependent on the self-reporting of the relevant institutions sometimes only partly under German authority. Thus the data cannot be validated. The report (Auswärtiges Amt, 2015) states that out of the 2,995 learners in total, 200 learned German in the Israeli school system, 687 at the university level, and 2008 in one of the Goethe Institutes in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. I tried to verify and update the data by contacting all stakeholders that could be identified. Thus, the Ministry of Education was contacted about their learners of German at Israeli schools and the universities were contacted, yet requests were unanswered. 2015 was also the last time data were published on the numbers of Israeli learners of German. A short description of the research project was sent to the respective language departments of universities with a request to forward it to all German learners. This was followed by a kind reminder eight weeks later. The online survey shows that most of the institutions are represented with some answers by language learners. However, given all the benefits of internet surveys, it also shows surveys conducted in classroom settings lead to the highest response-rates. Informal meetings with German and Israeli stakeholders were also held, yet none of the contact persons were willing to go on record to speak about the politically-charged subject of German as a foreign language in Israel. As for the university setting, some interesting observations can be made. Migration and immigration to Germany have reframed negative association with Germany among learners in university language courses. This will be elaborated upon in the empirical section of this paper. In general, the standards of competency in foreign languages at Israeli universities have been lowered since the 1990s, this is reflected also by decrease in the number of language learners (Figure 2.7). One private language school, EasyGerman School in Tel Aviv, answered the inquiry and between 80 and 100 students a year study German at this language school (Personal communication, Fortus, M. Feb 05, 2020). Yediot Aharonot (Hadad, 2016), one of the most widely read newspapers, reported in 2016 that 55 students will sit their final Bagrut exam as an elective subject, in German, making it the eighth-strongest foreign language in Israel after Arabic, a language with a “special” status in Israel, French, Spanish, Amharic, Yiddish, Chinese and Italian. This was the first time that the Israeli Ministry of Education developed the course tasks in-house and did not outsource the testing procedures to the Goethe Institutes. The Israeli press reporting on German as one of the languages of the Bagrut exam shows that it is a subject of interest also for the Israeli public.

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49

Figure 2.7 Auswärtiges Amt (2015) Deutsch als Fremdsprache weltweit. (Datenerhebung 2015)

Based on the numbers in existing literature, it is safe to say that German plays an important role and will most likely do so increasingly in the sphere of foreign language learning in Israel. A look at social media platforms can be very insightful in gaining some deeper understanding of general public discourse and also gives a glimpse at the world of digital and online learning. I examined the Hebrew-speaking Facebook groups and their numbers of members (table data 24/01/2020) (Figure 2.8).

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Hebrew 26% English 43%

Italian 4% Chinese 6% Russian 3%

French 4%

German 14%

Figure 2.8 Hebrew Speakers “Learn on Facebook” Groups

Learning German in Hebrew has been identified as the third largest group with about 2,000 members after English and Hebrew. This supports the assumption that learning the German language is of interest for Israelis as mirrored by their group affiliations on Facebook and therefore plays an important role in the field of foreign language learning in Israel. This could be a very interesting field of research for the future, also including an analysis of topics and sentiments in online chatter. Because of the problem of authorship and authenticity, I focused on “real life” subjects only as social media users can have a digital life of their own. Also, users’ geolocation was not revealed or could not be verified, so they could be in the Hebrew speaking group for learning German but living in Berlin or elsewhere.

2.3.3

GFL and the Holocaust

Adorno established that: That Auschwitz must “not happen again”, is the “premier” demand of education (Adorno, 2013). How GFL is a vehicle for education and sometimes even that of integration and the responsibility that comes with it will be discussed in the following chapter.

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The different types of learners must be somewhat influenced by the textbooks and other materials at hand. It is for that reason that the research will evaluate the state of the art literature on the Holocaust in the GFL classroom as a basis for the analysis of GFL in Israel. This is all the truer for GFL textbooks because they are mostly published in Germany (with a few exceptions for Austria and Switzerland). 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Holocaust still seems to be a taboo for GFL lessons. Thus, to understand the process of how GFL textbooks come to existence, one must understand the German perspective on the Holocaust and how it has become part and taboo of the German collective memory. Duba in 1997 summarizes the legacy of the Holocaust for the Germans: “The legacy of the Hitler regime still haunts us causing many of us Germans to feel frustrated or even angry at anybody who mentions the Holocaust” (Kellermann, 2009, p. 116). This frustration and anger surfaces and nowadays finds even more irritating the ways of some Germans on the political stage (e.g. from the uprising anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany, AFD) acting out anti-Semitism and trivializing the Holocaust. The latter is a sign that anti-Semitism has once more made its way into society and is very common according to the Independent Expert Group of the German Ministry of Interior: “modern facets of anti-Semitism remain as widespread as ever in the general population” (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2017, p. 283) and it is very closely connected to discourses on memory and history (Frie, 2018). These discourses of memory and history may not be excluded when assuming that teaching a language also teaches culture and history. When in view of the study material used in the foreign language classroom, this could play an important role in conveying historical topics (Mering, 2013, p. 189). For the German discourse in which GFL textbooks are published, Ghobeyshi (1997) points to the fact that if one does not want to use Nazi terminology, there is not even a word in the German language for the systematic killing of over 6 million Jewish people including women, children and babies. Ghobeyshi also analyzes how the word Auschwitz, in the same way, is a taboo. Something is so horrible that the word itself limits its discourse and is a substitution for all the evils committed in all the concentration camps. She contests that the strategies of not dealing with this chapter in German history makes it seem impossible at times to talk about it—and that may very well be even on a level of ‘etymology’. This certainly also applies for the GFL classroom. Maybe the time has come to call the Shoah in German what it really is: The murder of Jews (Judenermordung) followed by a robbing the victims (Raubzug) and their descendants. According to Ghobeyshi, three phases of dealing with the past in Germany can be defined. The

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first phase was defined by the rejection and defensive mechanisms after the “Wirtschaftswunder”20 (Economic miracle). Germany recovered relatively fast after the war and an economic upswing led to the second phase, building up of a welfare facade which then was questioned by the protest movements of the 1960s and 70s. Protesters asked why so many people of the old regime were still in positions of power and how this crime against humanity could happen in general with so many bystanders. A whole literary genre was born out of the destinies of the children of the Nazis (Schreier & Heyl, 1997), showing the great reverberations in this dealing with the past had for the new generation born to alleged Nazi parents. The generation of the third phase used the “excuse” of historical and biographical distance (Spies, 1986). Ghobeyshi wants to include a fourth phase that the Shoah and the victims were more present in media discourse in the early 1990s. However, I think the third phase does not necessarily exclude media discourses on historical events and the younger generation denying their concern with this subject matter. Some of these (overlapping) phases found their way into the textbooks of language instruction and at times obviously with some delay. The amount of time it takes for social conceptions to sediment and become textbook knowledge is an interesting field for future research. In October of 1991, the first international conference on GFL and the Holocaust was held in Tel Aviv analyzing American, Francophone-African and Spanish GFL textbooks. The development points to a re-tabooization of topics related to the Holocaust in the last 25 years. The results of the American textbooks for GFL by Strasser (1994) which analyzed all important textbooks since 1985 highlight this surprising regression. In 1994, Strasser concluded that most textbooks at the beginning of the 1990s finally included National Socialism as a topic at all levels. For the francophone-African textbooks, Sadji (1994) even mentions an overrepresentation of the Nazis and the “problems with Jews”.21 Serving as a trigger to explore problems of racism, Sadjii proposed to adapt the material for the needs of the African learners. For the Spanish GFL textbooks, Regales (1994) identifies that the Jewish topic (“Judenthematik”) has mainly been ignored between the eighteenth century and today. One big exception came during the Franco regime,

20 This term is crucial for understanding the zeitgeist of the new German republic. Newer studies show that it was not really an economic miracle helping the German economy to thrive but the reduced overproduction that had been installed by the Nazi regime that had fed the war industry and home front. 21 This is a highly-charged Nazi term, however, it is used in the original article and it highlights how the German language of the 1990s, and also today, struggles to use a more neutral vocabulary toward Jews.

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however, when Jews were presented in typical stereotypes as clever but underhanded members of society. As Hitler rose to power in Germany, the legitimization and glorification of that regime also found its way into the most widely used Spanish textbooks (Regales, 1994). Soon after the war, Germany started producing GFL textbooks which were increasingly used in Spain until today, when German publishers produce almost all GFL textbooks. At the time of the analysis of the Spanish materials, there were several texts referring to the Jews or the Holocaust and even connecting it with the prosecution of the Roma and Sinti (Regales, 1994). Furthermore, Warmbold (1992) reiterates the fact that the Nazi past is not adequately addressed in the GFL textbooks of that time. In 2002, Ghobeyshi reconfirmed the original finding by Koreik (1995) that historical issues are still neglected when teaching German as a foreign language. Looking at the school level, there has been some research on immigrant students and their understanding of the Holocaust, however, in GFL, there is until today very little to no research (Herzner, 2018, p. 185). Two decades later the situation has not really changed. So, what Ghobeyshi noted for teaching German as a foreign language in 2000 is very much true today. The Holocaust and NaziEra are highly underrepresented topics in German language classes. In light of this absence of the Nazi history of Germany, it is especially interesting to see how Israel fits into the landscape of German language instruction here. There is, however, no research on this topic. This can undoubtedly be seen when Ghobeyshi (2002) makes the claim only in a footnote after surveying teachers of GFL worldwide that Israel is the only country where teaching the Holocaust was rejected in unison. Teaching about the Holocaust in GFL lessons is connected to feelings of being overwhelmed and discomforted (p. 49). This is juxtaposed with a great interest in the Holocaust by language learners in GFL lessons in general as Illy has already claimed (1999, p. 171)22 that 66% of learners wanted the topic to be discussed, whereas the teachers had expected less interest. She assessed that the students, however, saw National Socialism as an important aspect of the culture and history of Germany and Austria. For her learners, National Socialism was defined in a broader sense entailing rightwing extremism, fascism, neo-Nazism, and xenophobia among others, which she left undefined. A majority (71%) of her students agree with the statement that one must deal with the subject so something like that will not be repeated. Illy (1999) also surveyed the students in regards to what associations were connected 22 This is rather a small sample, however, given that very little research exists and the research can be classified in line with action research with a suggested sample size of 30–50 (Morse & Field, 1996), the results are relevant. All the percentages were rounded.

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to Nationalism: “What do you think of ‘National Socialism’?”. The learners had the opportunity to answer in a range from “yes, very” to “no, not at all” in regard to 13 items in total. The associations of learners with National Socialism were dominated by war and crime (82% thought of ‘war and senseless destruction’, 77% of ‘concentration camps’, 70% of the ‘murder of Jews and Sinti and Roma’, 67.9% of ‘Terrible German War Crimes’). Also present were associations regarding Hitler (79%) and the ideas of a large and powerful Germany (80%). Illy also asked the students what aspects of National Socialism they were interested in. The most prominent answers questioned how it could happen (70%) and why so many people participated (70%). The other results are also interesting and can be found in the infographic created based on the data from Illy (Figure 2.9).

Figure 2.9 Areas of Interest National Socialism. (Data from Illy (1999))

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How these areas of interest voiced by GFL learners are taken up by the textbooks and other teaching material warrant examination. If not, it seems left to the German teachers to integrate extra materials into their classrooms to cover the topic. What images of German society are conveyed here and how, if at all, is the Holocaust contextualized? This research seeks to also come up with short teaching units on the subject matter to give it additional practical relevance. There is also a corrective function that GFL could and should fulfill worldwide when, in some countries, the views of German history are even more distorted and Hitler becomes a positive historical figure as described by Krishnamurthy (1994) in India: a vegetarian, painter, great strategist, solved many problems such as unemployment and had the great idea of the Autobahn. He had to fail, however as an older participant of the class attests, because he abused the symbol of the Swastika and that led to his downfall. Krishnamurty also asked students why he caused the Jewish people so much suffering: the answer was that it was God’s choice and nobody that believes in God is entitled to ask such questions. The GFL India is not the only example of positive receptions of Hitler. Heimrath (2013) lists several other alarming incidents. In Turkey, Hitler was used as the “real man” figure advertising hair shampoo for men. Bangkok art students decorated their college with banners portraying Hitler next to other famous cartoon figures, later setting the background for their group photo posing with raised hands imitating the Hail Hitler. In Taiwan, Honda ran a campaign showing how environmentally friendly their cars were which translated as: You could be Hitler too! Back then, many Jews were killed by Hitler with gas. Today your exhaust pipe can be a gas weapon, too (Bolten, 2007, p. 57). This is in no way intended to point a finger at these specific countries, it is rather the documented cases in the literature and is likely evident in many more countries around the globe. These examples were given to show what responsibility the GFL lesson can have to convey a different historical narrative that clearly states and explains the anti-Semitic, racist, and inhuman agenda Hitler and the Nazis pursued. In recent years, there is a new need to address anti-Semitism in Germany itself due to the alleged23 imported anti-Semitism by refugees of Arabic origin. Since 2015, beginning with an increase of migrants and refugees, the demand for language and “integration” courses heightened as well. This led to a new discourse on how to teach German and about Germany and this change also needed to be 23 One could also argue that the anti-Semitism has always been there, but it seems easier to address the issue if it can be attributed to a group of foreigners constituting the other than dealing with it per se as a problem that the German society as we had had for years.

