Letter from Europe

January 10, 2001

Dear AJC Leader,

These last several months of living in Europe, together with my family, have been special in so many respects. Each and every day has brought new encounters and discoveries, even as the cloud of daily tragedy in the Middle East casts its shadow over us, as it does, I know, over you.

Rather than run the risk of overwhelming you with the many and varied impressions gathered during five months of living in Geneva, rubbing shoulders with diplomats here from many countries, teaching a graduate seminar at the Johns Hopkins University campus in Bologna, and meeting with Jewish community leaders from many European countries, let me try to organize my thoughts and approach issues from four angles.

First, I must say – and I don't mean to rub it in – that the quality of daily life in Geneva is simply unparalleled. I say that as a lifelong and proud New Yorker. Sure, there are many who say that Geneva is boring, boring, boring, but we’ve found it anything but. It’s a beautiful, well-organized, and well-located city, with a remarkable degree of civility and some wonderfully innovative urban elements that New York and other American cities could learn from.

But Geneva also reflects the complicated and schizophrenic nature of Switzerland, a country not easily described. Let me illustrate.

Every morning I go for a jog in a picture perfect park that's about one hundred feet away from our apartment building. It’s an ideal park. Hundreds of children play in it every day, yet not a single one cries. Hundreds of parents and housekeepers watch over those children, yet not a single one shouts.   Dogs, a very common feature in Switzerland, don't defecate, much less bark. And litter is simply unknown to the park.

But, as I recently learned, under this very same park, one hundred feet from our apartment building, is a fully equipped, nuclear-proof shelter for six thousand residents of our neighborhood. It has everything from nursery schools to medical facilities, and is checked periodically as part of the Swiss civil defense program. No doubt, Switzerland has the most elaborate such civil protection structure anywhere in the world. Near the picturesque city of Lucerne, for example, the tunnel of Sonnenberg was completed in 1976. It has seven bombproof floors underground, place to lodge 20,000 people, and a hospital with two operating rooms and 328 beds.

In fact, this civil defense program is part of a still more elaborate defense plan for Switzerland. Though it is not well known, Switzerland has been among the most militarized countries in Europe. All males must do military service, then serve in the reserves for several decades, and always maintain a weapon at home. Some of the scenic mountains for which Switzerland is justifiably famous have been carved out to provide secure space for planes, tanks, and artillery. Every bridge and tunnel built around the perimeter of Switzerland includes provision for destruction in the case of enemy attack, notwithstanding the fact that no one can remember the last time foreign military forces attempted to enter the country.

Indeed, so great has been the paranoia about possible attack and occupation that a secret government unit, known as P 26, was established in the 1960’s. Among its very first acts was to purchase land in Ireland, with funds provided by major Swiss banks, in case it became necessary to establish a Swiss government-in-exile.  And in 1989, it was revealed that the government had been collecting secret files on citizens, organizations and foreigners – in all, some 900,000 files. Ruth Dreifuss, the politician who recently became Switzerland’s first Jewish president, commented at the time: “Switzerland was the country in Europe that most strongly experienced the Cold War. This was our version of McCarthyism, but fortunately with less damaging consequences.”

Yes, Switzerland is a captivating and vexing country at one and the same. This schizophrenia is also amply reflected in its wartime history and its belated effort to grapple with the meaning and place of that history in its national consciousness.

Second, speaking of history, for us, as Americans, there is often a kind of romanticization that overtakes us when we travel in Europe

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We visit the palaces, the crumbling fortresses, the chateaus, the walled cities, and the castles, and we succumb to their charm.

But as a Jew living in Europe, history is not so easily romanticized. It is ever present, it is inescapable, and, more often than not, it is a sobering, at times chilling, reminder of the realities of the Jewish past.

History means going to my local branch of UBS, the leading Swiss bank, and recalling that in 1997 a Swiss bank guard named Christoph Meili was fired for trying to stop the bank from destroying records that might have shed light on dormant accounts from the wartime period. He and his family eventually had to flee the country because of death threats, and were given permanent resident status in the United States.

History means going on one of our shopping expeditions to Chambery, a charming town in the Savoie, and seeing the plaque outside a building in the center indicating that a young man living there had been deported to Mauthausen, never to return.

History means traveling to Bologna, where I teach, and being reminded of Edgardo Mortara, the six-year-old Jewish boy who, in 1858, was secretly baptized by his housekeeper, seized by the Vatican, at the time ruled by Pope Pius IX, and raised as a Catholic, despite the family’s protests. Incidentally, Pope Pius IX was just canonized, together with Pope John XXIII, by the current pope.

