(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 24, 2019

RIVER EDGE, N.J. – On Wednesday, May 8, Dr. Michael Riff, director of Gross Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Ramapo College, introduced a screening and conducted a Q&A afterwards of the documentary, “An Apartment in Berlin.” Attracting 70 attendees at the River Edge Public Library in River Edge, N.J., the program wasco-sponsored by Friends of the River Edge Library, River Dell Hadassah and the River Edge Cultural Center.

With an estimated 20,000 Israelis having moved to Germany’s capital in the last few years, the film deals with the tension between their presence and Germany’s past. The filmmaker, Alice Agneskirchner, together with three young Israelis who moved to Berlin for various reasons, explores this tension by recreating and partly living in an apartment previously inhabited by the family of Simon and Rosa Adler, who more than 100 years ago came to Berlin from Galicia. Along with many of their fellow Jews, the Third Reich not only took away their livelihood and freedom, but also put an end to their lives. The three Israeli protagonists–Yael, Eyal and Yoav–are caught between identifying with the Holocaust and wanting to get on with their lives in a city that is giving them the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and find success.

In the Q&A following the film, it was apparent that the audience was equally conflicted between those who considered the behavior of the three young people as almost traitorous and aberrational and another group who saw the migration of young Israelis as a manifestation of the increasingly parallel normalization of life in Israel and Germany. In both societies, as some attendees noted, the burdens of the past that hover around the Holocaust are increasingly giving way to the practical considerations of educational attainment, affordable accommodation and personal realization.

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