AJC AND GERMANY

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AJC AND GERMANY
History in the Making, 1945–2020

DEIDRE BERGER

AJC and Germany: History in the Making, 1945–2020 B

AJC AND GERMANY
History in the Making, 1945–2020

Copyright © 2020 American Jewish Committee. All rights reserved.

Foreword

The story told in
this essay is unique —
and it is riveting.

AFTER THE END of the Second World War, following the Nazi Final
Solution that annihilated six million of Europe’s nine million Jews, not to
mention countless others, what would be the future relationship of Jews
with Germany?

For some, the answer was both obvious and understandable: none.
There was no conceivable way, they believed, to engage postwar Germany
against the backdrop of what had befallen the Jewish people. Germany
should be shunned at all costs, consigned to oblivion for eternity.

For the leaders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) at the time,
however, the answer was different. It is not that they were any less horri-
fied by the events of the previous 12 years; they were equally pulverized,
of course.
Rather, they understood something that led them to another conclusion.
In retrospect, it was a brave, even brilliant, insight.
Precisely because of the Holocaust, Germany had to be engaged. It was
too consequential a country — situated in the center of Europe no less and
the cockpit of one devastating war after another — to be ignored or avoided,
tempting though that might be.
And so they set out with an ambitious, even audacious, goal: to try to
influence the direction of postwar Germany, seeking to help ensure the
emergence of a peaceful and democratic country, which learned the painful
lessons of its history and charted an entirely new, and more hopeful, future.

2

It wasn’t easy or quick, not at all. For one thing, there was simply no
playbook for how to go about this. Nothing like it had ever been tried before,
not even close. For another, not every German in postwar Germany was
necessarily eager to confront the past, reject antisemitism, and embrace a
new outlook on life.
My admiration for AJC’s leaders in the first decades after the war
knows no bounds. Despite criticism from some other Jews, they persevered
through thick and thin, determined to make a difference and help write a
new chapter in German and Jewish history. And, amazingly, they succeeded
beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
In the past 70 years, Germany has evolved as a nation committed to the

protection of human dignity, ever mindful of its past, a founding member
of the European Union, NATO ally, home to a growing Jewish community,
and strategic partner of Israel.

If anyone wishes to understand what sets AJC apart, what explains the
organization’s DNA and approach to our mission, and what have been the
fruits of our labor, this essay lays it out in impressive detail, context, and
texture.

I wish to express gratitude to my cherished colleague, Deidre Berger,
the essay’s author and, despite her own modesty, one of the principal driv-
ers of our successful efforts in Germany during her nearly two decades
leading our AJC Berlin team. Previously, Deidre was the National Public
Radio correspondent in Germany. She knows Germany intimately, is pas-
sionate about German-Jewish relations, and has a journalist’s well-honed
communications skills. They are on full display in this essay.

David Harris
AJC CEO

3

Front Cover: AJC leadership delegation meets with Chancellor Merkel in Berlin, October 10, 2018.Photo: Bundesregierung / Eckel Rabbi Sidney Lefkowitz (right)

leads Jewish service, broadcast by

AJC and NBC radio, from Aachen,

Germany, October 29, 1944

AJC and Germany: History in the Making, 1945–2020 4

AJC and Germany:
History in the Making,
1945–2020

Deidre Berger

5

AS WORLD WAR II in Europe came to a close on May 8, 1945, American Jewish Committee (AJC) was already seeking strategies to help Germany avoid falling back into racist authoritarianism. AJC understood that fos-tering democratic values among the German people and setting up dem-ocratic institutions in Germany were necessary to help create conditions for an enduring peace. Seven months earlier, AJC’s interests were demonstrated when, in coop-eration with NBC radio, the first Jewish religious service from Germany since the advent of Hitler was broadcast live across the United States. Rabbi Sidney Lefkowitz, a chaplain serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, led the service on October 29, 1944, with 50 Jewish soldiers, on a battlefield near the site of a destroyed synagogue in Aachen. Private First Class Max Fuchs served as cantor and Catholic Chaplin Father Edward Waters and Protestant Chaplain Bernard Henry also spoke. Artillery shells and gunfire were heard in the background during the praying. The Jewish service also was directed at the German people, a warning, in the words of Milton Krentz, then AJC’s radio director, that “the Allied armies, composed of every color, faith and nationality, will never halt until freedom takes the place of tyranny on every inch of Axis soil.” Immediately after the war not everyone on the victorious Allied side shared AJC’s belief that Germany could be brought back into the Western fold. Nevertheless, AJC was determined to assist in the herculean task of reconstruction of a post-WWII Germany by fighting still virulent strains of antisemitism, upholding human rights, and promoting an appreciation for democracy. Ruins of the Reichstag

in Berlin, 1945

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Aiding the Survivors and
Promoting Democracy

THE FIRST CHALLENGE at hand was addressing the situation of hun-
dreds of thousands of traumatized Holocaust survivors. Not only had the
vast majority lost all or most of their families, but they were physically
and spiritually adrift, without the homes and the Jewish communities as
anchors that had once defined their daily lives. AJC opened a European
office in Paris and stationed correspondents in several countries to help
displaced Jewish survivors and monitor developments. AJC European
director Zachariah Schuster traveled several times a month to Germany to
keep AJC apprised of the situation.
In 1945, shortly after the end of the war, an AJC delegation visited

Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, and what its members saw
prompted AJC to advocate successfully for the creation of a U.S. govern-
ment Office of Advisor for Jewish Affairs. The first advisor, Judge Simon
Rifkind, an AJC member, convinced U.S. military authorities to set up sepa-
rate camps for Jewish survivors, who were being subjected to antisemitism
in camps that included ethnic Germans inculcated with Nazi ideology who
were fleeing the communist-controlled eastern part of Germany. In 1946,
AJC helped initiate the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons to pro-
mote admission to the U.S. for Jewish DPs.
Even at this early stage, AJC also sought to promote democracy in
Germany. In 1946, AJC organized and financed the Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing Association for the Promotion of Tolerance, a framework to stim-
ulate the civic involvement of Germans. By 1948, the Lessing Association
had branches in Frankfurt, Munich, Würzburg, and elsewhere. Yet AJC
found it challenging to build civic spirit in a society long dominated by an
authoritarian government that had little tradition of citizen action, and
the Lessing Association had difficulty developing lay leadership. A
potential source of philanthropic energy had vanished with the murder
or expulsion of Germany’s civic-minded Jewish community, many of
whose members had donated generously to prewar social and cultural
institutions. AJC became increasingly concerned with the weakness of

AJC and Germany: History in the Making, 1945–2020 7