Given the violent images being broadcast from Cairo and reports of violent clashes in the streets of Alexandria between ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s opponents and supporters, it is no wonder that so many Israelis, including this very writer, are wondering whether Egypt really is a “partner for peace.” As long as that thought keeps running through my head, I am reminded of my uncles and aunts who were sent by the people of the great poet Friedrich von Schiller, to the gas chambers to the sweet sounds of that anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner.
There are still men and women among us who remember how their Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian neighbors, all part of the “European cultural milieu,” turned them over to the Nazis. There is nothing like the Holocaust in all of modern history, and yet for Israelis and Germans alike, it was not enough to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries 20 years after the war was over. Despite the trauma, despite the memories, these two enemies became friends. Israel’s finest musicians now play in the Berlin Philharmonic, Israeli students pack the lecture halls of German universities, Israeli researchers attend scientific conferences in Munich alongside colleagues whose grandparents belong to the SS generation, and German colleagues are welcomed to Jerusalem with open arms.
