Dani Steinitz

Family History
Paper presented at the first Steinitz convention, Berlin1998

A. Leaving Germany and the Zionist background of Hans

My family left Germany under the threat and terror imposed by the raise to power of the Nazis. I remember father telling me that his mind was set to leave when he listened to a Nazi youth group marching in the streets of Braunschweig singing "Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt, dann geht's nochmal so gut". This tune, he claimed, gave him the final kick. Previous to it he was worried and shocked, in particular when the closest friend of our family, Dr. Richard Spanier, a renowned surgeon, was beaten half dead in the Gestapo cellars for uttering, while operating on a hopeless cancer patient in his private clinic, that he would gladly exchange the patient for Hitler. Spanier had a superb sense of humor - which I got to know much later, and couldn't miss a good joke, he believed he could afford in the company of old friends. However, a Christian nurse assistant was neither old nor friend enough and gave him away.

Father was as a boy a member (later group leader) of a Zionist youth movement. Later, when being a student, he departed from the movement, studied medicine (and music!), married and settled down as a practicing physician. His early association with Zionism made the idea of emigrating to Palestine not entirely bizarre for him. He came to Palestine in the late 1933 to investigate if and how he could make here a living. My mother, with 2 children, Ruth and myself, stayed for the time being in Germany, but felt 'uncertain' in the small Braunschweig after her husbands departure. She moved then for several months to relatives in Berlin. In the big town she felt she would not be too conspicuous. Later she thought it safer to leave Germany so she moved on to Italy where she waited for the certificates to enter Palestine. Certificates were granted only to families in possession of 1000 Sterling. Finally, in May 34 we landed in Palestine. Papa made an oath never to set foot on German soil again, which he kept.

Father turned back to Zionism. Zionism was abused at first by the Communists, later, in the eighties, almost the whole civilized world joined in - to the effect that the UN General assembly voted by an overwhelming majority for a resolution denouncing Zionism as a racist movement, which brought Israel into formal conflict with international law. This resolution was later, in the nineties, overruled by another resolution of the General Assembly.

Zionism was a national revival movement. As such, it seemed natural for Communism to denounce it, as they were officially opposed to any national 'separatist' movement. It is more difficult to understand the non-communist democracies who voted for such an absurdity, unless we contribute their attitude to the deep rooted historical anti-Semitism, changing only its name to anti-Zionism, when the sound of the old term became somewhat dissonant after World War II.

No wonder father was in lasting conflict on the subject with Wolfgang from early age, to the extent that they "couldn't stay in one room together more then so many minutes before they started fighting". Nevertheless, somewhere in middle thirties, Wolfgang persuaded Hans to come from Palestine for a visit to Leningrad, where, so he promised, he will persuade him to share Wolfgangs enthusiasm for Communism. Hans learned Russian -with a dictionary and easy texts, he was very gifted in this respect - and when ready he went to Leningrad for several months, where he worked in a hospital. He was appalled and shocked by what he experienced of the Bolshevik regime. He rejected the new paradise totally and at length, to the profound distress of his brother. He could not find any justification to the loss of freedom and the general anxiety of the people. He would not accept the reasoning that sacrifices i.e. atrocities where indispensable while laboring for the ultimate salvation of mankind. This of course deepened the cleft between the brothers to an extent that made it difficult for both to communicate. Only rarely did they overcome their antagonism in order to write to each other. The mail contact was kept up mainly by their wives. I remember however a late letter of Wolfgang, not many years before he died, in which he hinted (so it was conceived by Hans) that he changed his attitude to a certain extent: Wolfgang was talking about an eventual visit to Israel as a guest of the Jerusalem university, this visit being postponed for an unknown reason for the second time: 'I regret I must again postpone it. I am confident, if we met these days, we would understand each other much better' (quoted from memory).

