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

Gila Eylon was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, though she spent 3 school years in Jerusalem. She did her military service in a kibbutz, afterwards she lived in Ramat Gan with her mother. In 1974 she volunteered with the excavations in Be'er Sheva. She did casual labor most of the years and sometimes sells her own artist work. ; AB asks about GE's parents' relationship (a Berliner vs. a Viennese), her elder sister and their preferred language. GE mainly spoke Hebrew with her father, with her mother she spoke both Hebrew and German. Reading German is difficult for GE because of the different graphemic systems. Her mother is good at Hebrew nowadays. GE confesses that she does not see a meaning in her life since she has given up work. She suffers because her artistic work is not very successful. ; GE analyzes the difference between her Yekkish mother and the Middle Eastern milieu in the neighborhood. GE thinks that neither she nor her mother are good at cooking, their style is too German. Her family first lived in an apartment in Tel Aviv and moved to the house of the maternal grandparents in Ramat Gan when GE was 12 years old. GE hardly ever met her paternal grandfather, but she knew her grandmother, who lived in Tel Aviv. When she was a small child, they spoke German with each other. Her paternal grandparents immigrated in 1937, GE liked her maternal grandparents better. Her maternal grandmother was a painter, her grandfather artistically designed all the walls of the house. For three years GE lived in a dormitory in Jerusalem, because her parents put too much pressure on her because of learning. ; GE went to see a psychologist since she was 10 years old. Her relationship with her very dominant and hard working mother was very difficult. Her father also often put her under unjustified pressure. Later her mother became GE's best friend because she only had a few friends of her own age. GE suffers from the conflicts with her sister after her mother's death. She does not have a close relationship with her cousins either and does not like her strict aunt. She often played truant from school, but her mother caught her repeatedly. For several reasons GE does not feel any joy of living anymore: no artistic jobs, the climate, the city of Ramat Gan. GE tells again about conflicts with her mother during her youth, she sometimes escaped by jumping out of the window and run away. She analyzes why it is difficult to live as an unmarried woman. She tells about her father, the last years he lived in the Austrian Elternheim (parents' home) in Ramat Chen, eating and cigarettes were his vice. GE also smokes since she was a young girl. She complains neither her mother nor her sister bring her cheap cigarettes from their journeys. ; GE was in Germany together with her mother in 1972, they visited Frankfurt and Berlin. About ten years ago, she went to Germany alone and met friends of her mother. She also visited a cemetery in Prague, looking for the graves of some ancestors. Her mother didn't only have Jewish friends in Germany, she was a member of Soroptimist International, an organization for professional women. Through this organisation she made German friends too, with whom she usually stayed during her visits.