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

Judith Gur-Arieh was born in Haifa and grew up in moshava Kinneret. She attended school in Kinneret, Tiberias and Haifa. After finishing high school she did two years of military service. Then she attended a nurse training program, and worked as a nurse. Since 15 years she works in a parents' and nursing home, meanwhile as the manager. She has four children. ; JGA learned German as a child, mainly from her paternal grandmother who never learned Hebrew and later emigrated to the US. During the War of Independence in 1948, JGA lived for a few months in a Yekkish host family where she only spoke German. Her own parents wanted to give up German from the very beginning, but since 1948 they started using it more again. As a child JGA spoke better German than her younger brother and sister, but over the years she used it less and less. Today the whole family speaks Hebrew. JGA says Yekkes tend less to code-switching than Israelis with other roots. Her own parents don't mix the languages, it is more a habit than a conscious effort. Her parents speak and read English better than German. Even though the Yekkes don't speak Hebrew well, they don't insert German words as often as Israelis from English-speaking countries blend in English words. In moshava Kinneret there were mainly Jews with East-European roots. Although her parents learned Hebrew very quickly and wanted to assimilate, it is still difficult for them to write Hebrew. Both parents hardly ever spoke German outside of the family, their neighborhood was not German-speaking. At home however they almost always spoke German. When she was a child JGA noticed a difference between her own family and the families from Eastern Europe in their neighborhood, her mother was the only working mother. During his first years as a police officer, her father was only at home during the weekends. He was the only policeman with German roots at his office. When her parents had small children, JGA's grandmother lived with the family. Her grandfather, the painter Nussbaum, had built a house in Kinneret, her parents later built a house in Tiberias. Until 1956 JGA often spoke German with her grandmother, she had a close relationship with both of her grandmothers. As a young girl JGA still had a German accent, she only read books in Hebrew in English though, hardly ever in German. ; When they were children JGA and her siblings only heard about the beautiful aspects of their family history. Only much later JGA's father told them the terrible stories, mainly about how his younger sister was deported and killed. He was informed about her death by a letter in 1946 or 1947. His younger brother immigrated to the US and came to Germany as an American soldier in 1948. A cousin of her father committed suicide in Mauritius. JGA would have liked to hear more about their family history. Her father was interested in general history, but he hardly ever told them about his relatives' fates. Only in the late 1960s people began to come to terms with the Holocaust. JGA thinks many survivors still avoid to tell their stories because they are either traumatized or inhibited by feelings of guilt (sometimes even the second generation). JGA wrote a master thesis and made a film on Holocaust victims, on the problem of forgetting and the myths among the victims and the offenders. She describes the rituals she filmed in the kibbutzim. She regrets that cultural techniques, like reading and playing music, are declining. Because of the Holocaust JGA only has few relatives. She has some friends in Germany, but would never go to Germany or Austria for a vacation. She does not like the younger Germans, she thinks they partly show an uncouth behavior. She is shocked by the Neo-Nazi groups which she has seen on TV. ; JGA says that her father is still proudly feeling like a German, and that he has suppressed his trauma. He says he left Germany voluntarily in 1933 and that he was not chased away. This is a matter of conflict between JGA's brother and their father. Her brother deals with the past more openly, also for professional reasons (he guides groups to Yad Vashem). She considers her father's attitude as a façade. She thinks her mother is a very sensitive and intelligent, but also a complicated person. Her mother is very different from her father. ; Life in the moshava was very similar for all the children, but somehow JGA knew that her family was different. Her father's brother, who first lived in a kibbutz, never really settled in Israel. He lived an inconstant life in the military and as a ship's cook, then he went to the US. He never had a family. JGA's husband is of Russian origin, the different mentalities sometimes caused tensions in their marriage. She was more independent than her husband wanted her to be and in the end they divorced. About her children's mentality, JGA tells that the difference is not so obvious anymore. Her two elder daughters once joined their grandparents on a trip to Germany. Her children don't speak German. Relating to Yekkish characteristics, JGA thinks she is more punctual, more direct and more tidy than other Israelis. Her brother has even more of these character traits though.