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| 'East influx' impacts German poll
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Russian Jewish writer Vladimir Kaminer (L) spinning tunes during his "Russian Disco" at the Kaffee Burger in Berlin
Photo: AFP
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As Germans are preparing to elect the new members of the Bundestag or Parliament, Jewish immigration is another issue which has created a stir in German political circles during the last year.
Berlin has introduced new laws restricting the immigration of eastern European Jews, who have been moving to Germany in large numbers during the past decade.
Each year for the past three years, more Jews have immigrated to Germany than to Israel.
The mass immigration came as a result of an East German law, passed in 1990 just before German reunification.
The legislation allowed Russian Jews to enter East Germany simply by proving Jewish ancestry. The law stayed in effect after Germany was reunited in 1991. Since then, 70,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union have immigrated to Germany.
More Jews, more synagogues
| Survey on Jews and Israel |
A survey conducted in Germany at the end of 2004 by the Institute for interdisciplinary Conflict and Terror Research of the University of Bielefeld put together the following statistics:
84% of Germans polled do not approve of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
57.3% believe that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is not much better than what the Nazis did to the Jews.
38.1% claim that Israel’s policies reflect badly upon Jews everywhere.
52% believe that Jews in Germany identify more with Israel than with Germany.
65.3% are tired of hearing about Germany’s crimes against the Jews.
45.2% think that Jews are profiting from the crimes of the Third Reich. Tough the numbers remain high, significantly fewer people,
17.4%, believe that Jews’ behavior makes them responsible for their persecution and, 21.5% hold the belief that Jews have too much influence.
| In many ways, the immigration was an immense boon for German Jewry. It brought about a significant rise in the number of synagogues in the country, and there are now 110.000 members of the Jewish community in 83 different communities around the country.
When the Nazis came to power, there were 503,000 Jews living in Germany; in 1950, following World War II that number decreased to 15,000.
However the change has been far from problem-free.
Many of the Jewish immigrants never practiced their religion in the former Soviet Union and there have been complaints from the Jewish community in Berlin, where the largest number of the immigrants have settled, that the newcomers make use of the community’s social services without actually participating in the religious life of the community.
In addition, some 80 percent of the immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), many of whom have failed to find work in the country’s depressed economy, rely on the already strained social welfare system, according to a report in the “Berliner Zeitung” newspaper.
In reaction to this, German Interior Minister Otto Schily suggested a plan to limit the immigration of ex-Soviet Jews, which was approved by the German state.
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