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addressed by the publishers of course materials (Herzner, 2018, p. 185). If GFL in Germany wants to serve an integrative agenda, as Herzner argues, it has to be based on the principles of Holocaust Education. First, acknowledging the uniqueness of the Holocaust in human history as the Holocaust is a nexus in the collective memory and demands a responsibility to fight racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. GFL outside of Germany, and especially in Israel, does not have the integrative aim of assimilating foreigners into the German society, and yet, if GFL wants to be more than a commercial asset as part of a cultural policy, then it needs to deal with the Nazi past of Germany, anti-Semitism and racism, too. Especially if the later research shows that the associations of Nazi Germany are omnipresent in the language classroom. Moreover, the history of Nazi Germany also has relevance for recent developments. For Jews travelling to Germany, the “new” anti-Semitism24 can even pose a security risk if they are identifiable as Jews. To deal with the past, the instructor has to rely on course materials, and these seem to be insufficient in dealing with the past. This textbook culture of excluding the guilty past of Germany might also be because such historical atrocities are not the most attractive to language learners (Fornoff, 2015). Herzner (2018) analyzed ten state-of-the-art GFL textbooks with a “teaching about culture” focus which are mainly used in the integration courses for immigrants arriving in Germany. The results here are very interesting when looking at how Jewish life is underrepresented and only focused on the Holocaust. 9 out of 10 course books portray the Jews only as victims—mostly in an anonymized manner. Jewish life is reduced explicitly to the Holocaust. This leaves no room for identification or empathy because as they are portrayed, they were stripped of their citizenship from the beginning—only victims, with no past of life before being carted off and murdered. Jewish people cannot be identified in a single photo, mostly only the perpetrators are depicted or places of commemoration. These images do not allow for empathy, but in the case of portraying the perpetrators as done with Adolf Hitler, this may even lead to identification with them (Herzner, 2018, p. 191). Herzner concludes that a personalized history of the victims must be told. He did not even include the regular GFL textbooks in his analysis for they do not include the topics of the Holocaust or Jewish life implicitly if it all. This paper will try to also give at least an analysis of the GFL textbooks widely used and accessible in Israel in the next chapter.

24 The term “Anti-Semitism” was also used by Gur-Ze’ev and McLaren (2010) to describe “new anti-Semitism with its post-colonialist educational agenda on the other” (p.132).

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In early 2020, a GFL journal focusing on the Holocaust was published by Fornhoff, Ghobeyshi, and Schmenk. They emphasize the need for GFL to dedicate more efforts to the Holocaust and the challenging perspectives of it that arise in Germany. Following this line of argumentation, the perspective of the Holocaust and National Socialism in the context of GFL can be understood not least as a means of reconstructing the culture-related patterns of perception, interpretation, and identity of German society as reflexes of historical memories and thus those political but also perceptions of realities that are in the focus of the cognitive field of teaching about German culture (landeskundliche Erkenntnisarbeit) in a very fundamental sense (Fornoff et al., 2020).

2.3.4

Intermediate Conclusion: Image of Germany in Israel Today

The image of Germany and the Holocaust are inseparably intertwined. Influenced by political events and changing German-Israeli relations, these consequently sediment into social practices positioning Germany in a new different light that is more and more marked by the remoteness to the Holocaust. Next to the collective trauma concerning Germany, there is a strong German legacy in Israel influencing Israeli society ever since the declaration of independence. According to Oz-Salzberger (2014), the first university, the Hebrew University, was strongly influenced by German and German-Jewish scholarly culture, as were institutions of law, civil rights associations, and other non-governmental associations. Oz-Salzberger preliminarily concludes that “Israelis have not ‘normalized’ their relation to Germany; but we may be witnessing a new type of anomaly” (2014, p. 198). The following adapted graphic from Schwärzl (2007, p. 120) gives an overview of the variables influencing the image of Germany in Israel at the individual and societal level, as some of the influences were elaborated upon earlier (Figure 2.10): Figure 2.10 gives an overview and concludes the former chapter. At the top one can find the current influence of the holocaust on Israeli identity, consisting of personal selective perception, integrative and legitimizing function also driven by different actors and political instrumentalization mainly under the umbrella of security. This is taken up by different actors in society, the media and the Israeli education system and new personal experiences with Germany. These again are shaped by the global political relations as depicted on the left with tourism, world

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Figure 2.10 Image of Germany

events and events in Germany. And, in addition, by cultural relations between Germany and Israel which can be found on the right. Emotions still run high on this topic and a representative study from 2015 by Hagemann and Nathanson of 1.000 German and 1.000 Israelis designates anger on the German side25 at being blamed for the Nazi crimes against the Jews; on the Israeli side, the statement “to put the past behind us” is denied by fully 77 percent of the respondents. Hagemann and Nathanson explain this strong emphasis in Israeli society on the persecution of the Jews with the fact that:

25 This feeling of anger is highly problematic. It plays in the hand of right-wing extremists and Holocaust deniers calling for a cultural change toward “Ent-Schuldigung.” (Un-apologizing). This was a campaign on YouTube initiated by Nikolai Nerling, a former teacher that was suspended on the grounds of Holocaust denial, he and his followers no longer want to apologize for what happened in German history but instead wanting to rid Germany of the inherited guilt and more importantly of the responsibility that comes with it. Holocaust education is facing new challenges when antisemitism comes in new disguises.

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Furthermore, in Israel today, modern threats against Israel, such as Iran or the enmity with the Palestinians, are commonly conflated with or at least viewed as a historical continuation of the anti-Semitic persecutions not only of the 19th and 20th centuries, but of earlier periods as well. (p. 24)

The fear of annihilation seems to be a strong reminder of the Holocaust despite the more positive image of Germany in general. The following infographic gives a very condensed overview of how the image of the “Other Germany” gained momentum and what major events brought back the horrors of the Holocaust (Figure 2.11).

Figure 2.11 Old and New Germany—Events

The new approach to Holocaust commemoration started with the Eichmann trial in 1961. The horrors of the Holocaust were no longer a private trauma kept in silence but became public knowledge. At the same time Germany was on trial. In 1965, German and Israeli diplomatic relations were officially established, however, this was not seen as a favorable event by all Israelis and admonishing protests to remember and not to forgive were very common. 1972 was another dark year of Israeli and German relations eleven athletes were murdered in Munich, reminding many Israelis that Germany was not a safe place. Nine years later, different

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pictures from Germany reached the Israeli public; the Eurovision Contest, followed by many Israeli featured Ofra Haza singing about the Israeli people being alive which was almost perceived as a symbolic cultural act. In 1991, German engineering once again gained a bad reputation when Iraqi rockets hit the heart of the country. Again, questions were asked whether Germany really feels responsible for Israeli security. In 2008, Chancellor Merkel gave a speech that directly spoke about the Nazi legacy. She was the first chancellor addressing the Knesset. Her speech received standing ovations and ever since that speech the special relationship between Germany and Israel and Germany’s dedication to the security of Israel have influenced public opinion and have made Merkel very popular among the Israeli people.

3

Methodology

My research applies the existing theoretical frameworks of learning German as a foreign language to the very special case of learning German in Israel, for which only limited, if any, research exists. Having mapped the current academic landscape, two islands of research, also quite geographically remote, are identified. Firstly, teaching German as a language in general and secondly, the literature on the Holocaust and collective trauma, and the interrelations with education and learners’ identities. Both are discussed in the Theoretical Implications chapter. Thus, this empirical research bridges the gap between GFL and Holocaust education by firstly looking upon the present with its representations of German society by the means of textbooks analysis, and secondly by investigating how learning German is bound to the past with its collective trauma of the Holocaust and its relation to the story of the language learner in Israel. Within lies the contribution of this research in combining different existing approaches of GFL and cultural-historical analyses to the special case of learning German in Israel and on focusing on the subjects of language instruction which tend to be easily overlooked when didacticizing such an overwhelming topic as German history including the Holocaust. This may ultimately even allow an outlook into the future of GFL in Israel, in what may be learned from the types of language learners with regards to motivation and addressing current and historical events. The data were collected over 14 months between January 2019 and March 2020. Informants were identified, contacted, and asked for consent to participate. This has proven to be a rather complicated process. Since also the language departments at some of the universities were unable to support this research endeavor and pass on information and communication to the relevant language learners. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_3

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3.1

3

Methodology

Objectives, Justifications and Data Protection

Learning German in Israel is a complex and emotionally-charged undertaking. The methodology addresses the complexity as two subjects are analyzed—the teaching materials and the learners. On the way to gaining knowledgeable insights into the learners’ views on German and Germany, data are collected by two complementary means. An initial questionnaire will provide quantifiable data and identify areas of interest for the subsequent interviews. The analysis of the data employs a mixed-method approach of qualitative and quantitative methods. Given the classroom setting, the interviews occasionally were conducted as group interviews. This can have different effects on the data collected due to suggestion and peer pressure. As for the qualitative research, Glaser and Strauss (1967) suggested the goal of saturation, i.e. adding more subjects would not add to additional insights, this was followed in that interviews were conducted until saturation occurred. The informants could answer the questionnaire as well as the interview questions in the language of their choice. This is beneficial for three reasons. Some experimented with the German language or wanted to show that they could use German words as every possible occasion to use a language with a meaningful purpose enhances language development. Second, in this emotional subject, also considering the biographical component that might be present, the foreign language can create a distance between the learner and the emotionally-charged subject by allowing learners to verbalize sensitivities, even or exactly because the competencies of expression are limited. Greenson (1950) and Javier (1989) have pointed to the fact that individuals that switch between languages may deliberately do so to allow them to distance and detach themselves from painful emotions. Thirdly, the Arab–Israeli population often shows stronger language skills in English than in Hebrew. As German in Israel is a politically and emotionally charged subject, data protection is the highest priority. All data were collected, processed, and stored in compliance with the HmbDSG (Hamburg’s Data Protection Law, 2019) as recommended by the data-protection portal of the universities and colleges of Hamburg. This law regulates data processing for the purpose of scientific research in Section 27 of the HmbDSG and attempts to resolve the tension between freedom of research and informational self-determination through general principles. Data at all stages will be anonymized and pseudonymized (e.g., by removing all personal information that could directly identify an individual). The interviews will be transcribed and then deleted upon completion. The research subjects were informed of the objective of the research and that participation is voluntary,

3.2 GFL Textbooks and the Absence of the Holocaust

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anonymous during the survey, and anonymized during transcription. As for compliance with the research directives by the University of Haifa, permission was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the University of Haifa.

3.2

GFL Textbooks and the Absence of the Holocaust

To understand the most common language instruction books and how the Holocaust and Jewish life is portrayed, the analysis was carried out at the library of the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv. The library is open to the public and features several language textbooks, older and newer publications, and has one of the largest collections of German materials in the Middle East. The Goethe Institute predominantly uses Netzwerk for their beginners’ classes. I screened all the material and included the last ten years, i.e., GFL textbooks published in 2010 or later, in this analysis. It would be noteworthy to analyze older textbooks to trace developments in the depiction of Germany; however, older textbooks are usually removed from the shelves of the library and thereby can no longer be accessed by students. Given the focus on the learners of this research and the limitations of practicability for the analysis, only materials from the last ten years were included.

3.2.1

Design of Analysis

The analysis consists of a total of 26 instruction books by the publishers Klett, Langenscheidt—which merged in 2017 and became Klett-Langenscheidt—Cornelsen and Huebner. It is important to note that four were in the teacher’s library but for the sake of completion and a very recent date of publication, they were included. The analysis focused on basic (levels A1 and A2) and independent users (levels B1 and B2) of GFL, according to the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment) for two reasons. First, they are the most studied levels as represented by the great array of books in stock; and second, once a certain competency is reached, fewer formal instruction books are used during the lesson. Of the 26 textbooks analyzed, 17 were textbooks for basic users and nine were textbooks for independent users. The ways in which the textbooks construct realities of Germany and are then internalized by learners who think about Germany is beyond the scope of this research. However, the textbooks play a role in shaping the image of Germany and how Germany’s history is represented in this educational material, whereas a historical perspective and a wider analysis are worth their own research efforts.

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Methodology

The screening of the materials focused on three areas of interest. Firstly, is the Holocaust mentioned in any way, including pictures or people of interest to that era? Secondly, the aspect of analysis examines whether signs of Jewish life can be identified, be it culturally represented or directly mentioned or portrayed by images. The third aspect included keeping an eye out for anything that strikes the researcher as important and worthy of mention in comparison with the other textbooks.

3.2.2

Results of GFL Textbooks Analysis

The following table provides a quick overview of all textbooks analyzed. GFL textbook

Year

Publisher

Level

Is the Holocaust a topic?

Is Jewish life identifiable?

Accidental findings

Lagune, Kursbuch, 10 DAF

Hueber

A

No

No

Famous musicians

Menschen

16

Hueber

A1.2

No

No

Famous musicians and poets

Netzwerk, Gesamtband

12

Langenscheidt

A1

No

No

Schritte

13

Hueber

A1-1

No

No

Schritte plus

13

Hueber

A1 A2-2

No

No

Only Christmas as holiday

Schritte international

14

Hueber

A1 A2-2

No

No

Only Christmas and St. Nicolaus as holidays

Menschen

17

Hueber

A2

No

No

Only Christmas as holiday

Ideen

14

Hueber

A2-2

The movie “The White Rose” as topic

No

Schritte international 3, Kurs-/Arbeitsbuch

10

Hueber

B2-1

No

No

3.2 GFL Textbooks and the Absence of the Holocaust

65

GFL textbook

Year

Publisher

Level

Is the Holocaust a topic?

Is Jewish life identifiable?

Accidental findings

Schritte international 4, Kurs-/Arbeitsbuch

13

Hueber

A2-2

No

No

DaF leicht

19

Klett

A1-1

No

No

Daf Leicht

18

Klett

A1.2

No

No

Lifeball and birthdays

Studio d

11

Cornelsen

B1

Picture of Nazis marching through the Brandenburg Gate

No

People of color depicted

Schritte 5 Kurs-/Arbeitsbuch

11

Hueber

B1-1

Erich Kastner as enemy of the Nazis

No

People of color depicted

Schritte 6, KursArbeitsbuch

10

Hueber

B1-2

No

No

People of color depicted

Aussichten B1.1

15

Klett

B1-1

No

No

Menschen

19

Hueber

B1

Gabriele Münter and exhibition ban

No

Ziel

13

Hueber

B2-1

No

No

Ziel

13

Hueber

B2-2

Part of Unit on Forgetting: Anne Frank exhibition, and post stamp

No

Schritte 21 International 1 + 2

Hueber

A1

No

No

Schritte 21 International 3 + 4

Hueber

A2

No

No

Schritte 21 International 5 + 6

Hueber

B1

No

No

Timetravel without the 1930s

Christmas, Easter and St. Nicolaus as Holidays

People of color

66

3

Methodology

GFL textbook

Year

Publisher

Level

Is the Holocaust a topic?

Is Jewish life identifiable?

