Germany – a new home for Jews?

In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik shares what home means to her and where she feels at home. She tells what she particularly likes about Germany and what bothers her.

In Bleche (North Rhine-Westphalia), many Jewish quota refugees and late repatriates from the successor states of the Soviet Union spent their first years in the Federal Republic of Germany. Housed in an empty school, the interviewer’s mother celebrated her 25th birthday in 1995. © Private property of the interviewer

Früher haben mir meine Eltern aus Angst mitgegeben, ich solle meine Identität nicht an die große Glocke hängen und mich bedeckt halten. Sie wollten, dass ich versuche mich einzugliedern, ohne aber groß aufzufallen. Jetzt verspüre ich immer mehr diesen Drang, mich nicht bedeckt zu halten. Mit Blick auf meinem Engagement fühle ich mich empowert. Ich stehe zu dem, was meine Eltern erreicht haben, dass wir hier sind, dass ich meinen russischen Hintergrund habe und dass ich meine jüdischen Wurzeln habe. Das alles hat mich dahingebracht, wo ich heute bin. Für mich bedeutet Heimat die russische, aber auch die deutsche Sprache. Das habe ich im Ausland sehr gemerkt, dass ich dann doch für Russland und Israel zu deutsch bin. Meine Identität und meine Heimat ist ein Puzzle aus verschiedenen Faktoren. Sicher fühle ich mich in Deutschland, weil ich hier aufgewachsen bin. Ich habe zwar auch ein paar Monate in Israel verbracht und dort habe ich mich auch heimisch gefühlt, aber es ist eben nicht meine Heimat. Ich spreche kein Hebräisch. Ich würde das gerne und wir haben da viele Verwandte, aber gleichzeitig bin ich keine Israelin. Ich bin dort auch eine Migrantin mit einem starken deutschen Einschlag. Und genau so ist es ein bisschen Heimat zwischen den Welten. Aber zum Beispiel wäre Usbekistan keine Heimat für mich, da habe ich keinen Bezug zu.

Was mich aber an Deutschland stört, ist diese falsche Vorsicht und das Entschuldigen. Oft sagen mir Leute, ihre Verwandten hätten damals den Juden geholfen. Ich denke mir dann so naja, du musst dich nicht vor mir rechtfertigen. Ich habe zum Glück keine Verwandten, die im Holocaust in Deutschland starben. Dieser Stimmungswechsel sobald ich sage, dass ich jüdische Wurzeln habe, erlebe ich immer wieder. Ich werde dann zu etwas exotischem. Aber manchmal will ich einfach nur unsichtbar sein und nicht herausstechen. Ich habe nicht immer Lust, so viele Fragen zu beantworten oder ständig den Nahostkonflikt zu rechtfertigen. Ich habe damit schließlich nichts zu tun und lebe nicht in Israel.

Was ich nicht so mag, ist das doch sehr eingeschränkte Denken und das die Gesellschaft hier nicht so offen und plural ist. Vielen sehen Integration als etwas einseitiges. Aber Integration definiert sich durch beide Seiten. Also sowohl durch Migrant*innen als auch durch die Dominanzgesellschaft. Die Gesellschaft muss sich den Migrant*innen anpassen und ihnen auch Chancen bieten, die sie brauchen, um sich zu integrieren. Ich finde, es ist eine sehr einseitige Forderung und da sollte ein Umdenken stattfinden.

My parents taught me our fear that I shouldn’t make a big fuss about my identity and keep myself covered. They wanted me to try to fit in without attracting much attention. Now I feel more and more this urge not to cover myself. I feel empowered with regard to my activism. I stand by what my parents achieved, that we are here, that I have my Russian background and that I have my Jewish roots. It all got me where I am today. For me, home means the Russian, but also the German language. I noticed that abroad, that I am too German for Russia and Israel after all. My identity and my home are a jigsaw puzzle made up of various factors. I feel safe in Germany because I grew up here. I also spent a few months in Israel and I felt at home there, but it’s not my home. I don’t speak Hebrew. I would like it to be, but it is not. We have a lot of relatives there, but at the same time I am not an Israeli. I am also a migrant there with a strong German influence. And that’s exactly how it is a bit of home between the worlds. But, for example, Uzbekistan would not be a home for me, I have no relation to it.

But what bothers me about Germany is this false caution and apology. People often tell me that their relatives helped the Jews back then. Then I think ‘well, you don’t have to justify yourself to me’. Fortunately, I have no relatives who died in the Holocaust in Germany. I experience this change of mood as soon as I say that I have Jewish roots. I then become something exotic. But sometimes I just want to be invisible and not stand out. I don’t always feel like answering so many questions or constantly justifying the Middle East conflict. After all, I have nothing to do with it and I don’t live in Israel. What I don’t really like is the very limited thinking and that society here is not so open and plural.

Many see integration as something one-sided. But integration is defined by both sides. So both by migrants and by the dominant society. Society must adapt to migrants and also offer them the opportunities they need to integrate. I think it is a very one-sided demand and there should be a rethink.

Alexandra Sadownik 11Surname changed. was born in 1993 in Uzbekistan. After the reunification of Germany, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and Eastern German politicians worked on a immigration program for Jews in the former states of the Soviet Union. This was initiated due to the decreasing number of Jews living in post-Shoa Germany. With the offer of resettlement, Germany aimed to end the reconciliation. Since the 1990, approximately 200.000 Jews and their family members immigrated from successor states of the Soviet Union to Germany. Today, they define 90 percent of the Jewish population in Germany. Alexandra and her family migrated in 1998 to Germany as so called jüdische Kontingentflüchtlinge (Jewish Quota Refugees). They lived in a immigration shelter with other migrants from the former Soviet Union in Kiel for some years.

Today, Alexandra trains to become a German language teacher. Since many years, she is engaged in youth and student organization as scholarship holder from the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung.

In this interview, Alexandra Sadownik shares what home means to her and where she feels at home. She tells what she particularly likes about Germany and what bothers her.

    Footnotes

  • 1Surname changed.

The interview was conducted, analyzed and translated by Daniel Heinz on March the 26th in 2021 via zoom as part of a cooperation between Freie Universität Berlin and the We Refugees Archive. The original interview was conducted in German and Russian. Daniel translated the interview in English. Daniel and Alexandra were introduced to each other during a youth project from the embassy of the state of Israel in Berlin. They both have a common migration history from the successor states of the former Soviet Union to Germany in the 1990s.

Under the supervision of Prof. Schirin Amir-Moazami, students in the seminar “Narratives of Refugees in the Light of Border Regime Studies” (winter term 2020/21) worked on critical methods of qualitative social research as well as literary and scientific texts on the topic of border regimes.

Border regime studies primarily focus on the political, economic and legal conditions that produce migration and borders as social phenomena in the first place.

In cooperation with the We Refugees Archive, the seminar participants conducted interviews with refugees about their everyday experiences in Germany or wrote articles on the common topics of the seminar and the archive.