At first we settled down in the then little town of Tel Aviv. In want of authorized figures, I estimate Tel Aviv had then considerably less than 100,000 inhabitants. It was soon clear to Hans that in Palestine it will be difficult for him to make a living as a doctor. In those days thousands of physicians, among them a good portion of the most distinguished ones of Germany, came to Israel and were competing on serving the small Jewish population of less than 600,000 (like a medium town in Germany), the 50,000 German immigrants included. Father was 32 on his arrival, with limited professional experience. His appearance - he was often mistaken for a teenager - was no great help either. He therefore turned to his second profession i.e. music. His musical training was excellent and he was a fairly good pianist. He started by teaching piano-playing, and in the meantime he continued his autodidactic music studies and became an expert musicologist. Step by step he developed a unique kind of popular music lectures which brought him considerable fame. He became well-known to all music lovers in Israel. Till this very day, about fifteen years after his death, again and again people tell me how father introduced them to the world of music and how grateful they are up to this very day. He had his weekly program of music lectures for many years in the national radio. He edited several books on music, and wrote several items in the "Hebrew Encyclopedia" on music related subjects.

C. Some details of the German immigration

Some general notes on the emigration from Germany. The Jewish exodus of Germany started at 33. Out of 500.000 German Jews 50,000 escaped to Palestine, a more or less equal number migrated to the USA, prior to the shutting of gates in Germany, in Palestine and also in America. Some 40,000 migrated to other countries. This emigration was highly educated and contributed enormously, far beyond its numerical ratio, to the development of Palestine and later Israel. They played a major role in the foundation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Technical high-school in Haifa (the first official lecturing language was German, later changed to Hebrew), the lawyers association (the first minister of laws was a Jeke), Industry, Architecture, Music (they played a major role in the foundation of the Philharmonic Orchestra, sponsored by Huberman who made great personal efforts to persuade Jewish-German first class musicians to join in), painting, and all other arts, and last, not least, Medicine. In most of these fields the Jekes exemplified.

D. Settling down in Ramot Hashavim

I can't tell you what drove my parents to make the unusual decision of settling in Ramot Hashavim where I live now. They were both town people Ramot Hashavim of those days was an antithesis to urban life. The idea of the Ramot Hashavim settlement was brought up by the Jewish Agency - the authority for establishment of all Jewish settlements. They sought a settling solution for professionals who could not practice their skills but had some money to invest. Agriculture was the only available solution. These people however, did never practice physical work and were - so considered - too aged to start a hard labor career. Raising chicken requires only moderate physical effort, it could therefore suit this population and provide them with a reasonable income. The standard chicken farm was set by the experts to 600 egg-laying hens. For this a standard piece of land of 4,000 square meters would be adequate. This is exactly what we had upon arrival in Ramot Hashavim. The house included, it cost all together 600 pounds, which was just a little less then my parents total fortune. This was to my judgment a quite daring step, considering what the village amounted to in the early days. There was not one paved way. There was no telephone connection. Water had to be supplied from local drillings. Traffic was by foot or by donkeys for those who could afford it (we obviously couldn't). The number of families could not support a kindergarten so we walked half an hour through deep sands to the neighboring village. The only school in the area was even further away. So I grew up barefooted in short trousers usually without a shirt for about 9 months of a year.

It didn't take too long until it was clear that there was some mistake in the calculation to the effect that one could not make a decent living with 600 hens. Whoever could turned to additional occupations, wherever possible, mostly to his former profession. Father practiced his music skills from the very first days of our resettlement. My mother turned to her profession much later, when we were semi grown up. She was a children's diseases physician. Later she specialized in child-psychiatry.