Accidental findings

Netzwerk

12

Langenscheidt

A2.1

No

No

Netzwerk

17

Langenscheidt & Klett

B1.1

No

No

Reunification history starts without intro in 1945

Berliner Platz Neu

nd

Langenscheidt

A1

No

No

People of color

Berliner Platz Neu

10

Langenscheidt

A2

Berthold Brecht, fleeing from the Nazis

No

mosques, People of color

Reference to the Holocaust can only be found in four of the 26 analyzed textbooks. In these cases, the material touches upon the biographies of Berthold Brecht, Erich Kästner, Gabriele Münter, and Anne Frank very briefly. Erich Kästner is portrayed as the hated writer by the Nazis, writing against war, racism, and fascism, and he was subject to writing bans but did not flee into exile like many of the other writers. Gabriele Münter is mentioned as an artist included in painting bans. The biography of Anne Frank is mentioned in a unit “In favor of remembering” and the exhibition about her fills at least a whole page, the learners are also invited to reflect on memorial sites and their intentions of what to commemorate. Only in two cases the words National Socialist are listed in the word list at the end of the book, and the Nazis are only shown in one instance marching the Brandenburg Gate (Figure 3.1). The history between 1933 and 1945 is briefly sketched in this case and translated as follows: 1933 the Nazis seized power and marched through the Brandenburg Gate. During World War Two, starting on September 1, 1939, the Brandenburg Gate was heavily damaged. 1945 Germany was defeated, liberated, and divided.

3.2 GFL Textbooks and the Absence of the Holocaust

Figure 3.1 Example of History in GFL-Textbook Studio Funk et al. (2012)

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Methodology

Worth noting, in this case, is the term liberated (“befreit”) which appears in context with the formerly mentioned Nazis that seized power. This fits all too well in line with the historical narrative that prefers to forget that Hitler was elected and supported by a vast majority of Germans. Kocka (1986) cites Heinrich Böll in order illuminate one of the greatest paradoxes of German history of being defeated and liberated which: You will always recognize the Germans whether they define the 8th of May as the day of defeat or liberation. We were waiting for our enemies—the Americans in the Rhineland as our liberators. (Böll in Kocka 1986, p. 46). The whole narrative is of Nazis who occupied Germany, and Germany that was finally liberated from this “occupation”. This also promotes the Thought Styles of Germany that have less associations of the Holocaust and where the focus lies on “Another” Germany. The term Jew cannot be found on the word lists at the end of books in any of the analyzed GFL textbooks. Jewish life is not identifiable in any way, neither as depicted in images nor represented in topics relating to holidays. The holidays celebrated in Germany are exclusively Christmas, St. Nicolaus, and Easter. The history of Germany seems to start in 1945 and even when a historic overview is given, the years from 1930–1945 have vanished into oblivion. Another interesting accidental finding is that only six of the 26 textbooks depict people of color, the rest show images of stereotypical Germans. The families portrayed are stereotypical as well, no same-sex couples or even single mothers or fathers have found their way into these textbooks. It seems like the textbooks are conveying a conservative image of Germany, where “otherness” and even minorities are underrepresented to say the least. With the complete absence of Jewish life. In conclusion, this analysis supports the argument by Herzner (2018) that these topics relating to the Holocaust and Jewish life are absent from the mainstream GFL textbooks of the last ten years. This is all the more surprising considering almost all textbooks touched upon these dark chapters of German history during the 1990s. This re-tabooization of the Holocaust and absence of Jewish life in GFL is problematic for two reasons: If the Holocaust disappears from the textbooks, the often-distorted views of Hitler and the Nazi regime abroad cannot be challenged; further, it once again bans Jewish life from the German reality. Jewish life has always been part of German society, textbooks need to reflect that if they want to paint an accurate picture of Germany.

3.3 The Questionnaires

3.3

69

The Questionnaires

Given the explorative nature of the subject matter at hand and the number of language learners in Israel, a quantitative method alone would present intrinsic shortcomings in capturing thoughts and feelings. However, I added a quantitative element by not only relying on interviews but making the first contact by questionnaires distributed in several ways. I administered the questionnaires with a short introduction of myself. Two teachers of the advanced groups even utilized this questionnaire as part of an impetus to speak (Sprechanlass) and reflect on their language biography during the language class. As requested, I gave the introduction in German. Secondly, I asked a teacher to distribute the questionnaires. Thirdly, the online survey conducted included a link with the same questions as the questionnaire with the addition of asking where the students learn German, and a request to identify the framework they are using. In all three options, the learner was asked to indicate interest in a follow-up, one-on-one interview. As with the entirety of the project, all data were anonymized. In order to map out preliminary thought patterns, I addressed the question of which German lessons were relevant and requested, and to open areas of interest, the students were asked to fill out a questionnaire containing the questions below (p. 109), which could be answered in English, German or Hebrew. There are two reasons for the acceptance of all three languages here. From research into the use of language and therapy, sometimes even discussing certain subjects in, for instance, a highly emotionalized setting in a second language can give the subject a feeling of safe distance. As Sieger, a bilingual psychotherapist, states about language in therapy: “I realized that language had been an essential mechanism to control and disconnect from these emotions” (Sieger, 2016). For other settings, the questionnaire is seen as an integral self-reflective tool within the framework of the language lesson. Therefore, some learners, even at the beginner level, tried to answer questions in German. An online survey was also conducted; however, this was done only in Hebrew to ensure that only Israeli learners were taking part. There are German studies centers in which also quite an extensive number of international students are enrolled. These students mostly do not speak Hebrew at the level that they would fill out an online questionnaire. The link to the online survey was sent to all the universities, the two Goethe Institutes, and language schools that had an email address as contact information. It was also spread among student communities on Facebook. The digital age allows for a snowball effect which undeniably allows for greater outreach, and yet the return rate cannot be determined. The control question of how much the Holocaust influences the current view on Germany was

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Methodology

dropped and only the more general question of how Germany’s history influences the view of the online questionnaire. This is because online surveys have to be even more condensed to allow a better user experience; and secondly, the paper version of the questionnaire had shown that Israelis immediately answer the question in regard to the Holocaust and WWII (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Trilingual Questionnaire 1

Age/Alter/‫גיל‬: gender/Geschlecht/‫מ‬ ?‫גדר‬ Where are you learning? Wo lernen Sie Deutsch? ?‫ת‬/‫ה לומד‬/‫איפה את‬ Mother Tongue/Muttersprache/ ‫שפת‬ ‫אם‬ Years of learning German/Wie viele Jahre Deutschunterricht?

2

‫שנים של לימודי השפה הגרמנית‬ What associations do you have when you think of Germany? Was verbinden Sie mit Deutschland?

3

?‫ת על גרמניה‬/‫ה חושב‬/‫אילו אסוציאציות מתעוררות בך כשאת‬ What made you learn German? Warum lernen Sie Deutsch?

4

?‫מה גרם לך ללמוד גרמנית‬ To what extent does German history play a role in today's view of Germany? Inwiefern spielt die deutsche Geschichte eine Rolle, wenn man heute auf Deutschland blickt? ?‫כיום‬

‫של גרמניה‬

‫תדמיתה‬

‫על‬

‫משפיעה‬

‫הגרמנית‬

‫ההיסטוריה‬

‫כמה‬

5

‫עד‬

What role does the German history play for the German language lesson? Please give examples.

6

Welche Rolle spielt die Geschichte im Deutschunterricht? Gib Beispiele. /‫שיעורי גרמנית שלך ? תן‬/‫עד כמה משפיעה ההיסטוריה הגרמנית על הלימודי שפה‬ :‫תני דוגמאות‬

What role does the Holocaust play for today's view of Germany?

7

Welche Rolle spielt der Holocaust für die Sicht auf Deutschland. ?‫עד כמה משפיעה השואה על תדמיתה של גרמניה כיום‬

(continued)

3.3 The Questionnaires

71

Table 3.1 (continued) Would you like to learn more about the history of Germany or current events? Please name a topic.

8

Möchten Sie mehr über die Geschichte Deutschlands oder aktuelle Ereignisse lernen? Nennen Sie bitte ein Thema. ‫י‬/‫האם אתה רוצה ללמוד עוד על ההיסטוריה אירועים עכשוויים של גרמניה? אנא תן‬ .‫נושא‬ In your opinion, in what ways does the Holocaust influence Israeli society and culture? (Please refer to different areas of influence)

9

Wie beeinflusst der Holocaust die israelische Kultur und Gesellschaft? (Nennen Sie verschiedene Bereiche) ?

‫הישראלית‬

‫והתרבות‬

‫החברה‬

‫על‬

‫משפיע‬

‫השואה‬

‫איך‬

,‫לדעתך‬

In your opinion, does the Holocaust have any impact on you personally or on your family? If this is the case, please describe. Ihrer Meinung nach, inwiefern beeinflusst der Holocaust Sie persönlich? ‫משפחתך? אם‬ .‫י‬/‫תאר‬

‫על‬

‫אישית או‬ ‫בבקשה‬

‫עליך‬

‫השואה משפיעה‬ ,‫המקרה‬

‫לדעתך‬

10

‫האם‬ ‫זה‬

The first question is to identify the basic categories about the person: age, mother tongue, gender and where they learn German. The second question aims to identify their progress in learning German. The third question invites the learner to give free text answers of their associations with Germany. The fourth question asks for the motivation of the learners to learn German. The fifth question asks the learner about which effect the German history plays on the image of Germany which is then closer defined in the sixth question. Question seven allows the learner to elaborate on the effects the Holocaust plays for the view on Germany. Question 8 invites the learner to identify areas of interest what they would like to study in their German lessons. Question nine and ten try to further investigate the view of the learners of the influence the Holocaust has on Israeli society in general and then on their personal biography. All data from the questionnaires in their paper—and online form were then compiled in a table to prepare for analysis. The results shall be given by first analyzing each question and then identifying thinking styles or thought patterns to form learner types.

72

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3.4

Methodology

The Interviews

Kvale defines the qualitative research interview as “an interview, whose purpose is to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena” (1983, p. 174). Underlying this research lies the assumption that the face-to-face interview is still the first choice because “the synchronous communication of time and place in a face to face interview also has the advantage that the interviewer has a lot of possibilities to create a good interview ambiance” (Opdenakker, 2006, p. 4), which is crucial given the subject matter at hand. All interviews were followed by thanking the interviewee for cooperating and asking him or her if there are further remarks that might be of relevance to the topic or the interview process. This can lead to an emergence of a whole new area of information (Wengraf, 2001) for an interview is an encounter in the real world or as Schostack describes: The interview is not a tool but an encounter, an event amongst other events in the lives of people. Each encounter involves negotiations, calculations, interpretations. If we knew what others were going to say, presumably we would not bother to ask them (2006, p. 15).

This is an important assumption with practical as well as ethical implications. The interviewee remains at all times and also during the analysis the true owner of his or her words. I, as a researcher of German origin be it obvious or suggested, must, therefore, admit that my presence in the room has an influence on how the interviewee produces his or her image of Germany and as a German language learner. This influence has been defined as the interviewer effect and has been proven by quantitative surveys and yet has not been addressed enough in qualitative research (Misoch, 2015). Schostak (2016) assesses as for the analysis that no innocent reading of interviews and transcripts can be done. He stresses the responsibility that the interviews places on the researcher “with the decisions and the accounts through which forms of actions are articulated” and names several exit strategies and emancipations which I employ writing about the interviews: 1. Disturb apparent foundational statements by revealing the manner in which they were constructed; 2. Identify the difference in apparently homogeneous structures, entities and categories; 3. Exploit ambiguities, puns, contingent associations of all kinds; 4. Examine the rhetorical structures through which social action is organized;

3.5 Analysis of Participants

73

5. Identify alternative quasi-transcendentals, quasi-stabilities that evoke or incite or act as lures for a desire to engage in action for alternative futures; 6. Open spaces for dialogue about alternative views that mutually challenge and mutually mobilize desire for an alternative. (Schostak, 2016, p. 178) Each interview had a duration between ten to twenty minutes. The interviews were also done partly as group interviews (three out of ten), thus, providing the basis for a broader collection sample. However, group interviews differ greatly in the dynamic between participants. Peer pressure and social acceptance of answers combined with other group dynamics that are not always obvious to the researcher entering the setting are factors that cannot be openly identified. The focused group interview as it emerged at the beginning of World War Two, was developed in order to understand the effects of radio programs to promote army morale (Nuttavuthisit, 2019). It is an interview form with several participants arranged in a set of round table discussions, with the researcher as a moderator. The interview is also recorded and transcribed, and the data are added to the subjects’ answers from the questionnaire that was filled out beforehand and compiled in a table. Nuttavuthisit (2019) elaborates on how this type of interview has also gained popularity among marketing practitioners to gain insights quickly and costeffectively. In this setting, the group members co-construct meaning, while at the same time convergence and divergence of opinions may emerge. In certain situations, as indicated by research from China, informants may feel safer in a group interview than by being interviewed alone (Eckhardt, 2004).

3.5

Analysis of Participants

On a preliminary note and when addressing the issue of validity, one must critically self-reflect on the highly individual process of interview data analysis. As Alshenqeeti concludes: In sum, there is no fixed method of analyzing interview data in the literature, yet, researchers should cautiously deal with it as it affects not only the quality of an interview, but the validity, reliability of the whole research (2014, p. 41).

Certain types of German language learners and how and which conceptions of Germany are “reconciled” and negotiated into their Israeli identity and how then ‘German’ is done in the classroom and translated into categorized types are then

74

3

Methodology

analyzed. Qualitative research always faces the problem of generalizability. In this sense, this research seeks “the typical material” as a strategy for generalization based on theoretical presumptions and former analyses, for then these types are generalizable for a greater part of the population (Mayring, 2003). Therefore, this is a two-step process of analysis. First, every question will be analyzed separately; and in a second step, these answers will be categorized and associated with a certain Thought Style where possible.

3.6

Type Building

My theoretical framework for type-formation (Typenbildung) is based on the model of critical psychology and subject-oriented empirical research as laid out in Weber’s tradition by Geffers. The insights from psychological research are useful for the analysis of the language learners for several reasons. Firstly, a reality of Germany is individually constructed and the researcher or therapist is trying to understand the worldview of the subjects to come up with types to better understand the individual’s reality. However, the subject is not the human per se, but the world as it is experienced by each individual and their practical attempt to deal with their existence. The world is understood as a historically-concrete, social constellation of social conditions that provides and limits the individuals with a range of options to act upon. Here, a transfer is then established between the options of the subjects (subjektiver Möglichkeitsraum) and the typically-expected options (typischer Möglichkeitsraum) (p. 349). Geffers (2008, p. 361) postulates steps for the analysis to construct types which shall be employed in this subject-oriented empirical research (Figure 3.2). 1. Establishment of relevant comparative dimensions. By contrasting individual cases against these dimensions, relations can be established. Some of these dimensions are defined from the start and others are defined within the process. One dimension could be age, i.e., generation after the Holocaust, level of German, gender, mother tongue. 2. Grouping of cases and analysis of regularity. The individual cases are grouped by using organizational methods allowing the researcher to see all the possibilities. Geffers suggested to use a board with several fields, thanks to progress in computing, I was able to fit all the data in a quite extensive table, with search, filter, and extract functions. In addition, content analysis tools were used, allowing analysis of word frequency and word cloud formation.

