Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, Vice President of World and European Jewish Congress and former President of Central Council of Jews of Germany, gave last week the Edward Ross memorial lecture at the Oxford University Chabad Society, on ‘Challenges facing Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust’.
She explained her significant life decision to continue to live in Germany after the War due to her ultimate belief in the good of the German people and that it is possible to rebuild the Jewish community of Germany even after such destruction.
This was despite what she witnessed first hand in November 1938 with Kristallnacht when she was hit by a Nazi officer after refusing to give away the hiding place of her father, a senior lawyer in the senate, when she was a young girl.
She said that, as a Jew, she believes in miracles - her standing here today is a miracle and the revival of Jewish life in Germany is nothing less than a miracle.
Dr. Knobloch said there are about 120,000 Jews in Germany today, four times the amount that existed in 1989. Jews in Germany contributed enormously to the history of Germany going back 1,700 years and they were proud to fight for Germany during the First World War and suffered enormous losses.
Pointing to the building of a major community centre in Munich, the Ohel Jakob synagogue, in 2006, which she helped found, as President of Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, she said that she saw this as a milestone in the development of Jews of Germany today as a successful community.
Dr. Knobloch praised the work of Chabad Lubavitch in this regard as crucial to Jewish communities around the world, pointing out that Chabad serves a critical role in places where there are large Jewish communities and particularly where there are no established Jewish communities, like many places in Germany. She said Chabad are excellent at involving countless unaffiliated Jews into Jewish life and whe was proud that she was instrumental in founding the first German Chabad centre in Munich.
She also addressed the stark challenges facing the German Jewish community with the rise of the far right Neo Nazi party. Dr. Knobloch declared that it is now time for the German government to declare these groups illegal, as the notion that they will on their own moderate their views has failed to materialise and therefore it is time to outlaw them completely.
Emphasising the point further, she quoted a recent study which indicated that 20 percent of Germans still have anti-Semitic views, believing in the conspiracy that Jews have too much power in the world and 45 percent think that Jews focus too much on the Holocaust.
She said that modern day anti-Semitism can be manifest in hatred to the State of Israel and that if Israel would have existed in 1941 the Holocaust of European Jewry would not have occured.
She concluded her talk by saying that Judaism is a religion of hope and that she is hopeful for the future of Jews of Germany and Europe; the Jews can be strong as a community while living in modern Germany successfully.
Dr. Knobloch visited before her lecture the medieval Jewish sites of Oxford and an exhibition of German Jewish refugee archaeologist Prof. Paul Jacobsthal, the founder of Celtic Art, which is currently on display at Oxford Town Hall.
Dr. Knobloch was welcomed to Oxford by Rabbi Eli Brackman, director of the Oxford University Chabad Society, and introduced by Chief Executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Mr. Jon Benjamin.
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