Ramot Hashavim (verbal translation: the hills of the returning - meaning Jews returning to their historical home), was, as already mentioned, an agricultural village based on one specialized branch. It was a widely accepted principle in Zionism, that the national revival of the Jews required the abandoning of the traditional Jewish occupations practiced all over the Diaspora. The Jewish salvation was closely linked to physical, manual labor - which was entirely strange to Jews - at first priority, agriculture. Another principle of the Socialist-Zionist overwhelming majority was, that the Jews had to be totally self supporting, i.e. must perform all labor by themselves. There was no such thing as degrading occupations. It was regarded unacceptable to rely on say agricultural supplies or road building on the Arab population. This may be looked upon by our opponents as a will to deprive Arabs from their income source. By no means! It was regarded unseemly to be served in any respect by aliens as in the Diaspora which was a cause for the degeneration of the Jews. There was one occupation branded as unworthy - commerce. A very broad spread occupation of Jews throughout the Diaspora. A healthy nation must support itself. Agriculture was linked to another ideal of Zionism: return to the soil. Not just to the soil as such, but to the soil of the holy homeland of the Jews. Living only in towns like in the Diaspora was another cause for decline. This reasoning gives in a nutshell the logic by which agricultural activity became an object of worship The best men are working the land! This stands in absolute contrast to the European tradition: Peasant or "Bauer" is no compliment in English or German. The Hebrew Chakla'i, (Landworker) Moshavnik (Member of a farmers settlement) and, last not least, Kibbuznik (Kibbutz member) were all held in high esteem. I did not make a research, but I venture to claim that the average members of these categories enjoyed a higher level of general education than their urban competitors. One could count on their high motivation to fulfi1l any national task, army service included. They lined up traditionally for the most endangered combat units. Their numbers of low and high rank officers exceeded by far their proportional numbers.

Absorbing this atmosphere, it was not inconceivable for an intellectual to turn to farming. In fact, the percentage of academically educated people in Ramot Hashavim I dare estimate did exceed 60 percent. Among the say 40 first families I count out of memory 14 physicians, 5 lawyers, 1 art dealer academic level, 1 actress and 1 stage director and several other academic professions. The first community head was a dentist, the second, a cardiologist and zoologist, named Walter Steinitz, my fathers 'uncle. All of them and others abandoned other activities to come and farm 600 stupid hens! Sounds crazy? Not in those days! Until the age of say 15 my dream was solely to become a good farmer, and so did all my comrades.

E. Socialist youth movement and internal conflict

Farmers yes, but not necessarily in our village. At the age of twelve, I joined a youth movement "Ha'machanot Ha'olim" - The uprising communities - who were quite extreme left and preached that only the life in a kibbutz was not only the real salvation for our individual soul, but also the worthiest contribution to the Zionist endeavor. I was absolutely carried away and would have followed this destiny without questioning, was it not for an ugly split within the organization, whether to follow and obey the Soviet model of socialism or follow the Socialist-Zionist model of the Israel workers party, i.e. accept the leadership of Ben Gurion and Berel Katznelson who advocated a Zionist Socialism, meaning, a Socialism that could be linked to the national renaissance, clearly antagonizing the Soviet Socialism. Former friends were turned over night into desperate enemies. This event made my enthusiasm fade out gradually.

However, the general change in the described attitude started in the fifties and came to climax in the nineties, uprooting most agricultural settlements. It came through the industrialization, which brought about the rise of living standards and gradually made the farmers incompetitive with low cost labor, such as the Arab workers. Kibbuzim turned more and more to industry, which demanded labor from the outside. Working at production lines was not at all regarded at high esteem. Kibbutz members didn't like to do it. One of the firmest principles of the kibbutz foundation was gradually broken - no exploitation of employees! This change effected the whole country and changed our convictions. It was no longer an ideal to be a farmer although nobody thought it was degrading in any sense. It became possible, with constantly reducing bad feelings, to admit that you might consider university studies. Boys and girls a few years older than me, saw in their admittance in an renowned agricultural school the culmination of their dreams. It was the group of my age, give and take 3 years, that accomplished the academic revolution.

F. German immigration assimilation problems

Ramot Hashavim was a sort of greenhouse in which one could stick to an illusion of being in a German village, except for some inconveniences like the dragging of feet through deep sands, up to the ankles and like being eaten by hordes of bloodthirsty flies bred in abundance in the chicken dung.