3.7 Reintroducing Ludwik Fleck’s Thought Styles

75

3. Analysis of sense, context, and type building. Mere grouping by regularity and frequency, however, does not suffice. The understandability of the individual action must be a criterion. 4. Characterization of the constructed types. Steps one through four are repeated until no further findings can be established. Then the types shall be characterized along the dimensions.

Figure 3.2 Process Empirical Type Building based on Kelle & Kluge (1999)

This type-building is complemented by introducing the constructivist approach to philosophy, medicine and history by Ludwik Fleck and his definition of Thought Styles from 1935.

3.7

Reintroducing Ludwik Fleck’s Thought Styles

In 2017, Sabisch called for the application of Fleck’s theory as a method of the empirical social sciences and especially for the expert interviews that she analyzed with respect to contemporary doctors’ approaches or Though Styles to gender and gender identity. In this research, the Thought Styles shall be identified. First, Fleck’s theory shall be introduced poignantly in regard to his definition of Thought Style and secondly how they can inform us about the image of Germany that the learners internalized. Fleck was not a trained historian or sociologist, but

76

3

Methodology

a doctor who studied at Lwow University. He claimed that medicine is especially prone to fall to “pseudo-logical explanations” (Fleck in Löwy, 1990, p. 217) because the more complex the phenomena the easier it is to fall prey to “a law verifiable in the short term” (Fleck in Löwy, 1990, p. 217). Drawing on his findings in medicine and unmasking the socially-constructed nature of medical facts, he came to the conclusion that “all scientific knowledge is socially constructed” (Löwy, 1990, p. 217). Fleck’s work, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, was originally published in 1935 but only rediscovered in the 1960s. Fleck himself was a victim of the Holocaust, persecuted as a Jewish serologist, he had to serve in Buchenwald and help the Nazis develop vaccinations without being given credit until 1947. But the Nazis did not only obliterate his career, Fleck’s two sisters, Dr. Henryka Fleck-Silber and Antonia Fleck-Kessler, along with their families were murdered in Poland by the Nazis (Fleck, 1979). Fleck’s theories were likely influenced by the Polish School with thinkers like Chalubinski, Bieganski, Bernacki, Kramsztyk. (Löwy, 1990, p. 2017). Another line of thinking suggests that he was influenced by gestalt psychology with which he was probably familiarized during his stay in Vienna, and the sociological thinkers like Durkheim, Mannheim, Weber, Levy-Bruhl and Jerusalem (Löwy, 1990). Some critics say that Fleck does not go beyond a concept of the cultural conditioning of thought as laid out already by Weber and Mannheim, but what is novel is that he applies his concept to scientific cognition (Fleck, 1979). In 1957, Fleck was finally able to relocate to Israel and published 130 papers in Polish, German, Hebrew, French, and Russian. In his long-hidden 1935 work, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, he develops the concept of Thought Style grounded on the assumption that the individual is not able to think outside of the collective. He bases this idea on Grumplowicz, who stated about the individual: The greatest error of individualistic psychology is the assumption that a person thinks His mind is structured, and necessarily so, under the influence of this ever-present social environment, and he cannot think in any other way (Grumplowicz in Fleck, 1979, p. 46 f.).

He then identifies the individual’s role in the collective as “the individual within the collective is never, or hardly ever, conscious of the prevailing Thought Style, which almost always exerts an absolutely compulsive force upon his thinking and with which it is not possible to be at variance” (Fleck, 1979, p. 40).

3.8 Pretest Empirical Research

77

This Thought Style1 is then constructed into a thought collective. And without going into too much detail, the concepts of thought collective and Thought Style are not distinct and lack a clear differentiation in Fleck’s work. For the sake of clarity, only Thought Style will be used as the “carrier” (Fleck, 1979, p. 39) for the historical development of any field of thought. Fleck also clearly identifies history and culture here in the formation of the Thought Style. To illustrate this, Fleck himself gives the example of how the disease is seen during different times and by different Thought Styles. Disease as punishment is part of the collective notion that society is religious. Disease caused by the stars was a Thought Style of the astrological fraternity. Disease as curable by metals is the Thought Style of practitioners believing in the mercury idea—this was a common treatment option, yet one of the biggest hoaxes in medical history for Syphilis until the 1950s (O’Shea, 1990). In this thesis, I shall endeavor to identify Thought Styles about Germany. These Thought Styles represent the historicallybound truths about Germany, it is the knowledge that is accepted and incorporated into the self. The concept is marked by a certain fuzziness, however I am using it in the sense that was laid out by Fleck himself, and this is based on the argumentation that the these Thought Styles go hand in hand with language or rather the institutions need the corsets of the language as described by Schiewe (2011).

3.8

Pretest Empirical Research

The questionnaire underwent several rounds of editing and improvements and was then employed in a pretest in a school under German auspice in the Palestinian Territories. The subject pool of the pretest diverged greatly from the subject pool of the original, however, this can be neglected since the insights gained mainly focused on eligibility and the adequateness of the questions. Due to bureaucratic difficulties, I had trouble receiving a permit from the Ministry of Education to interview students at Israeli schools, and the questionnaire was sent to a German at a German school outside of the territory of Israel (the Palestinian Authority). The teacher administered the questionnaire in January 2018 to the students and also provided helpful insights for the improvement of the questionnaire itself.

1 Kuhn’s

much more known “paradigms” are highly reminiscent of Fleck’s Thought Styles, and in accordance with “paradigm” is a periphrastic construction derived from and effectively translating Fleck’s Denkstil/Denkkollektiv, this was not because Kuhn did not understand Fleck’s terminology “but because only such a paraphrase was, per impossibile, possible.” (Babich, 2013, p. 81).

78

3

Methodology

The seven students were between 16 and 18 years old and boys and girls filled out the questionnaires. However, it should be pointed out once more that this research cannot provide, nor does it strive to render a comparative analysis of teaching German in Israel and the “Territories.” This would require an in-depth analysis of a completely different setting. Despite all differences, nevertheless, students have been exposed to GFL for over five years and learn according to the German directives leading up to the final exams, Abitur, granting access to universities. A short outlook on the topic can provide some explorative insights in the analysis of learning about German society and history in a completely different setting that is interesting for future research; particularly, considering the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and potential for Germany mediating the conflict. Also, on a level of language instruction; potentially even as a “Third Space” following Bhabha and Rutherford (2006).

3.8.1

Pretest Results

As a result of the pretest, three questions were added to the questionnaire to assess more deeply the impact and influence of the Holocaust on personal biographies and society. The students were asked to voice their opinion about which subjects should be covered in the German lessons. Two categories relevant to the analysis of types became apparent. The first one is strong associations with Germany. For these Arab speakers, the strongest association is freedom, which is a very interesting association with Germany. This word cloud is based on the frequency of the word as mentioned by the students (Figure 3.3). This expression of freedom can be understood when the second category is employed: motivation. In this category, the aspect most mentioned was the desire to study in Germany as the motivating factor (5 out of 7). Learning German as opening doors and allowing better chances came second. Other mentions also render some stereotypes of German culture ranging from political figures, e.g., Frank Walter Steinmeier, parts of cultural life: punctuality, beer, cold weather and unfriendly people, to even mentions of refugees. In the future analysis of the larger data pool, it will then be assessed if certain stereotypes on German society are markers for certain types. In this pretest, the results were inconclusive. However, the economic pull factor of Germany will most likely also be an element of the types of language learners.

3.8 Pretest Empirical Research

79

Figure 3.3 Word Cloud Associations Pretest

Two groups of students could be identified: history-aware and historyunaware learners. The latter having been exposed to materials on German history mentioning poetry, short stories, and literary eras. Other students even mentioned Exillyrik by Brecht and Lasker-Schüler. See one student’s answer below (Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.4 Original handwritten answer- Student pretest

However, no interpretation becomes apparent in the view on German society today, and no opinion is stated in the view on German society related to the Holocaust. This is a good example of how a personal interview question could shine more light on how meaning is assigned to materials studied in the classroom. The history-aware student mentions that language cannot be understood without an understanding of history, culture, and traditions; see below (Figure 3.5).

80

3

Methodology

Figure 3.5 Original handwritten answer—Student pretest

She assigns meaning to the role of the Holocaust by pointing out Germans’ sensitivity when speaking about the Holocaust and support for the Jewish people. Another example of the history-aware learner, even when expressing a certain ambiguity in interpretation, is given here (Figure 3.6).

Figure 3.6 Original handwritten answer—Student pretest

3.8 Pretest Empirical Research

81

The Holocaust is described as a mistake and mistakes should be learned from but it is in the past and does not play a role according to the learner. With Freud’s (1991) theory of negation, this result could be pointing exactly in the opposite direction more in line with German students’ alienation from the topic. In conclusion, as result of the pretest, the preliminary types of history-aware and history-unaware learners can be developed further on this basis.

4

Results

In total, the data corpus contains 105 questionnaires that were answered by people ages 18 or older. The results were condensed in one extensive table sheet and different analytical tools were employed. The analysis will be a mixed-method approach, allowing in some areas to give quantitative results; while for other questions, discourse and content analysis will be employed. For all statistics given, it is almost impossible to determine the margin of error because the population number must be estimated itself. Given an estimated population of about 4000 learners of German in Israel, a sample size of 105, and a confidence level of 95 percent, the margin of error would be around 8 percent. “Language and sociocultural identity are components of each other, dependable and inseparable. Language both reflects and affects an individual’s worldview, considering as a sort of road map to how one understands, interprets, thinks about, and expresses one’s point of view of the world” (Mohammadi & Izadpanah, 2019, p. 66). This also applies to the diverse backgrounds of the learners and their respective primary language. However, given the small sample size, this research does not strive to identify differences but rather similarities in all learners’ Thought Styles about learning German and Germany. Each question will be analyzed separately to type-build in the second step of the analysis. Learners are referred to by learner plus letter.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_4

83

84

4

4.1

Results

About the Institutions

The participants (n = 105) were asked where they learn German. This does not mean that they do not also learn with smartphone applications or study themselves with autodidactic materials. Instead, this takes into account where they study momentarily or their location at the time they were surveyed. Universities are the institutions where learners most frequented with 73 percent of all learners surveyed, followed by the Goethe Institute with 9 percent. This could partly be because the subjects studied at the universities where surveyed on-site, whereas the Goethe Institutes were surveyed via an online questionnaire. However, it does seem to reflect a reality that a lot of learners learn at one of the two institutions when at the same time, the number of learners at the Goethe Institutes must be much higher than represented by this survey. This survey in conclusion more adequately reflects where students were accessible for the survey rather than the respective locations of learners at the different institutions (Figure 4.1).

77

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

4

9

8 2

0

Figure 4.1 Where the Participants Study GFL

1

3

1

4.2 About the Participants

85

4.2

About the Participants

4.2.1

Gender and Age

Gender and gender norms may play a role in what GFL learners think about Germany. In particular, gender bias in the sciences has gained attention and this research opts for reducing gender bias. Therefore, during all interviews in group settings in line with the implications by Sallee and Harris (2011), a mixed-gender research team was used. However, this research’s explorative nature does not render different results, this is due to the small sample size and the overrepresentation of male participants. 68 of 105 subjects identified as male and 34 identified as female, three subjects did not disclose their gender identity (Figure 4.2).

Female

Male

68

36

Total

2

4

70 to 90

1

4

60 to 69

1

1

50 to 59

2

3

40 to 49 30 to 39

1

3

18 to 29

23

59

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Figure 4.2 Gender and Age

Figure 4.1 showed an overrepresentation of the male population in the subject pool. This can be explained because a number of participants were from one university that is mainly associated with engineering degrees. Despite a great increase in the number of female students within the last ten years, the quota of female students in all programs (undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. programs)

86

4

Results

stands at 36.6 percent (Tal, 2018, p. 3). The sample reflects the overall number of female participants. The highest number of participants could be found between the ages of 18–29. This can also be explained by the access to informants recruited via the universities contacted. It shows, however, that learning German is a subject that not only people generationally closer to the Holocaust are interested in, but also younger people—students in the process of obtaining their Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. The average age of all learners in the subject pool was 30 years old.

4.2.2

Time Studying German

The subjects (n = 105) were asked how long they had studied German. The following table shows the prominence of the different periods for learning German. It is safe to say that greater time actively studying German leads to greater language skills; however, the level of German was not assessed during this study. The aim of this statistical asset was to find out where language learners stood in their language acquisition process. 57 percent of all learners were in the beginning stage of their language acquisition process studying German for one year or less. The biggest group of learners (36%) had studied German for about half a year. This accumulation can be explained by the design of the study, which is that the survey was conducted in beginners’ classes at the university level. These students were learning German for one semester, which equals half a year. The most interesting finding is that the language skills of the subjects in this survey are predominantly at the beginner’s level. This finding is also confirmed by the analysis of the selection of books that were found at the library of the Goethe Institute, containing the biggest array of books at the beginner level. Also, at the university, approximately only half of the group moves up from the first to the second German course (Figure 4.3).

4.2 About the Participants

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Up to & incl. years

Number of learners

time undisclosed over 10 years 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

10

20

30

40

Figure 4.3 Time Span Learning German

4.2.3

Ethnicities

The question about the first language, L1 or commonly known as mother tongue, allows in a sensitive way to ask the students (n = 105) about their cultural identity. The Israeli society is diverse and the majority of learners surveyed identify mainly as Israeli Jews or Arabs.1 The Israeli school system mirrors this by offering among others two different branches in the Israeli education system, in which students, or rather their parents, are obliged to choose between a secular Jewish track with Hebrew as the dominant language or an Arabic track where Arabic is the main instruction language. Other options are available as well (Figure 4.4).

1 Even

the terminology here is politically charged whether the Arabs identify as Israeli Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel. Therefore “Arabs” shall be used.

