Jews and Turks in Germany after 9/11 · 79museums and monuments in Germany today, albeit often under police
protection and sometimes surrounded by barbed wire.^21
Today, however, German Jews are no longer “sitting on packed suit-
cases,” and especially for Russian Jews, Germany has become an attrac-
tive country in which to live. Obviously, the welfare system that provides
generous health care privileges can be counted as a major reason that
Russian Jews along with all other immigrants are attracted to Germany.
With the arrival of Russian Jews, Jewish life in Germany became livelier.
National Jewish organizations are thriving, such as the Zentralrat der
Juden or the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle (Jewish social services) and their
own local Jewish congregations (Jüdische Gemeinden), community or-
ganizations and cultural centers in Berlin and elsewhere (for example,
the Jüdische Kulturverein), newspapers (e.g., Jüdische Allgemeine), book-
stores, synagogues, restaurants, cemeteries, and museums. Their congre-
gations have the church tax collected by the state from Jewish community
members in order to finance the communities. The Zentralrat der Juden,
some rabbis, and community leaders enjoy national political recognition,
and the Jüdische Kulturverein in Berlin and other Jewish groups orga-
nize cultural events. Moreover, Jews are entitled to practice sheḥita, the
religious slaughtering of animals, and have their own schools. As they
maintain a certain level of institutional separateness, however, it is ques-
tionable how or whether they feel at home in Germany, and some of the
discussions in Berlin’s Jüdischer Kulturverein concern whether or not a
Jew should also call him/herself a German.^22
German Turks
Only seventeen years after the conclusion of World War II and the atroci-
ties it involved, Turks started migrating to Germany.^23 When the Federal
Republic needed a labor force to rebuild the country, the government
decided to import guest workers from nearby countries.^24 Turkish mi-
grant workers were usually unskilled or semiskilled peasants who were
running away from the lack of choice, scarcity of land, unemployment,
and limited social services at home.^25 Some of them managed to reunite
with their families under the Family Reunification Law of 1972, while
others decided to stay permanently in Germany, leaving their families
behind in Turkey.^26 By 1980, there were 115,000 Turkish people living in
Berlin alone.^27