Many of the settlers did not learn the lands language, Hebrew. It so happened that our neighbors on both sides could say hardly more than good morning and ask "where is..." in Hebrew. There was one man I admired for his universal knowledge, and wisdom, whose name was Walter Steinitz whom I introduced before. He missed what could have been a brilliant academic career, just for the reason that he would not learn Hebrew! Not that he feared failure (many Jekes found it indeed very difficult), he knew quite a number of languages and had a talent for it, but he objected to the implementation of Hebrew as the state's official language. His objection was supported by Herzl's view:

(Herzl was the founder of the modem Zionism. He believed that the solution of the 'Jewish Problem' was possible only in a Jewish state. As he predicted a sort of Holocaust, and felt time was running short, especially in view of the pogroms in Russia, he urged the Jews to accept any state that would be opened to them. He therefore favored Uganda which was proposed to him by Great Britain. His plan was however down-voted in the third Zionist World Congress (initiated by him), by the east European majority who would accept no solution but Palestine which was not available at that time. In his utopian book "Altneuland" Herzl advocated that each Jewish community will speak its language of origin, e.g. the German immigrants will communicate in German. This plan was obviously unworkable).

It was unworkable for Walter Steinitz as well. After a good start in which he founded the Mediterranean sea research institute in Nahariya in the north, he settled down in Ramot Hashavim never to hold any office again, but for a short period in which he was the head of the municipality. He continued his studies for the rest of his life while his wife earned their living by chicken farming, and later, when this proved insufficient she opened a little shop for kitchenware in one of the three rooms in their little house. Walter reminded me ever of a Rembrandt reproduction hanging in our living room, showing a dark figure of a scholar in a dark room, bent deeply over an open book, sagging gradually into it, utterly detached from his environment. The eternal scholar, one may call it. Walter was relieved from shortage the day he was granted a full, retroactively paid professor's pension through the German "Widergutmachungsplan" in the fifties.

Hans was more realistic but also much younger. He learned Hebrew systematically and achieved a fair level of knowledge. Learning Hebrew doesn't come easy to Europeans. To begin with, the letters are completely different, further, Hebrew is written from left to right and omits all vowels. Next comes a syntax, very different from any European language. There is no similarity in words between Hebrew and European languages. Except for words like ganeff, osser, frosch (sei kein), schekern, and some more Hebrew words that infiltrated through Yiddish into German. You may believe me, there is nothing in common! Hans was linguistically talented and mastered the language well enough to lecture in Hebrew without embarrassment. He tried hard to master literature and poetry, even the old testament which he studied with a specialized teacher but here achievements remained moderate. He did not, however, get rid of a heavy, unmistakable German accent, which was a fate he shared with practically all Jekes. It didn't seem to be a profound professional drawback, as competitors were no better off. It did however effect his ability to participate in the cultural life in general. He would hardly understand theater plays and he couldn't read most of the modern literature which was and is still written in amazing abundance until this very day. The amount of newly published books, so I was told, is second only to the USA. Considering the number of Hebrew readers - one must exclude newcomers from Russia and a good proportion of the immigrants from Arab speaking countries who are still at a lower educational level - it is incredible. All cultural output of this hot boiling "melting pot" was beyond Hans' range. He felt Israeli yet being deprived of the capacity to fully participate, a matter which distressed him continuously.

It is amazing that the German community achieved so much in most fields, but so little in politics. The Parliament was and is almost void of Jekes or descendants. The ruling Oligarchy came from Russia and Poland. Most of them knew Hebrew upon their arrival in Palestine, as they learned Hebrew reading and writing in Talmud-Torah, the Jewish equivalent to elementary school. Later many of them went to a Yeshiva. At both schools they read holy Hebrew and Aramaic texts. There were however also Jewish secular schools, like the one Marco learned in, where one learned Hebrew. (Marco's Hebrew is a delight to this very day.) So they had a great advantage over the Jekes in language and Jewish culture, which were both venerate here. The secular Jekes had neither nor! But I believe the main factor accountable for keeping Jekes in political shadow, was the discrepancy in their motivation. The eastern Europeans came to Palestine out of political Zionist movements, patriots moved by devotion to Zionist goals, ready to carry any kind of hardship. The German Jewry came as refugees, with much skepticism, frequently feeling humiliated by what they looked upon as unfittingly low standards of culture. Many of them would have chosen different solutions if available. As a result they were often provocative out of criticism and conceit Many Jekes considered Palestine as a temporary asylum, possibly dreaming of returning 'home' to Germany after it will come to its senses. (Several did return.) This applies well to my grandfathers attitude. He would never have dreamt of leaving his beloved homeland, where he spent endless efforts to assimilate into German society, was it not because persecution and humiliation. He was proud he fought for Germany in World War I at the French front, where he commanded a field hospital, and was awarded the Iron Cross for his outstanding services.