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5

Others

8

Russian Hebrew, Russian

5

Hebrew, English

4 68

Hebrew English

3

Arabic, Hebrew

2 10

Arabic 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Figure 4.4 First Language of Learners

This analysis allows for conclusions regarding the ethnical background of the subjects. Most subjects (65%) identify as speaking Hebrew as their mother tongue. This group is then followed by the group of Russian speakers at 12 percent and then Arabic speakers with 11 percent. It is highly interesting some learners here listed two or even three languages as their mother tongue. This would be an interesting avenue for further research since it would allow deeper insights of how exclusive Arabic and Hebrew are to one another. It may be coincidental but Hebrew plus Russian or English were more common than mentions of Arabic and Hebrew together. This rather comes as a surprise since all the students that were interviewed at least at the university level have native or near-native competencies in Hebrew, yet their mother tongue seems to be reserved almost exclusively for Arabic. This research includes subjects from all three major population groups as represented by the three languages Hebrew, Russian and Arabic. Unfortunately, the level of secularism respective religiosity could not be included in the survey. This could be another interesting opportunity for study: to what degree religiosity and the image of Germany correlate. Due to the relatively small subject pool,

4.3 Individual Associations with Germany

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an analysis regarding the ethnic background and how it impacted the different questions will not be undertaken. This could be addressed in future research investigating the degree to which the learners’ ethnical backgrounds are bound to their learning of GFL. This research is aware of different ethnical identities, however, by describing the differences rather than the similarities, ethnic divisions are accentuated rather than minimized. The identities that normally are so readily assigned, Arab and Jewish Israeli, should be met with skepticism as to what intent the complex identity is reduced to the ethnical background alone and by permeating that difference and possible exclusion: “Their multiple, complex senses of self and connections to others are reduced to a single characteristic” (Aitken, 2007, p. 267). Aitken (2007) analyzed the role of international peacebuilding initiatives and interventions, and on how international agencies falsely assumed stable ethnic identities that were politicized per se and unintentionally institutionalized and perpetuated ethnic division and conflict. His analysis mainly applies to armed conflict but given the complex nature of Israel’s existence, it shares some of the same characteristics of a post-conflict society.

4.3

Individual Associations with Germany

This question is aimed to identify the major stereotypes ranging among the learners (n = 105). This is addressed first by a sentiment analysis and is second a topic analysis.

4.3.1

Sentiment Analysis of Associations

A first analysis aims to identify whether the associations were mixed, rather than positive or negative. Sentiment analysis is also quite a new field when it comes to the analysis of expressions also on social media, and many marketing and media companies try to program algorithms that can understand sentiments of short phrases or one-word answers. For this analysis, however, a classic manual approach was used. I coded the answers according to three categories. When the Holocaust, war, Nazism, or similar terms were mentioned, the answer was classified as mixed, no matter how many other positive mentions were found. If only positive associations were found, or if this was even clearly stated as some answers were, the category rather positive was applied. The same logic was applied for the rather negative answers when answers showed more negative

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associations or explicitly stated negative feelings. A representative example of a mixed answer: Learner O states: “Germany is connected for me with Holocaust and racism, great classical music, Goethe, Heine, and concentration camps.” These associations are mixed in their nature, great classical music exists right next to associations with concentration camps. An example of a rather positive answer is this one by learner AC: “Big city, modern, technology, culture”. An example of a rather negative association with Germany is this one by learner CU: “Not good ones. About 70% of my mother’s extended family (from Emden, Germany) were murdered”.

rather positive

50

rather negative

5

mixed

49

Figure 4.5 Sentiment Analysis of Associations

The sentiment analysis (Figure 4.5) shows 49 percent of the learners have rather positive associations with Germany, shortly followed by 47 percent of learners that have mixed associations about Germany. Only five percent of learners have rather negative associations with Germany. This is in line with the research that was presented in the chapters containing the theoretical implications, concluding

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with a rather positive image among Israelis of Germany and in this example, the language learners. However, these mixed feelings toward Germany are interesting because they often combine biographical factors that shall be discussed later.

4.3.2

Word and Topic Analysis of Associations

725 words of 105 learners were analyzed. The most common word was Holocaust with 26 occurrences, which equals about four percent of all words given as an answer. This can be considered an extremely high frequency given that the very common conjunction “and” was the second most common term. This shows that the Holocaust is very present in the association of the learners. In the next step of the analysis, the words or phrases were tagged with an umbrella term. The top ten findings of umbrella terms (297 tag words were assigned) are and given with their percentages (Figure 4.6):

Tag

Occurrences

Percent

Holocaust

25

8

Nature

22

7

Culture

19

6

Beer, war, people

15

5

History

14

4

Berlin

10

3

Family

9

3

Industry, Nazism

8

2

Music

7

2

Food, diversity, cold

6

2

Figure 4.6 Top 10 Tag list

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This list of most common terms shows that the Holocaust predominates the answers also when umbrella categories are formed, which are referred to as tags. According to Vaidya and Harinarayana (2019): “tags can also be a useful dataset for content categorization and knowledge organization” (2019, p. 30). This also shows that these categories are based upon the individual learners’ terms and not on any vocabulary or reference system. This is followed by the tag “nature,” which includes all terms involving nature and its beauty that were mentioned by many learners. The next term is “culture,” which at times entails the addition of rich or beautiful that was assigned by many of the learners. German beer seems to be famous among the learners of German and it is the fourth most common tag, along with War and World War II, which are topics that are associated with Germany quite strongly. The next common tag was “people”. The German people is a strong association for the learner which could be explained by personal contact with German people that manifests here. The next most common category was “history,” and this is not summarized under “Holocaust” or “war”, because some learners deliberately made the distinction. It might have been used as a euphemism for Holocaust or Nazism, too; however, this cannot be established. The city of Berlin had 3 percent of all occurrences in tag frequency, pointing toward a strong association with the capital of Germany for Israeli learners. The next most common tag is “family,” which includes family currently residing in Germany, or family members that used to live there sometime during the family history of the learner. The next two terms are “industry” associated sometimes but not exclusively with the car industry in Germany, and the term “Nazism.” The next tag, “music” encompasses famous classical music as well as more current music genres such as techno, that seem to be associated with Germany. About 2 percent of all occurrences of words relate to German food, including “currywurst,” “German diversity,” “cold weather,” and “cold people.” The following word cloud contains all words and phrases that were given by the learners. The word size and position reflect their frequency (Figure 4.7).

4.4 Motivation

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Figure 4.7 Word Cloud Associations Germany

4.4

Motivation

The analysis of this category shall employ the type-building process as described by Kelle and Kluge (1999) and was elaborated upon in the chapter methodology. The process consists of four steps. The first step is to establish dimensions of comparison. This dimension is the learner’s motivation which has been addressed by the open question inquiring what motivated the person to learn German in the questionnaire. The answers then were grouped, and empirical regularities have been established. The answers belong to one of the following categories: Linguistic Interest The learner is interested in German as a language, either as another foreign language, the sound of German or German cultural influences such as soccer or music. Contact with German or Germany that Sparked Interest The learner has been in contact with Germans or Germany; this can either be Germans that live in Israel, student exchanges, or touristic visits to Germany.

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Family Background Connected to Germany The learner has a family background that is connected to Germany or Switzerland. Living in Germany for Future Jobs or Studies The learner’s motivation is connected to the desire to potentially live in Germany for some time for work or studies. After analyzing the content of the grouped answers, the types will be characterized. These types are not discreet categories and a learner can belong to one or all types simultaneously or mixed types. Thus, multiple answers were possible and there was no hierarchization of the answers.

4.4.1

Linguistic-Type

The linguistic learner is learning German mainly because the language itself is of interest. There might also be a fun factor involved and considerations regarding the personal schedule, e.g., if the class fits in well with other classes. Another observation was made in this respect when language learners spoke about learning German during school time. The schedule became a crucial element to make the classes more or less appealing. For example, late classes were seen as disadvantageous. Acquiring another language is seen as an asset by the learners of GFL and when it is offered by the institution, the learner feels that this is an opportunity to seize. There might be an interest in the cultural life of Germany, which can range from music to soccer to literature or architecture. The language itself is perceived as fascinating, ranging from answers attesting to German being a beautiful language with interesting grammar to revoking traumas of the Holocaust. The language may be of interest because of language instruction applications. The similarities with Yiddish also drive some learners to learn German as something familiar and alien at the same time. The academic and economic influence of Germany serves as another reason, and the language is seen as an entrance ticket to academic and economic circles.

4.4.2

Contact-Type

The motivation of this learner stems from former contact with Germans or Germany. This contact was established as part of work relations, student exchanges or touristic trips to Germany or meeting Germans somewhere else. Some friendships

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remain and still serve as a motivation to learn the language. For some learners, their partners are German and this serves as a motivation to learn the language. The contact with Germans seems to be an important formative experience for some of the learners. Many learners made references to their trips, exchanges to Germany—school as well as university level, and touristic travel. This might even be a turning point in their language biography; however, this would need further research. One interviewee gave an interesting account of how she met the family of her Neo-Nazi friend who seemingly had changed. She even gave the account in very advanced German. Learner K: Also ich habe einen Freund. Der war früher ein Neonazi. Ganz, ganz Neonazi. Also mit alles Mögliche. Hakenkreuz. Alles. Und ich habe ihn kennengelernt durch die Musik im Internet. Okay. Und wir haben angefangen zu sprechen. Zu reden. Zu schreiben. Und er hat Israel gehört. Und er sagte: “Was? Wirklich? Du bist Jüdin? Du bist die erste Jüdin, das ich /” Ja. Und heute. Also das war schon vor sieben, acht Jahren. Heute er ist mit einem großen, ähm, Davidstern Läuft in München. Und er kämpft für Israel (.) im Netz. Also im Internet. Er ist wirklich ein / Er sagt es, er hat die Bedeutung gefunden. Also vielleicht ist es ein bisschen große Wörter. Aber wirklich. Er hat geändert. (.) Sich geändert. Und gibt es viele Leute wie ihn. (..) Er hat nix über Israel gehört. Und bis heute er sagt: “Ja, meine Mutter ist Antisemit. Weil sie (..) / Ihre Familie war so. Und sie war als Kind so. Und sie bleibt so. Aber du. Sie mag dich so sehr.” Und sie ist immer noch Antisemit. Für sie die Juden sind schuldig. Bis heute. Okay. Also das ist schwierig. Aber ich trenne. // Ja. Ich mag (..) seine Mutter. Sie ist wirklich sehr, sehr nett. Aber ich verstehe das. Sie war / Sie lebte in dieser Epoche. Und diese Zeiten, die waren sehr, sehr schlimm. Und (..) das war so in ihrer Zeit.

The citation translated into English: So I have a friend. He used to be a neo-Nazi. Very, very neo-Nazi. So with everything. Swastika. Everything. And I got to know him through music on the Internet. OK. And we started talking. To talk. To write. And he heard Israel. And he said, “What? Really? You are a Jew? You are the first Jew that I /” Yes. And today. So that was seven or eight years ago. Today he’s with a big, um, Star of David Running around in Munich. And he fights for Israel (.) On the net. So on the Internet. He really is a / He says it, he has found the meaning. So maybe it’s a little big words. But really. He has changed. (.) Has changed. And there are a lot of people like him. (..) He didn’t hear anything about Israel. And to this day he says: “Yes, my mother is anti-Semite. Because she (..) / Your family was like that. And she was like that as a child. And she stays that way. But you. She likes you so much.” And she is still anti-Semite. For them the Jews are guilty. Til today. OK. So that’s difficult. But I separate. // Yes. I

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like (..) his mother. She is really, really nice. But I understand that. She was / she lived in this era. And those times were very, very bad. And (..) that was in their time.

To summarize the encounter, the subject, an Israeli Jew meets a neo-Nazi German, they intensify communication and contact, build a relationship and he changes his antisemitic prejudices to a pro-Israeli attitude that he showcases online and offline. His mother, however, still antisemitic, holds positive feelings toward the Israeli friend and the subject explains and even understands where those prejudices come from and recognizes the views coming from difficult times and zeitgeist. This episode is remarkable in two ways, Neo-Nazis can change when they eventually meet and get to know the “enemy.” The Israeli girl, instead of reciprocating the hateful feelings toward the mother of her friend, says she “separates,” and that she indeed likes the mother. This very individual example of dealing with prejudice can be enlightening when further considering a study by Birtel and Crisp (2012) in which psychotherapeutic principles of exposure therapy were adapted to tackle prejudice. Three experiments were undertaken to target a range of stigmatized groups (adults with schizophrenia, gay men, and British Muslims) to test the hypothesis that imagining a positive encounter with a member of a stigmatized group would be more likely to promote positive perceptions when there had been an imagined negative encounter beforehand. “Compared with purely positive interventions, interventions in which a single negative encounter was imagined just prior to imagining a positive encounter resulted in significantly reduced prejudice” (2012, p. 1379). Unfortunately, Antisemitism is still very present in Germany and even rising, it is a form of prejudice that, arguably, can be effectively countered if people are exposed to the stigmatized group. Student exchanges to Israel work exactly under this presumption, so the benefit is twofold, Israelis meet descendants of the former perpetrators and Germans encounter the Jewish life that has been almost totally eradicated in Germany. Being confronted is certainly only one aspect of countering prejudices, a lot of German Jews were neighbors, classmates and colleagues at the beginning of the Third Reich before being murdered, and still the prejudices developed. Schmidt (2019) states that for Germany the multi-cultural society has led to the decrease of expression of prejudices but they are ever present in hidden reactions or secret agendas. Unmasking the prejudices and thematizing them in an appropriate manner, e.g. speaking about them on a meta level (Schmidt, 2019), is key to reduce stereotypes that are then translated into discriminatory practices.

4.4 Motivation

4.4.3

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Back to the Roots-Type

This learner has or had family in Germany. A biographical connection to the Holocaust is not always explicitly established when the grandparents spoke German, but in a lot of cases, this can be implicitly deduced and also cross-checked with their answers on the biographical influence of the Holocaust. Some also have family currently living in Germany and the learner wants to improve communication. Some learners have German citizenship due to re-naturalization, these learners, and others with a family history in Germany, now see this as an opportunity to go back to their roots. Learner CH writes: “Trying to know my family’s roots better.” Or Learner CO who says: “There is a desire to find out details that the parents did not tell. Following that a journey to the roots.”