History means visiting Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, in the new quarters of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, a building that once served as the Luftwaffe headquarters and, more recently, as the headquarters for the East German Communist Party.

History means visiting the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, a striking building on the lakefront, and searching in vain for any reference to the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Summer Games, and then coming outside to see the glittering lights of Evian across the lake, a breathtaking sight were it not for the fact that Evian evokes the memory not just of bottled water and thermal baths, but of a failed international conference, in 1938, to assist Jewish refugees when they still might have been saved. 

History means crossing the border with France nearly every day, as we are but 2.5 miles from the frontier, a border where no one seems to care about our passports, much less visas. Each and every time I cross from France back to Switzerland, I am reminded that sixty years ago it was a sealed border. People risked, and too often lost, their lives, as they sought to puncture holes and make their way from occupation to freedom.

To be fair to the historical record, Switzerland accepted 30,000 Jewish refugees during the war, more than the United States. But many others – no one will ever know exactly how many – never made it because of the refoulement, the pushing away of refugees.

In this regard, history means the story of Aimee Stitelmann, a 16-year-old Swiss citizen, who tried to help Jewish children enter the Geneva area from France. Twice during the war Swiss authorities arrested her.  The second time, she was tried in July 1945, two months after the war's end, for having broken Swiss law by seeking to bring in unauthorized individuals, i.e. Jews fleeing the Nazis, and sentenced to two weeks in prison.

Yes, history here truly is lived each and every day.

I have to tell you the truth. Sometimes I cannot help but envy other travelers. I suspect that when they see road signs for Lyon, they think first of art museums and two-star restaurants, not of Vichy and Klaus Barbie; and when they travel to lovely Venice, they are not immediately seized with the thought that the concept of the “ghetto” originated there but rather might first debate whether the gondola ride is worth the exorbitant cost.

Third, as a friend of Israel, this has been quite a challenging period, to say the least.

Once again, I am reminded how unique is the relationship between the United States and Israel, and how equally unique is the American Jewish community.

All the European countries today have bilateral ties with Israel. They range from the special links between Germany and Israel to the more problematic ties between France or, say, Ireland and Israel. And all the European countries have Jewish communities, ranging from the French, by far the largest, to infinitesimally small populations in such countries as Finland and Portugal.  All are vitally important to the well being of Israel and the Jewish people, but none can match the unique significance of the American role in Israel’s quest for peace and security or the role played by American Jewry in advancing that role.

This reminds me yet again of the special responsibility – and remarkable opportunity – that has been placed on our shoulders.

Moreover, in recent times, all of us have experienced the shattering of illusions.  Today it's the left whose illusions have largely been shattered, yesterday it was the right.

It was the illusion of those on the right to believe that Israel could have a flourishing democracy and widespread settlement activity, and at the same time rule over two million disgruntled Palestinians, even if occupation came about as a result of acts of war by Egypt and Syria in the spring of 1967.

Now it's the left's turn. Wishful thinking about peace had replaced hard-nosed assessment of certain developments among the Palestinians. Education for hate, encouragement of violence, misuse of the Palestinian police, accumulation of weapons, release of hard-core terrorists, calls to jihad – these weren’t simply propagandistic points made by Israelis on the right, but genuine concerns with a basis in fact.

We all ought to experience a bit of humility. There is no clear path for Israel today. There are no neat and clean choices. There are very real risks whichever way Israel eventually turns. There are no experts with foolproof understanding of the region and prophetic certainty. Israel will continue to lurch from its quest for peace to its need to protect its citizens, and back again, seldom being able to keep both objectives in perfect harmony, at least until the situation clarifies itself – perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a decade, perhaps still longer – and Israelis understand whether a durable peace is truly attainable or not.

I only wish the European media would grasp these complexities, but that may be a pipe dream. With few exceptions, notably in Germany, journalists have been rough on Israel, repeatedly portraying it as the aggressor in the most unflattering possible way. If you feel the American media has too often lacked balance, I dare say it’s far worse here.

And though I can’t prove it, I have a sense, from a number of conversations in France, Italy, and Switzerland that there are some in Europe who take a special pleasure in criticizing Israel today. This could be a reaction to the last few years of Jewish criticism of European behavior during the war with respect to refugees, individual and communal property, dormant bank accounts, insurance policies, and art. Here’s a way to get back at the Jews, some contend, but in a way that cannot be characterized as anti-Semitic. And, in the same vein, here’s a way to show that the Jews really aren’t so different from the rest of us. Look, give them a powerful military and they behave no better than other armies, despite Jewish talk of morality, ethics, and concern for the oppressed and powerless.