He sold his big three stories house in the ancient quarters of Braunschweig, with most of his well equipped medical clinic, for one third price of it's value, to a German colleague. After the war he was interviewed by a lawyer for the German restitution program about eventual claims. He confirmed the buyer took advantage of his urge to sell and get out - it was 1936, high time to leave - but he would not, under any circumstances, launch a claim against a professional colleague. If he wasn't so stubborn, I could have been a wealthy man today.

G. The German heritage

The German cultural heritage was passed over to us, the descendants, which was not always to our liking. It may be that it was more outspoken for children raised in an almost homogenous Jeke settling than it was for my colleagues in town. But we all were (and are still to this very day) 'different'. Most of us still carry the stamp Jeke, even if it has bleached strongly with time. We didn't like being labeled Jeke in school and we dislike it today. Jeke stands for squareness, stupor, inflexibility. In childhood it meant also poorer achievements in the Hebrew subjects, as payment for a different mother-language being spoken at home and in the neighborhood is inevitable.

Following German tradition, we were brought up strictly. My grandfather, sitting at the head of the table would say: "Psst! Kinder haben nicht mitzureden!" (Children do not participate in the conversation) and the children wouldn't dare to utter another word. I try to imagine what may have been the reaction of my grandchildren to such a statement. They would probably burst out in loud laughter, urging grandpa to tell some more funny jokes. As parents, we recognized the prerogative of the children to talk about whatever and whenever they felt like it. Rarely would I say, rather pleading than commanding: "Wait a moment, let me first finish my sentence before you reply". But if he wouldn't? He wouldn't!

In my childhood it was generally accepted that we had to eat whatever was put on our plate. Choosing what we liked was out of question. During the war there was shortage in many items. We were quite well of, compared to people in town, as we grew a great variety of vegetables and fruits on our land. We also had some goats for milk and cream-cheese, eventually also meat. Last not least we ate eggs and hens out of the 600 hens farm. When they were served at table, they truly were "alte Suppenhühner", but still meat. Eggplant was an important source for proteins... Today was the terrible eggplant day! Sitting down at the table I saw a big, brown roasted, gray, ugly, abominable slice of eggplant on my plate. The first dish, others were to follow. It was the only item of food I hated profoundly. I new that fate had gripped me at my throat at last! This can't end well. I could have protested and argued was it not for the presence of grandpa and grandma who were watching carefully that mama wouldn't slip. I raised my tortured face speechless to my beloved mother for a sign of compassion. Compassion was drained out of her face: if you don't eat it you get nothing else! I knew, if I tried I would throw up immediately. I did not touch it when everybody was already enjoying the second wonderful dish. "We do not like to see your tortured face, now go with your plate to the kitchen, close the door behind you and eat there alone." Did mother give me a chance to throw the filth into the waste or out of the window and lie that I ate it? No! She counted on my good upbringing, she knew I could not lie to her. The meal in the hall was finished. Mother came into the kitchen, she put the plate into the refrigerator. (I guessed what it meant: as you didn't eat it today you get it again tomorrow for lunch!) What a terrible verdict. Well, this barbarous sanction was not carried out. When grannies were not in the background mother was ever so loving and understanding. True, she also new I may fight it out with her until she brakes down. Such extremities were however very rare.

28/07/98

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