4.4.4

Life in Germany-Type

For this learner type German is a door opener to living, working, or studying in Germany temporarily sometime in the future. As learner AN states: “I have a dream to work in Germany for a while.” For some, this is connected to feelings of a better future and to the rather positive image regarding German diversity and tolerance in general. This is also connected to the associations that Germany has a strong industrial sector within Europe, and this appears attractive to some learners offering career opportunities. Learner BM says: “I am considering doing my MA in Germany and maybe moving to live there, because nowadays Germany is more modern than Israel”. German as a door opener seems in particular appealing to Arabic speaking Israelis, further research is necessary in this field but learner N, identifying as a professor at one of the universities also mentioned the large proportion of Israelis or Arab origin in German classes: “They want to study Germany, they want to, to … [inaudible] looking for a job at Germany [sic].” Overview of Learner Types The following figure gives an overview of how the data reflects the learner types (n = 129) (Figure 4.8).

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21

Life in Germany-Type

29

Back to the roots-Type

25

Contact-Type

54

Linguistic-Type

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Figure 4.8 Learner Types of Motivation

Most subjects that were interviewed as part of this research belong to the linguistic type (42%). This type learns German because the language and the sound of it spark motivation. This linguistic fascination might stem from the underlying reverberations of the Holocaust even though it is not clearly uttered by the learner. The second most frequent answers can be classified as belonging to the back to the roots-type (22%). They see German as related to their family history and learning the language makes them feel connected to some aspect of history in their identities. The next biggest group is the learners of the Contact-Type (19%). These learners have had contact with Germans or Germany, and this has triggered an interest in the language. This shows what influence exchange programs can have on the learner’s biography. 16 percent of all learners can be attributed to life in Germany-type. These learners learn German to be able to live, work, or study in Germany at some time in their lives. The motivation to learn German is of crucial interest when trying to promote a language abroad. The data have shown that the rather positive image is also reflected here sparking interest and motivation on the levels of linguistics, revisiting former contacts with Germans and Germany, or to go back to one’s roots by learning German. Finally, German can also be seen as a door opener to a promising future that was once and is still associated with so much pain.

4.5 History’s Influence on the Current View on Germany

4.5

99

History’s Influence on the Current View on Germany

Half the answers (53 of 105) directly relate the history of Germany to the Holocaust. It is therefore the first association for many Israeli learners of GFL when asked about the history of Germany. The second step of analysis of this question was done by forming categories which were applied when influence was attested without defining it further. The category of changed associations related mainly from bad Nazi Germany to a now humane and democratic nation (Figure 4.9).

Do not know 5% Positive 12%

Changed 34%

Negative 19%

Undefined 30%

Figure 4.9 Influence of German History on the Current View on Germany

Most learners (34%) gave answers that point toward the changing view on German history. The history of Germany that is associated with Hitler, the Holocaust, and world wars has changed. There is still an influence that is stronger for some people than others, so some learners described how other people reacted when they discussed their studies of GFL. 30 percent of all learners gave answers that

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said German history still plays an important role but did not define that influence further. 19 percent of all answers point toward a negative influence of German history and its view of Germany today. These answers were always connected to the topic revolving around or mentioning the Holocaust. Learner CA writes: “There is still an association for a Nazi state for some people.” However, this in relation to the changing image of Germany that over onethird describes in their answers, and furthermore, the new Germany can even serve as an example in the world, which is taken up by a rather positive outlook on Germany’s history and its effects today. Learner O states: “The German history has a big influence on my thinking about Germany, but I have a lot of respect for the German effort to understanding and remembering the past. I have a lot of respect to Angela Merker [sic].” The data show how Germany’s history is seen after a great change in Israel and the learners are even aware of that change in attitude. Germany and its history remain strongly associated with the Holocaust, however, there is a strong differentiation of now and then even with the shadow of the Holocaust still lingering.

4.6

Role of the Holocaust on Today’s View of Germany: Two Conflicting Thought Styles

The image of Germany seems to be in constant negotiation in the learners’ identities between the different Thought Styles, on the hand connecting Germany very strongly to the Holocaust and on the other hand a new and other Germany. This surfaces especially when the learners somehow need to position themselves if there was something especially German in the Holocaust or if it could happen anywhere, as Learner R allows some insight into that negotiation process: I actually connect culturally to Germany, in my opinion the whole Holocaust and its impact on Germany – I do understand where it comes from and ultimately the things that people did are things that can happen everywhere, the fact it just happened on their land is something else already. In my opinion in today’s map Germany is very liberal indeed, the opposite of what it used to be…

The “opposite of what it used to be” is a highly interesting phrase here, this would mean that the modern German is free from antisemitic tendencies; a utopia is grounded upon the resolution of the conflicting Thought Styles in favor of the New Germany.

4.6 Role of the Holocaust on Today’s View of Germany …

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Learner BY writes: “In perspective, 75 years is very little, the mere fact that we still have survivors alive today creates a great dissonance between generations. The younger ones don’t feel as strongly as the older generations.” As the analysis and theoretical implications have revealed, the image of Germany has changed tremendously within the last 70 years. The following analysis shall take a closer look at Germany and the Holocaust equation that seems to be engraved in the cultural memory and is dealt with differently by different generations and different ethnicities in the diverse society of Israel, however, it is always present. In the next section, the answers of the learners are analyzed to assess whether their statements follow one of these Thought Styles, defined in line with Fleck, “the readiness for directed perception with corresponding mental and objective assimilation of what has been so perceived” (Sady, 2019, p. 3). These types are not exclusive and may even coexist.

4.6.1

Germany is the Holocaust—Thought Style

Learner BM writes: “I think it’s impossible for Jewish people to think about Germany and not associate it with the Holocaust.” And learner BN of Arab Israeli origin writes: “There is still always the association with the Holocaust in the background.” Germany cannot be thought of without the Holocaust and the learner articulate that there are “associations”—in in the background, yet always present and can be made to reappear by certain trigger words that seem closely associated with the Holocaust, e.g. Achtung, Raus, Schnell. The leaners articulate that speaking German causes troubles in their families. As this biographical note shows, learner CI states: “A lot, my mother does not want me to speak German when I am at home.” Although some students may be confronted with the Holocaust and with rejection within their families, it does not stop them to learn the language of the former perpetrators. The dark past of Germany and the present of their family’s life in Israel become intertwined when speaking German. To face the horrors of the collective past might have a motivating effect for some Israelis and is worthy of further investigation. Learner CU, who lost over 70 percent of his mother’s extended family states: “For me, Germany will never be ‘another country’. Germany seems more normal today than most countries, but I feel the bad things are still burning on a small fire beneath the surface”. This ambivalence to learning German, despite the “bad things burning on the backburner” are sign that a part of

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this Thought Style is also the category that the Holocaust plays a role in the view of Germany today. Recent and past antisemitic and xenophobic events seem to support this Thought Style as a Germany that remains hostile to Jews and Jewish life or Jews that remain invisible. It is for this reason that this thought-style can present with a menacing notion of new or recurring Antisemitism in Germany.

4.6.2 ‘Another’ Germany—Thought Style The positive image of Germany is closely connected to this Thought Style that seems to solely represent a different or another Germany. The collective trauma of the Holocaust is almost exclusively assigned to the old Germany. Perpetrators and their biographies seem to be no longer a part of German society. Strong distinction between old and modern and past and present Germany is made. Learner BH states: “In my mind it [the Holocaust] plays too big of a role. It’s hard for me to shed light on this subject, because I don’t understand why people still hold a grudge after Germany repented its acts.” This Thought Style follows the idea that Germany is a different country now that it repented and it was redeemed. The modern Germans are perceived as different from their (Nazi) ancestors. Interesting in the learner’s statement is the personification of Germany as a country as an entity. In line with this Thought Style, some learners expressed that the Holocaust does not play a role in how Germany is perceived today. The ambivalence in the Thought Styles is the fault line in the learner’s identity and the language learning biography. Learner S highlights this in his account of how his family reacted when he started learning German and eventually made a trip to Germany: “…and even more extreme for me, my grandmother told me before I flew to Germany it would break her heart if I put my leg on German land, even more if I learned their language and she is very angry at me that I am now learning, and also my parents are very angry at me so … Yes, it is complicated.” These learners’ grandparents are Holocaust survivors. The Thought Style Germany is the Holocaust is the predominant Thought Style the subject grew up with and is painfully confronted with. And yet he has also internalized a second Thought Style, Germany is another country. Not completely but enough for him and other learners of German to decide to learn the language that is so closely connected to so much suffering in the family. The conflicting Thought Styles are also reflected when visualized as a figure (Figure 4.10). Half of the students’ (n = 95) claimed the Holocaust plays

4.6 Role of the Holocaust on Today’s View of Germany …

Germany is holocaust

plays a role

Another Germany

does not play role

26

0%

20%

14

40%

4

103

antisemitism

41

60%

10

80%

100%

Figure 4.10 Role of Holocaust in the View of Germany in General

less of a role mainly because they follow the Germany as Another Country Thought Style. However, 46 percent of the answers are in line with the Thought Style that Germany is the Holocaust or rather that the Holocaust plays a decisive role. About four percent of the learners even voice concern about a new Antisemitism rising in Germany. There are slightly higher numbers for the Germany as Another Country Thought Style, these informants are learning the language strongly associated with the horrors of the Holocaust. It is rather legitimate that both Thought Styles coexist and that the Holocaust becomes the elephant in the GFL classroom; always present, yet, unable to stop Israelis from learning German but all the more allowing new signifying processes. This may also constitute a coming of age and emancipation process by some younger learners that form their own identity in regard to their family history, i.e. the third and fourth generation taking a new stand.

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Role of German History in German Language Classes

The next question aimed to assess the role German history plays in language classes. Some learners gave more general answers on how history influences the image of Germany in relation to the learner’s biography. Learner S writes: “Sometimes a certain ‘Anti’ arises in me regarding the language and from the culture. And suddenly I am reminded of the history and on those days it is harder for me to learn the language.” This quote highlights the ambivalence that is present in the Israeli GFL classroom. German is not only the language but also the culture and history. The learner speaks about feelings of antagonisms somedays and how that influences his abilities to learn the language. This analysis will examine how many learners, or rather their answers (n = 99), relate this question directly to the Holocaust and the size of influence by categorizing the answers by the role attributed. Learner AD says: “Very little. Every time the teachers says schnell - immediately reminds of the Holocaust. In a similar way, Arbeit echoes Arbeit macht frei.” This soundbite underscores some of the difficulties in analysis. The learner defines the role as very little but at the same time, every time the teacher uses highly frequent terms, i.e., Arbeit connotations of the Holocaust occur. This ambivalence is addressed when the Thought Styles about Germany are defined. However, following psychoanalytical premises, the second part of the sentence or following sentence, mostly introduced by conjunctions can be assumed as more accurate. About a third (26%) of all learners relate this question directly to the influence of the Holocaust on their language studies Figure (4.11). Though the question was rather aimed to identify whether history plays a role during the lesson itself, this finding reveals that the Holocaust here is also a strong association. For about 40 percent of the learners, history plays no role at all, and for another 30 percent, history plays a small role. Only a few learners deem history to play a large role during the language lessons. These results are consistent with the textbook analysis, i.e., that history is a topic that is very rarely addressed during GFL lessons.

4.8 Learners’ Interest in History and Current Events

little

medium

big

105

holocaust

39

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Figure 4.11 Influence of History on GFL Lessons

4.8

Learners’ Interest in History and Current Events

Learner AM writes: “I would like to learn what the young people think about climate change, homosexuality, socialism, EU, corruption of politicians and Israel-Germany relations.” This learner is interested in a wide array of current topics. It is interesting how detailed this list is and how the areas of interest are bound to diversity, politics, and the very topic of this paper. Zooming back out and taking a more general approach to the data, the learners’ answers (n = 116) were divided into the following nine categories. These serve in a similar fashion as tag words. They are not intended to be discreet categories but rather to reflect the cross-sectional learners’ areas of interest, thus, one answer can belong to two tags or umbrella topics (Figures 4.12 and 4.13).

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Tag/Topic

Description

Pre-WWII

Learners describe historical areas of interest in relation to WW2, their knowledge focuses on that period without knowing what led up to it, revolutions of 19th century were also mentioned, as well as German tribes and medieval times.

Social sciences Learners mentioned the economy, industry, politics, agriculture, ecology, EU, Brexit, pension crisis Culture

Philosophy, film, daily life, music, football, cultural events, different regions of Germany

Immigration

An influx of foreigners, foreign cultures in Germany, Turks, diversity, differences, growth of the Muslim population

Current

This is a miscellaneous category, collecting all mentions that mirrored the question of current events, without defining it further

Relations

Germany and its relations with other countries, Israel, what young people think about the Holocaust

GDR

Relations East and West, fall of Berlin wall, life in GDR

History

Historical topic undefined

Figure 4.12 Nine topics with descriptions

The strongest topics were current affairs (not defined in more detail) (22%); immigration (18%); and topics that can be attributed to the social sciences (15%). About 5 percent of the learners were interested in topics associated with the GDR, Berlin, and reunification. About 8 percent of all learners express disinterest in history or current affairs. Their disinterest remains rather general, negating the question with a simple “no” or “not interested”. When asked if he would like to learn more about the history or current events of Germany, Learner BH responds: “To be brutally honnest [sic] I don’t. This [sic] are subjects I find to be boring and heavy-weight.”

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not interested

social sciences

culture

immigration

relations

pre WW2

history

GDR

9

0%

17

20%

10

21

40%

25

60%

8

80%

9

current

11

6

100%

Figure 4.13 Areas of Interest Israeli GFL Learners

Sometimes the term ‘history’ or ‘current events’ seems to remind the learners of school subjects. Some learners are even apologetic, which points toward a response that students believe that learning about history and current events is socially desirable. Teaching history in a foreign language can lead to new perspectives on history and the subject matter, and therein lies a chance for GFL to make history and current events appealing in a new context.

