7 - Relationships with ‘Minor Denominations’

Summary

As individuals were being recruited to form the religious affairs staff for the British Element of the Control Commission Germany, nobody appeared to have fully appreciated whether there would be any impact on the workings of the staff, or indeed on the wider Control Commission as a result of the experiences of the Jewish community under the Nazi regime. There also appeared to be little official awareness that in the concentration camps there would be both Jews who were German, as well as others who had been forcibly taken from their homes, elsewhere in Europe. There would also be, albeit in tiny numbers, German Jews who had survived within the wider community. All the groups deserved to be recognised as a single community that had survived a dreadful persecution. At the same time, it would also have to be recognised that they were separate communities having different needs. With the additional questions as to who a German was and how such ‘Germanness’ would be defined, it should perhaps have been unsurprising that many ‘German’ and other Jews were to see themselves as primarily defined by their Jewishness. To complicate matters further there was a growing sense that their nationality would best be defined by being part of a new Jewish state centred on Jerusalem. Such a sense of identity created especial problems for the British authorities. They administered ‘Palestine’, the area which many Jews saw as their desired future home. Conflicting policies within the British government raised sensibilities that were to cause major problems over the next few years. Some of these feelings would be encountered in the British Zone, not least in the attempts to rehabilitate the liberated Jews from the Bergen-Belsen camp who were being treated in the Bergen-Hohne barracks complex some three miles away. The programme to meet the needs of that group would have to deal with a complex mix of national identity, religious aspiration, international relations, and human charity. Neither the camp at Bergen-Belsen nor that at Bergen-Hohne were part of the remit of the Religious Affairs staff. Although they would be called upon to consider general matters of policy, the organisation of the camps lay with others, mostly those working with Displaced Persons.