Second generation of immigrants from German speaking countries ("Yekkes")

Michael Sternberg was born in Berlin in 1925. He immigrated with his family in 1933. His parents sent their children shortly after their immigration to Ben Shemen Youth Village for half a year, afterwards they lived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. MS attended the agricultural school in Ben Shemen, after which he did a biology teacher training in the teachers' seminar of Hakibbutzim. He fought in the War of Independence and from 1948 until 1950 he served in the military. In 1950 he went to London to study medicine. In London he met his first wife and they married. Back in Israel MS received a five-year specialist training in pediatrics in Tel Hashomer Hospital Ramat Gan. He kept working there as pediatrician and genetic counselor until his retirement. In 1980 his first wife died. He married a second time in 1982. Since his retirement at the age of 65 he works in a consulting center of Bituach Maccabi. He moved to Sde Warburg. ; MS' family spoke German at home, partly because of his two grandmothers who did not speak Hebrew. His family belonged to the early Zionists; his uncle Felix Rosenblueth, alias Pinhas Rosen, later became minister in the State of Israel. MS read German books for some time. During his first years in - a Hebrew - school he didn't speak at all, his parents even asked for psychological help. However when he began to speak, his Hebrew was almost fluently. He left school at the age of 14 and worked in a zoo for a year. His mentors, with one of them MS spoke German, convinced him to continue to learn and to go to Ben Shemen. MS would have liked to study veterinary medicine, but it was not yet possible in Palestine. He planned to go for studies to Italy and started to learn Italian but before he found a university WWII broke out. He then decided to become a teacher. Only in 1950, after participating in the War of Independence and serving in the Israeli army, he could realize his plan to study medicine in England. He met his wife there, who was also German-born and came to England on a Kindertransport. The young family moved to Israel in 1956, where he specialized as pediatrician. MS continued to speak English with his wife, his children first spoke English but later Hebrew. ; Between 1953 and 1957 MS' parents lived in Germany, his father worked there for the Israeli governent and prepared restitution contracts. When MS visited them, it was the first time he came back to Germany. The second time was when he visited Frankfurt in 1972 for a research project together with the university of Frankfurt. He met many young scientists of the post-war generation, he got the impression they did not understand why Israel could not forgive Germany. He liked the German landscape and German food, altogether it was interesting, but also very strange. His third visit was only 3 years ago, he was invited by his native town Berlin. MS was impressed by modern Berlin, but he did not feel home there. He does not have any traumatic memories of his first years in Germany. ; MS does not have time to read German literature. The Yekkes did not speak German publicly during the War. MS is suffering from his Yekkish character habits like punctuality, which his second wife does not share. Reliability is important to him, and he prefers Beethoven to oriental music. Besides that however he doesn't object to the oriental influence on the Israeli culture. His mother still writes poems in German, she also writes biographies of relatives in German which will be translated into English and Hebrew. MS' father studied philology in Germany, but he did not try to keep the German cultural assets among their family. MS speaks German with his siblings, but otherwise prefers to speak English.