4.9

Individual Assessment of How the Holocaust Influences Israeli Society and Culture

Learners were asked how they believed the Holocaust influences Israeli society and culture. Learner CW gives quite an interesting overview: “A good friend once told me, ‘We are entering an education system, immersed in the boiling oil of the Holocaust, and after we finish, we have a hollow envelope through which we look only at the world’”

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The central idea here is that there is no Israeli culture and society without looking back on the Holocaust, and there is no Israeli politics without looking back on the Holocaust, and I doubt there is a Jewish culture without another look at the Holocaust. Also, as the literary review confirmed, Israeli society and culture is intertwined with the collective memory of the Holocaust. As the learner describes it, entering “boiling oil”—metaphorically acquiring the collective painful experience if it had not been conveyed within the family before—and then being enveloped in a worldview which interprets all experiences through the looking glass of the Holocaust. The learner even contests that there is no Jewish identity and politics without involving this focalization. She continues to analyze how the Holocaust is instrumentalized by the political left and right: “For example, the right uses the Holocaust to argue that we must not give up power, while the left looks at it as ‘what we should learn from the phenomenon of racism’” (Learner CW ). Both constitute their own agenda around the collective trauma of the Holocaust, it is highly noteworthy that this young woman is so aware of the collective identity and its bearings on her everyday life. Learner BP paints a similar picture and diagnoses the Israeli society with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: “The Israeli society is PTSD, Holocaust and the constant fear extinction playing a key role in our political life.” It is not entirely clear what definition and effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder the learner had in mind, nonetheless, this is partly supported by recent research on the transmission by Kidron et al. (2019), who conclude: This study of Jewish-Israeli wounded remembering suggests that the Holocaust model of transmitted trauma becomes a dominant mode of self-understanding when it is consonant with cultural worldviews and political contexts and functions to recover the past in ways that serve local values and interests. (2019, p. 8)

This highlights the point of how the Holocaust is commemorated and is closely connected to theories of resilience and successfully dealing with trauma individually and as a society. The self-reflectiveness of those learners is most likely beneficial for this process. For the next step of the analysis, the answers (n = 130) of the learners were categorized depending on whether the influence of the Holocaust on Israeli society was identifiable and to what extent it played a role. Three additional categories were formed. First, whether there were mechanisms in the role of the Holocaust identified. These are related to how the memory of the Holocaust is kept alive. This includes mentions of movies, education, and politicians. Secondly, diverse

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effects of the Holocaust on Israeli society were mentioned by the learners, ranging from a unifying effect to a legitimizing factor to a Zionistic agenda, and also frowned upon Israelis that move to Germany. Thirdly, some learners described the role of the Holocaust to serve somewhat as warning and that Israel is a safe haven in opposition to the world where existential fear is present. This is in line with what some learners identified as related to post-traumatic stress disorders of a nation. However, a warning was also mentioned revolving around ideas of what can happen when human behavior is unchecked and that the Holocaust is a message to all humanity.

not

small

medium

big

decreasing

mechanisms

warning

diverse

60 52 50

40

28

30 22 20 11

11

10 4 0

2

0

Figure 4.14 Influence of Holocaust on Israeli Society

For 40 percent of the learners, the Holocaust plays a big role in Israeli society (Figure 4.14). Only three percent of the learners believe that the Holocaust plays no role today. A small influence was not described by the learners at all. About 1.5 percent define the influence of as medium. 8.5 percent of all learners describe the influence of the Holocaust as decreasing in Israeli society. This is explained by some as a generational change. The mechanisms of the Holocaust are mentioned by 8.5 percent of learners. 22 percent of the learners describe the diverse influence of the Holocaust on Israeli society. 17 percent of all learners consider the role of the Holocaust as a warning. The data support the findings of

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the existing literature, i.e., the Holocaust plays a ubiquitous role within the Israeli society or as Dani Kranz phrased it: central in the construction of the new Jew in Israel (Kranz, 2017). Another Holocaust, no matter how real the danger, is to be avoided and that is the highest priority. Politics and writing unity revolve around the notions of never again. Learner BL writes: “It’s in our veins. I think there is not a single day when I don’t hear a Holocaust reference in a chat among friends, family, or in the media.” So, one might ask the question, why also in the GFL classroom? First, of all, Israel is undoubtedly special in the respect that the Holocaust is present per se. However, this paper addresses not only GFL in Israel but the tabooization of the subject in GFL lessons worldwide. Secondly, when the Holocaust is present as the elephant in the room, taking the stage when certain words are used, it needs to be addressed. Not always necessarily making it the central theme of the lesson, but at least to acknowledge its existence and accept that words do not exist outside of culture.

4.10

Biographical Aspects of the Holocaust

In the next question, the learners were asked if the Holocaust had any impact on them personally or their family. More than half (52 percent) of all the learners’ answers (n = 100) reported that their family was directly affected by the Holocaust. Family members were either murdered or are survivors. The following word cloud gives an overview of the most used terms in all answers before summarizing the most difficult item of the questionnaire. Some German words can be found in this word cloud, this is due to the fact that the answer to this question were kept in German if the learners chose to answer in German (Figure 4.15). The answers differ greatly as to whether or not the Holocaust was perceived as traumatic within the family history. I analyzed the learners’ responses whether trauma or very negative feelings were mentioned if there was a biographical influence. However, this is not always explicitly stated and the collective trauma is also voiced by learners from an Arabic background.

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Figure 4.15 Word Cloud Holocaust Impact on Biography

Learner BN wrote in German: As I said above, I am an Arab, my origin is not directly seen by the Holocaust. But I still own the Holocaust. The media and films have played a major role in this context. We live in a country in a generation that is heavily influenced by the Holocaust. Of course that also has a broad reflection on my life.

On the other hand, Learner T, whose grandmother was in the Holocaust, mentions: “My grandmother was in the Holocaust. I have no feelings towards this subject.” His other answers explain that for the older generation, the Holocaust plays a role, but for him, it is less emotionally relevant. These ambiguities are essential to point out. According to Schostak (2016), they allow underrepresented groups to voice an opinion that is very unlikely to show in quantitative methods. Learner AF explains the biographical impact as follows: All my grandparents are Holocaust survivors, most lost their families and both my parents and I grew up in a weird family dynamic that still needs to “survive”. It is so ingrained I doubt a day passed in my life the subject of the Holocaust or just Nazis hasn’t been brought up.

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Three main types of answers could be identified and can be understood describing the effect on the learners’ identities from “not affected” to “strongly affected”.

4.10.1 Not Affected This type states that they are not affected. Sometimes, it is elaborated that they did not have family in the Holocaust, or that their family came from parts that were not under the influence of the Holocaust. Some learners describe that their families had left before the Holocaust began. Learner F elaborates: “No, we are Ashkenazi Jews, but my grandparents were in Jerusalem during the Holocaust. I don’t think that we are affected by the Holocaust besides being more patriotic due to this.” One could argue even that the patriotic attitude must have had an impact on the learner, however, this would involve further research and would boarder on intervention.

4.10.2 Affected—But How? This type of learner has been affected. Their grandparents, parents, or friends have suffered. Yet, it is not often talked about or not a topic in current family talks. The learner states that there was no traumatic effect, or the effect is not defined as traumatic, or is not explained further. Learner B wrote: “Not so much. The sister of my grandmother was in the Holocaust, but our family has no traumatic history with the Holocaust.” Given that the sister of the grandmother was affected by the Holocaust, the learner’s mother most likely had been affected, too. This remoteness seems somewhat typical of the third generation. It is interesting that details of “she was in the Holocaust” were not shared, the reader wonders if she survived. Some learners speak of many losses, but do not explain the impact. Other learners describe that their grandparents were affected, but they could not share their stories. This category also included learners that mentioned an impact due to being Jewish or Israeli and therefore said they were impacted indirectly but did not explain this effect.

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4.10.3 Affecting Learner G sheds a light on how he is strongly influenced: “Impact in every aspect, as a third-generation I could still feel the direct impact on the behavior of my mom and my grand mom and how it does influence my life.” Some learners of Russian origin made the distinction that their grandparents were affected by the occupation and World War II and not necessarily by the Holocaust. Learner D writes: Luckily we weren’t “touched” by the Holocaust. My family comes from USSR, Azerbaijan. The Jews there weren’t affected by the Holocaust. (...) But eh, so yeah, like eh, I come from a Russian family and eh, my grandfather was in was in in the Red Army in the Second World War, so like my father’s side of the family was a bit like eh against me going to Germany.

Some learners voiced that their family history, despite learning German, would keep them from visiting Germany. For other learners, the Holocaust and loss of many family members led to “missing trust in the international community” (learner AB). Other learners fear “that it might happen again (or something less but still bad)” (learner AO). Learner BQ confirms a concerning explanation: “Yes, it is something for me that reminds me there were and are still people that don’t like fact that I am Jewish. I will always be careful out of Israel to reveal my religion” There is also a very important effect regarding how minorities are seen by learner BU: “First of all, I have relatives who died in the Holocaust. Personally, it made me think a lot about radicalisms of ideologies and treatment of minorities” The Holocaust is omnipresent and the learners’ answers (n = 88) reflect this as 79 percent claim to be affected (Figure 4.16).

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Figure 4.16 Personal Holocaust Impact Not affected 21% Affecting 39%

Affected, but how ? 40%

4.11

The Sound of German

Learner B explains what some people say when she tells others she is learning German: And most people, they basically don’t know that you can even learn German and something, like, in Israel, it seems kind of odd in itself. And then they realize that it’s an odd thing to do, so, I seem a bit crazy. Why, why would you learn German? Why would you learn a language like that? Like, isn’t that like a Nazi language? Like some say that.

Here, it appears clear that German is looked upon as a language at least eyed critically; the Nazi language with its “disgusting” (learner B) sounds. Learner J describes how German in her family was seen as noise and that it was a language that you just did not listen to. German sounds “brutal and harsh” (learner D) and learner H thinks for “many people, it’s an ugly language because all of the very hard sounds”. This reception of German in Israeli society can be explained by how and when German usually is heard, which is usually only in the context of the Holocaust during documentaries and movies. This is changing as well, as it was laid out in the chapter on the image of Germany. However, for entire generations of Israelis, the most formative experiences with the German language is closely or even exclusively related to the Holocaust. Learner G summarizes:

4.12 Humor

115

…as an Israeli where I listened to German in the past, was in, eh, like, em, Holocaust movies or, eh, especially the Holocaust movies. Or like when Hitler say something like video, things like this. And, uh, specific words that it s-stuck in your mind. Like when the teacher says schnell.

4.12

Humor

The associations with the “Nazi” language break their way into the GFL classes sometimes accompanied by a sense of humor. Learner G describes an episode when: “But, eh, we learned another word, the, eh, license, driving license. And there is the word Führer, and it was like a moment in the class that everybody was, eh, ‘Hmm, what is this word?’” The learner continues describing that the learners reacted humorously, this resembles almost a cathartic or comic relief through making fun of what has been so deeply engrained as bringing horror as the Führer. During conducted interviews, other humorous mentions of the Holocaust occurred. Here is a soundbite: Learner B:It was a discussed topic. I wouldn’t say that we encountered it mostly in the textbooks but it did come up like quite a bit in different forms, likeInterviewer: Do you remember any form? Learner B: [laughs] Besides humor sometimes, um-

Humor provides a great way of dealing with painful experiences and by that, the horrors of the Nazis are recontextualized and the power that they still seem to hold can be taken. Saper (1988) already pointed out that humor, when used appropriately and judiciously, can be of value in psychiatric healing. That which has a positive effect in counseling oftentimes also applies to the classroom. Nevertheless, Bolkan et al. (2018) determined that humor can have a negative effect on student learning, whereas they claim contiguous humor can be beneficial in the classroom by creating a positive learning environment. The deficit effect they describe might also be due to their research design of measuring outcomes of tests on retention and transfer and not on a longer learning curve that takes into consideration long-term motivation and performance as is crucial in language acquisition. This is, however, an important route for future research into investigating humor and positive learning environments on language acquisition.

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Results

GFL Textbooks and Diversity

In the interviews, the learners confirmed a finding from the textbook analysis that occurred as an accidental finding, i.e., the representations of Germans are highly normative. English textbooks seem to struggle with similar challenges to paint a picture or rather pictures of a more diverse society (Hermann-Cohen, 2015). The following soundbite addresses this issue as part of a group discussion: Interviewer: Diversity can be a lot of things, right? It can be backgrounds, it can be sexuality, it can be gender, it can be women’s rights, it can be... Did you learn anything about the hot topics? Learner B: Not from the textbooks. Learner C: Yeah. Not from that source. Learner D: It, might was... It might been diverse in manner of gender, like females and males. But it wasn’t like, I don’t recall having a gay couple or a lesbian couple, or uh, anything that is too, like, you could say that is uh different. Or unique. Interviewer: Would that be interesting? Learner D: I think slowly the world is going to uh, a more and more diverse place. And I think having the textbooks showing um, diversity and stuff like that.

The learners clearly understand the world is changing and that the textbooks do not reflect reality with blonde German characters and mother, father, and child family types. If a textbook deems itself progressive and does include online dating advertisements but fails to include sexualities other than single heterosexuals, it might seem outdated upon publication. Learner B describes seeing the real Germans including “Turkish people”: “I guess it’s, I remember it very well because I didn’t really expect that before going to Germany itself. Like, I kind of got the idea that everyone I’m going to see is like the people in the textbook.” Teaching materials that produce a reality that excludes certain individuals, be it members or the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, single mothers and fathers, people of color, Jews or Muslims, or any other religion can be highly problematic.

4.14 Limitations of the Research

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Limitations of the Research

The current study is not without limitations. Firstly, despite the rich material collected, claims cannot be made to have sufficient and representative data to establish a complete and accurate trajectory of all the factors influencing the image of Germany in Israel and the involvement of the learners’ identities. German as a heatedly discussed issue in Israel also limited the research. As pointed out earlier, stakeholders were hesitant to go on the record and/or were not responsive to inquiries at all. There may have been differences between the different groups (ethnical, religious, milieus) of Israeli society, however, due to the sample size, these correlations cannot be safely established without becoming pitfalls themselves and by that, leading this research to legitimize biases against certain groups. This includes different groups of ethnicities but can also apply to groups related to gender or sexual identity. Further observations indicated there was a LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer) factor involved. I as a researcher may also have triggered a bias as to which answers were expected of the learners as I may have been identified as a speaker of German. In addition, as the Holocaust is Germany and Germany is the Holocaust equation is undergoing change, a few mentions of Poland being the more imminent association with the Holocaust were observed. The Holocaust remains association number one, “but less than Poland for that matter,” as learner AD wrote. This shift in Thought Styles, Germany seems to be accompanied with a new interpretation of historical events and the perception of Poland, which requires more research. This research had to rely on the access to learners supported by teachers of GFL that allowed me to approach their groups or forwarded the link to the online survey to relevant learners. This constitutes a selection bias since students that learn with these teachers may have been presented with a more balanced image of Germany. However, since the links were spread all over social media and shared via various channels, this selection bias was mitigated. Another limitation of this research lies in the analysis of the GFL textbooks, first in the selection of the textbooks analyzed because it was reliant on which textbooks were accessible at the library and teachers’ library at the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv and secondly in focused on the images and materials provided by the textbooks and less on the tasks that were provided for the learners. To smaller this effect a literature review on the state of the art of GFL textbooks was included to compare results.