And fourth, as an American living in Europe, it is striking to see what is taking place on this continent today. We Americans need to understand better the developments. Some very exciting and dynamic things are at hand. 

The European Union’s ongoing effort to define itself, to deepen the reach of its regional institutions, and to expand to include as many as thirteen new members, all have truly profound implications. As the recent summit in Nice suggested, it's not an easy process, far from it, but it's moving ahead. European themselves, as well as Americans, Israelis, and others, must all ask themselves what does this mean for them, and the answers may not always be obvious or internally consistent.

For one thing, it's striking to see borders disappearing.  At many points between France and Germany, for example, or France and Italy, there simply are no border crossings. For my children, who like to collect stamps in their passports, it's getting tougher.

And of course, widespread prosperity in Europe continues to be very apparent, without some of the glaring disparities between rich and poor that characterize American society, I might add.

Yet at the same time, there are obvious concerns within Europe. Let me just mention three.

One is talked about, but often obliquely or behind the scenes. There is a growing nervousness about a resurgent Germany. It’s not that Germany has behaved irresponsibly or is pushing around other countries; rather, it’s simply the realization that Germany is becoming more future-oriented and, ever so slowly, feeling less constrained by the burden of the past. As the largest country in the EU, in terms of both population and economy, its weight is considerable. And as the EU moves eastward, Germany’s influence is likely to grow further. In other words, the center of gravity of the EU is moving steadily away from Paris and toward Berlin.

Another is the question of immigration and the related matters of integration and acculturation. Pick up any newspaper in countries like Germany and Italy and there is likely to be at least one article on the subject daily. In effect, many European countries are in a bind. According to studies done by the European Union, the EU will need literally hundreds of millions of immigrants over the next decade or so in order to compensate for its declining and, in some cases, negative birthrates. Yet Europeans, to put it kindly, are, at best, ambivalent about immigration.

By and large, European countries don't define themselves, as do New World societies like Australia, Canada, and the United States. We are societies that are constantly redefining ourselves.  We are works in progress – we have been and will continue to be. That’s not the way European societies have evolved, or at least not the way the popular imagination believes they have evolved.

But today, legally and illegally, by air, by sea, and by land, from the east and the south, migrants are seeking to make their way to the thriving countries of Europe. And they are not taking no for an answer. They keep coming, finding the porous points and entering, looking for jobs and a new start.

On the one hand, as in the United States, they often do the jobs that no one else wants to do. On the other hand, talk about Albanian or Russian organized crime is heard throughout Europe. Trafficking in women from Eastern Europe is a major concern, and street crime is often associated in the public mind with this inflow of migrants. Thus, there are very mixed feelings about this migration – a recognition that some of it is necessary, but that it comes with a price and a degree of uncertainty.

And this brings me to my final point.  What will happen in the case of that uncertainty? Europe's past challenge was how it dealt with its Jews; its future challenge is largely to be defined, I believe, by how it deals with its growing Muslim populations. In Sweden today, 200,000 Muslims live in a society of nine million; in Switzerland, there are an estimated 250,000 Muslims among seven million residents; in France, four to five million Muslims live in a country of 60 million; and in Germany, mosques are rising everywhere. In Frankfurt alone, there are 27 mosques today, with more being built.

How will Europe deal with these challenges? Will it rise to the test and pave the way for smooth integration? Will it turn against the newcomers and fuel populist movements, some of which have already sprung up in such countries as Belgium, Denmark, and Italy, not to mention the most successful of all, the Freedom Party in Austria, which is a junior partner in the governing coalition? What will be the impact of the newcomers on European societies? Will they seek to change fundamentally the societies in which they live, and, if so, how?

And what will an expanded Europe, with a changing face, mean for Jews and the State of Israel? What will an increasingly strong and confident Europe mean for relations with the United States, which is sometimes seen these days as much an adversary as a friend and partner?

All are tough questions with no obvious answers. But what is certain is that what happens on the European continent has significance for us all. The American Jewish Committee, with our long-standing interest in and widespread contacts with Europe, will have to pay still more attention in the coming years to developments at work here.

My best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year from the beautiful (and yes, exciting) city of Geneva.

Sincerely,

David A. Harris