Germans, Jews, Israelis: The Indissoluble complicity

Abstract

A survivor of the Kovno Ghetto and of several Nazi labour camps, Vera Elyashiv was barely sixteen years old when the Russian army entered Germany and liberated the camp in which she found herself with several hundred women, minutes before the German guards lined them up to be ‘liquidated’. After the war she went to Israel where her only aunt lived, her entire family having been killed by the Germans. She worked for many years as the parliamentary correspondent of the Israeli daily, Davar. She now lives in London, as a freelance writer and journalist. An account of her experiences during the war years, written in 1945, appeared in the Summer, 1970, issue of The Jewish Quarterly. Her book on post-war Germany entitled ‘Deutschland kein Wintermaerchen’ was published in 1964 by Elon Verlag. The following essay is a revised version of Miss Elyashiv's contribution to a collection of essays by several authors under the title, SO SEHEN SIE DEUTSCHLAND (‘This is how they see Germany’), published by the Seewald Verl...