You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
“Let us be realistic, let us try the impossible.”
Ernesto Che Guevara (quoted by Eva Maria Staudinger in Fed with Tears—Poisoned with Milk, p. 153)
In a Series of Conferences, German and Israeli psychoanalysts met with Tavistock-trained group leaders to explore how feelings and fantasies about “German-ness” and “Israeli-ness/Jewish-ness” influenced the ways they related to each other. This book emerged out of their experiences. It is a collage of expressions of what the meetings meant to some of the individual participants. Rather than attempt to summarize, I offer my thoughts about some of the issues these contributors raise.
“I am not my father, but his daughter”
Jutta Matzner-Eicke (Fed with Tears—Poisoned with Milk, p. 146)
What do we each believe is the extent, and the limit, of individual responsibility? In our hearts, do we hold ourselves, and each other, accountable for only our own actions and inactions? I think most would agree that a German person born after the war should not be held responsible for the crimes committed during the Holocaust. Likewise, it is relatively easy to assert that an Israeli is not responsible for upholding his or her parents' attitudes toward the German people. But strong feelings can override rational assertions. And we can understand this when we listen to Ursula Kreuzer-Haustein's report (p. 126) that she heard of an Israeli conference participant whose mother implored him not to travel with a friend in Germany, saying, “Don't do that, don't trust them, they killed your grandparents!” Some of the conference participants felt powerful shame and guilt, and a sense of being a betrayer, merely because