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Friday, December 20, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

53—ENTERTAINMENT

53—ENTERTAINMENT

OBSERVATIONS

Clark Family Players

MUSIC FOR LIFE

BIRTHDAY
PARTIES

Solo pianist or duo-
trio-quartet.

Bach to Boogie, Jazz
& Classical.

Parties and all occa-
sions.
Lessons Also
851-3574

Bitburg And The Fassbinder Play
Re-Open German Holocaust Debate

and other special oc-
casions.
Clowns, juggling,
magic, music, dance,
puppets, balloon
sculpture.

Call Mary Ellen
273-6716

BY VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK
Special to The Jewish News

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There are only 30,000 Jews
among the 61 million inhabi-
tants of the Federal republic of
Germany. They have prospered
economically, the government
has sincerely tried to make
amends to them for the savag-
ery and criminality of the Nazi
regime. Until a new Bitburg or
Fassbinder episode arises, the
Jews in Germany can live in
relative ease and tranquility,
the beneficiaries of what one
German newspaper has de-
scribed as "official philo-
Semitism."
As Bitburg demonstrated last
May, however, and the furor
over the Fassbinder play in
Frankfurt more recently re-
vealed, the process of reconcilia-
tion and healing, and the elimi-
nation of psychological barriers
between Germans and the Jews
living in Germany has a long
way to go.
The Jews themselves have
been more sensitive to this
reality than German official-
dom. They were quick to protest
the renewed attempt to stage
the Fassbinder play which,
whatever the author's inten-
tions, denigrated Jewish moral-
ity, ethics and the role of Jews
in the community. In this in-
stance, however, they did not
stand alone.
Many German newspapers
have seen the Frankfurt episode
from the same viewpoint. The
German Embassy's press sum-
mary noted that "commentators
used the occasion to question
the wisdom of presenting this
play, and many observers felt
that the incident underlined the
still precarious relations be-
tween contemporary Germany
and its Jewish citizens."
For decades before Hitler,
most Germans regarded the Jew
in their midst as an alien ele-
ment. After the Hitler era, offi-
cial Germany tried to bridge the
gap and, on the surface at least,
made progress. Jews who had
returned to Germany after the
war or had newly settled there
were absorbed, to a certain ex-
tent, in the life of the country.
In Frankfurt, with its Jewish
community of 5,000, a Jewish
leader even serves on the city
council as a member of the
Christian Democratic Party. But
the Jew is still an element sepa-
rate and distinct from the Ger-
man totality and must remain
very conscious of the distinction.
The federal government and
most of the laender have vigor-
ously acted in the postwar years
against manifestations of a
neo-Nazi revival and have taken
strong measures to counter
overt anti-Semitic activities. But
decades of Nazism, as the record
shows, cannot be eradicated
overnight — not even in 40
years — and the sensitive an-
tennae of Jews who suffered
from it then must remain
closely attuned and responsive
to its echos.

Further, while leaders like
President Richard von Weiz-
sacker constantly admonish the
German people that they must
never forget the heinous crimes
perpetrated by the Nazis on the
Jewish people, most Germans
would like to be able to forget
that era entirely and absolve
themselves of any lingering feel-
ings of guilt for the crimes
against the Jewish people per-
petrated in their name.
The Fassbinder play was not a
new threat to the Jews of
Frankfurt; it is something they
have had to contend with ever
since Rainer Werner Fassbinder,

The press was
almost unanimous
in describing the
Fassbinder play as
anti-Semitic and
welcomed the
decision not to
produce it .. .

a leftwing playwright, made a
Jew the central character in a
play, Garbage, the City of Death,
dealing with an unsavory
Frankfurt municipal scandal in
the 1970s.
Fassbinder himself tried to
stage the play almost ten years
ago but gave up the attempt
after it was denounced as anti-
Semitic from the left which the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
one of Germany's most prestigi-
ous newspapers, characterized
as more dangerous than the sp-
outings of the neo-Nazi fringe.
Ulrich Schwab, director of the
repertory theater, attempted to
produce the play last year de-
spite the objections of the
theatre's advisory council and
was fired. This year, Gunther
Ruhle, a former critic who had
once denounced the play as
anti-Semitic, insisted, on putting
it on in the Kammerspiel, which
he manages, arguing that "it is
no longer a theater play; it is a
political fact."
Ruhle persisted, despite pro-
tests by the Jewish community,
the city administration and
most of the newspapers. The ac-
tual showing of the play was
prevented when 30 prominent
members of the Jewish commu-
nity occupied the stage and con-
ducted a debate with Ruhle and
the management and the as-
sembled audience for the entire
evening.
After a subsequent private
showing for the critics, most of
whom denounced the play as
anti-Semitic, Ruhle announced
abandonment of his production
plans, but not, apparently, be-
fore he had asserted publicly
that "the no-hunting season is
over" — that is, that the day

had arrived when it should be
permissible to criticize the Jews.
The press was almost unani-
mous in describing the Fassbin-
der play as anti-Semitic and
welcomed the decision not to
produce it, although the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
which had condemned it, ob-
jected strongly to the tactics
used by the Frankfurt Jews to
prevent its production.
"No citizen can be permitted
to take the law in his own
hands, not even when he refers
to the highest moral values or to
a most deeply-injured feeling," it
declared. "Reliance on respect
for the law is the ultimate
guarantee that moral claims can
be made valid and that the
rights and freedoms of the indi-
vidual can actually be pro-
tected."
The General-Anzeiger, pub-
lished in Bonn, also deplored the
forceful measures taken by the
Frankfurt Jews to prevent the
showing of the play, warning
that it might be construed as an
attempt to impose censorship.
The Dusseldorf newspaper,
Westdeutsche Zeitung, was criti-
cal of the obtuseness of the the-
ater management in seeking to
put on such a play "in this year
of remembrance with its an-
niversaries of the Nuremberg
Race Laws, Auschwitz and
Germany's surrender."
What the paper might have
noted was that at the height of
the furor over the production,
the Jews of Frankfurt, many of
them with vivid personal
memories of the event, joined
other West German Jews in
commemorating the 47th an-
niversary of Crystal Night when
Nazi storm troopers throughout
the Third Reich destroyed syna-
gogues, Jewish community
buildings and Jewish
businesses, causing more than
100 deaths and damage in the
hundreds of millions of marks.
The attempt to stage the
Fassbinder play, wrote the Of-
fenbach Post, established that
"there is no 'normalized' rela-
tionship between Jews and
non-Jews in Germany. Not even
after 40 years. Forty years is
not an interval of historic prop-
ortions, but would it be natural
and normal for Auschwitz to
have been forgotten, effaced,
blotted out? Can anyone who be-
lieves in man's humanity de-
spite all that has happened, de-
sire this?
"This (the Fassbinder) play
must hurt the survivors and
their children in a way they
must feel is brutal. It scares
them. That should have been ,
taken into consideration" the
Offenbach Post editorailized.
What might be tolerated in New
York has a different odor in
Germany, for here, the horrible
wounds of the Nazi past are
covered only by thin scar tissue.
That calls for sensitivity in our
dealings with each other.7