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LGBTQ Factor?

During one group interview with three participants who started learning German as part of their school studies, one identified as Male-to-Female, one gay and one lesbian. This was said before the official interview recording started and sexual identity was not an item on the questionnaire. However, this group alone leads to the question of whether the GFL Lessons might be similar to the drama club in American high schools and its associations. One high school student spoke his mind about one wish to decrease bullying of gay children: “That everyone would get treated the way the athletes get treated; that the drama club would get the same attention as football team” (Perrotti & Westheimer, 2002, p. 74). Despite highlighting the discriminatory practices of high school life, this quote positions the drama club as a safe space and popular among LGBTQ children. Is learning German, or rather the German class appealing to other sexual and gender identities? The answer may include more than a single factor, it can be the teacher teaching German at a specific institution, Berlin as the tolerant place of longing, the special relationship of German-Israeli relations catering to a queer community or all of the above. Israelis that have left for Berlin support this argument, by living in Berlin they escape their confinement of conventions. Thus Natan, a 39year-old Israeli living in Berlin said: My parents still call me, even today, asking ‘so, what about a boyfriend?’ I tell them, ‘Listen, I have a boyfriend every day! Every day I have a new boyfriend.’ And then the question is of course, ‘Do you want to be alone?’ And this is another reason why it is better to live in this country, where being alone is not the Mark of Cain (Amit, 2016). (Natan, 39-year-old Israeli, living in Berlin)

This one voice from Berlin invites further research on how sexual identities, language learning, and in a more general sense how Germany serves as a way to escape social conventions in Israel.

5

Discussion—Thought Styles on Germany

One of the main results of this study is close relationship between learning German and Israel identity against the background of German—and family—history. The heuristic of the Thought Styles helps to understand the complexity of GFL in Israel providing an understanding for stakeholders and educational staff. In the tradition of Ludwik Fleck, Thought Styles are important for constructing knowledge, which is shaped by historical and societal conditions. Further, language plays a decisive role when communicating on teaching and learning. (Schäfer/Schnelle 2019, XXV). In my study, the Thought Styles on Germany are based on the analysis answers of the Israeli learners of GFL. However, they did not develop in a vacuum and are therefore bound to the other areas of analysis: first and foremost, the GFL teaching material and also the societal discourses on the changing image of Germany. But second also on the schoolbooks that expose the Israeli student also to a specific and rather positive image of Germany. These Thought Styles may be understood as the collection basin for the different strands of analysis, merging them in these four Thought Styles about Germany. In practice, the Thought Styles on Germany might even be multi-dimensional and yet allowing for a preliminary conclusion about the Israelis that decide to learn German and more importantly what image of Germany is dominant at the time of the study. Therefore in the first instance for practical reasons, this multidimensional data set is reduced by a principal component analysis to the two-scale model reflecting answers on the questionnaire, interviews, and also recurring themes that appeared predominantly in research literature. Consequently, the Thought Styles based on the interviews are elaborated and enriched with further data, like textbooks and research literature. Thus, a multidimensional ‘view on Germany’ broken down into the main dimension: the contrasting positive associations with © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_5

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Germany (upper) versus negative associations (lower) and the contrasting strong associations with the Holocaust (right) versus weak associations with the Holocaust (left). Further research would allow these correlations to be proven statistically even on a multi-dimensional model. This would not have to be confined to the Israeli subjects who learn German but can analyze greater population samples or focus on particular population group regarding ethnic background, age, religiosity, contact with Germany, descendants of survivors of the different generations, and other statistical aggregates. Four Thought Styles (Figure 5.1) have been identified regarding Germany among Israeli GFL learners. They mainly revolve around the two ideas of how positive their associations are with Germany and how strongly the Holocaust is associated, respectively. The Thought Styles have been named by a key term that mirrors the main conception about Germany within that Thought Style. It is important to note that a subject can incorporate several Thought Styles that might be even contradictory at some point.

5.1 German Engineering

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Figure 5.1 Thought Styles on Germany in Israel

5.1

German Engineering

This Thought Style incorporates all the major positive associations regarding Germany. Germany is seen as a country with cheap living costs, a stable democracy, diverse culture, and tolerant people. German people are seen as honest and reliable. German culture is seen as an example for music, film, sports, and architecture.

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The nature of Germany is appealing. German engineering is seen as a sign of quality and the German car industry is successful in producing high-quality products. The Thought Style may incorporate a hope for the future to live, work or study in Germany.

5.2

Cold Germany

Germany is seen as a cold place, in a real and metaphorical way. Not only with regard to nature, but also the people. It has a cruel history of wars and is overregulated, highly bureaucratic, and Germans are driven by perfectionism. Some people see a problem with immigration, and an aging society with a very low birth rate. Germany and Germans are (still) considered as hostile and not welcoming to foreigners.

5.3

Other Germany

Germany of today is another Germany; the Germans have repented and have been liberated from the Nazis. Not all Germans were Nazis and people have changed their attitudes toward Israel and Jews. The German-Israeli relationship is important and Germany supports Israel and helps to keep it safe. For some Israeli learners of GFL, it is associated with a homeland lost, but with the positive notion of rediscovering their roots.

5.4

Neo-Nazi

Germany is deeply connected to an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli attitude. The Holocaust can happen again at any time. The authoritarian education helps to keep subjects following rules blindly. There is rise in xenophobia in Germany and others are not welcome. Retributions were made but “6 million times no” reverberates. German products are a sign of that Nazi past and should be avoided. For the Jews, Germany remains lost and one does not set foot on German grounds. Although styles could be identified by this research, sometimes it is the learner themselves that uses associations in line with one of the four, or the learner draws on examples from his or her family history. German-Israeli relations have successfully promoted a more positive image of Germany so that most of the Israelis in

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the subject pool have positive associations toward Germany despite being strongly tied still to the collective memory of the Holocaust. It is important, once a Thought Style is identified, to question its truth. At the same time, it never reflects the complex reality, but it enables the subjects to speak from a certain position. It allows educators, German foreign policy makers to address certain Thought Styles, while at the same time during the GFL lessons, it invites learners to do a reality check on the Thought Styles. These Thought Styles may also find some use in other examples of complex and historically charged binational encounters.

6

Conclusion

Learning German is unavoidably political in Israel. It is connected to cultural policy, diplomacy, history and current political debates in Germany and Israel—and the Holocaust remains a central topic. The collective memory of the Holocaust can be traced throughout history and is closely connected to the foundation of the State of Israel, how Israeliness is defined, and Israel’s view of Germany. During the founding era of the 1940s, Israeli society was preoccupied with laying the political and economic framework, and by that, absorbing millions of immigrants. These constituted Holocaust survivors, but also immigrants from Arab countries. This left little room for the trauma some of the new inhabitants brought with them; their trauma was cast aside and remained private. This changed with the Eichmann trial. The silence was broken: the testimonies were heard by Israelis, and it marked the beginning of the politics of prevention that still dominate Israeli political and societal discourses. At the same time, Israelis found new ways to deal with trauma, such as through the Stalag Holocaust Erotic Literature that gained popularity despite being sold secretly. In the 1970s, Israel was shaken by military confrontations and three events, in particular, brought back dark memories of the Holocaust. Eleven Israeli athletes were killed at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. A year later, images of handcuffed Israelis in Syrian and Egyptian camps would circulate throughout Israel. And in 1976, Israeli passengers were selected and singled out during the hijacking at Entebbe Airport. The 1980s were dominated by personal encounters and intensification of contact with Germany and its past. The Israeli singer Ofra Haza won the 1983 Eurovision by singing and celebrating the life of the Israeli people. During the 1990s, personal encounters increased, and the reunited Germany became a destination for Israeli tourists. A look on how the Israeli press, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8_6

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as Browning (2004) examined, reported on Germany confirms that its image is that of another Germany with its Nazi past more and more historicized. Mizrahim second-generation survivors established a literary subgenre during that time, in pursuit of recognition as descendants of Holocaust survivors of non-European descent. During the 1990s, the first humorous approaches can be found, criticizing mainstream Holocaust commemoration in Israel. In accordance with Zandberg (2006), the first generation looked back in fear, the second generation looked back in anger, and the third generation looked back in self-reflectiveness. A new zeitgeist was born; the attitude became “what was was” (Zimmermann, 2014, p. 46). Nazi Germany and another, new version of Germany, were perceived more and more as two separate entities. During the last 20 years, more and more Israelis dared to take “a closer look into the lives and mind of their interlocutors, the descendants of their grandparents’ worst enemies” (Oz-Salzberger, 2014, p. 214). Still, the right way to commemorate and who owns the Holocaust memory is a site of ongoing struggle. In 2015, a representative study showed that over 70 percent of Israelis have a very positive attitude toward Germany (Borchard & Heyn, 2015). Interestingly, differences between Arab and Jewish Israelis were relatively small. From 2014, we can see very graphic depictions of the Holocaust topic on Israeli mainstream TV taking shape as satire. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis watch these clips on YouTube. Depicted are Israelis trying to hang Eichmann and impersonation of Hitler and his closer followers having survived the war and planning the final solution against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision song contest. Humor is an act of overcoming the trauma and is closely related to resilience. During the Milky protests, the discourse in Israel was dominated by the cheap living costs in Berlin and whether that constitutes a legitimate reason for Israelis to leave their homeland and live in the former country of the perpetrators and the Third Reich. The Holocaust remains the “primary myth of Israeli politics and the moral foundation of a new Israeli civil religion” (Liebman et al., 1983, p. 137). This is cemented by the education system in Israel. However, at the same time, the education books in Israel for History, Geography and Civic Education paint a rather positive image of Germany—as a western, progressive and economicallyrobust democracy. German in Israel is a politically charged topic and stakeholders are very careful not to step on anyone’s toes including those of researchers. This did not make the research easier but showed that learning German is part of a political framework with many actors involved—some of them overtly and some of them

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covertly. Germany and Israel have a special relationship and security is priority number one. As long as security and the existence of Israel is threatened, the fears of falling victim or being “wiped off the map” dominate Israeli policy and hence determine also German-Israeli relations. Given the historical relationship, Germany is limited to a rather reserved negotiation strategy in other aspects of German-Israeli foreign policy. Based on the numbers in the existing literature and the social media analysis of Hebrew-speaking Facebook groups, it is safe to say that German plays an important role as a foreign language in Israel and will most likely continue to do so. GFL evidently still has a deficit when teaching about the past. Despite the learners’ interest, historical and political connotations remain somewhat untouched. The Holocaust and Jewish life have completely disappeared (since the 1990s) from the mainstream GFL textbooks. This is even more problematic considering the role GFL plays as part of citizenship integration courses in Germany. The empirical data overall confirms a positive attitude towards Germany, though there is a strong influence of the Holocaust for most learners. Three learner types were identified: the learner that is linguistically interested in the German language; the learner that is rediscovering his or her roots by learning German; and the type of learner for whom Germany presents a future option to live or work. Germany and its history remain strongly associated with the Holocaust, however, there is now a strong differentiation of the present even with the shadow of the past still lingering. Besides the positive image of Germany, the Holocaust remains ever-present in the classroom. Occasionally though, the elephant in the room makes an appearance, be it by humorously analyzing the syllables of Führerschein or the words schnell and raus, triggering recollections of Holocaust movies. GFL needs to address this gap of what is or rather is not in the textbooks and what is in the minds of the learners. Four Thought Styles were identified about the positive or negative image of Germany and how strongly these are associated with the Holocaust. These Thought Styles are this research’s answer to the question of the new and old discourses of Germany in Israel. 1. 2. 3. 4.

German Engineering Cold Germany Neo Nazi Other Germany

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6

Conclusion

The latest type seems to be the dominant Thought Style and is supported by the literature and this research. One must, however, remain vigilant and apply a critical perspective—especially as almost all of the last of the witnesses of horror and the Holocaust have died, which then could entail that there is not only another Germany but also another Israel. Learner X speaks the researcher’s mind: “The influence is less and less, as the survivors are dying and no one is there to tell their story.” GFL education needs to tell their story, it needs to include Jewish identities, and it needs to deal with the dark past of Germany before and after 1945. This responsibility is three fold, GFL is teaching about German culture, sometimes even in an integrative manner, it needs to provide an accurate image about German history, present society including Jewish life and educate as to not reproduce exclusion, which calls for making the voices of the victims heard, maybe this is less true for Israel, where the Holocaust is omnipresent but all the more true for GFL around the world. And if it is omnipresent maybe students want to talk about it nonetheless. Tzipi Livni shared these private thoughts (Livni in Friling, 2009, xii): To be a Jew is to dream about the Holocaust, live the Holocaust, and die the Holocaust— without actually having gone through it. To be an Israeli child is to try to imagine the number ‘six million’ and never being able to comprehend it. To be an Israeli mother is to suddenly realize that you’ve transferred Holocaust collective memory and the Holocaust experience to your children … Being a Jewish leader in Israel means wondering if you had seen the writing on the wall … would you have made the right decision at the time. [It means] understanding the magnitude of the responsibility and it especially means vowing never to forget.

As Germans, we must acknowledge the memory of the Holocaust. Despite some efforts by German right-wingers to “un-apologize”, being German means to be obliged never to forget, which does not mean to apologize for something that was committed nor can be forgiven vicariously. However, never forgetting means to not allow to let these memories to be erased from German history. GFL educators share this responsibility and GFL is at the forefront in promoting an image of Germany that is aware of its historical responsibility. Finally, I designed a infographic (Figure 6.1) (reminiscent of the Bauhaus in Tel Aviv) allowing an overview of the research conducted four pillars (ground level), the Thought Styles developed (first level), the key observations (fourth level) and fifth level further areas of research that were identified.

6

Conclusion

Figure 6.1 Conclusion Infographic

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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 M.-P. Hermann-Cohen, Holocaust and Conceptions of German(y) by Israeli learners of German (DAF), Holocaust Education – Historisches Lernen – Menschenrechtsbildung, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-34212-8

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