German foreign office minister Cornelia Piper attended the opening of a new exhibit on the influx of Russian Jews into Germany Tuesday in Budapest, during the course of a state visit to the Hungarian capital. The exhibit, formerly displayed at the Berlin Jewish Museum last Summer, showcases the work of Michael Kerstgens, one of the few photographers to have documented the immigration of some 250,000 Russian-speaking Jews into Germany following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
The exhibition will initially be housed at the Hungarian foreign ministry from March 5-18, before transferring to its more permanent base at the Budapest History Museum in the city’s Buda Castle Building from Mary 2- June 23. The timing of the exhibition’s arrival in Budapest comes after a surge in anti-Semitic incidents in the Hungarian capital, as it aims to highlight the social and religious impact of a sudden influx of political refugees from the former Soviet Union to Germany’s existing post-Holocaust Jewish community.
The 162-strong collection of black and photographs have been in the possession of the Jewish Museum Berlin since early 2011 and will be displayed alongside an exhibit entitled Berlin Transit:Jewish Migrants fromm Eastern Europe in the 1920s, tracing “historical view of the theme of migration right up to the present and the question of how Jewish life in Germany has changed with the immigration of Russian –speaking Jews through the 20th century”.
In addition to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in Hungary which have reached a peak over the past year, including a parliamentary-represented ceremony to honour pro-Nazi Hungarian writer Jozsef Nyiro last year which caused a near diplomatic dispute with Israel and a number of official tributes to honour Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s wartime leader and ally of Adolf Hitler, the country has also seen the rise to prominence of far-right anti-Semitic party Jobbik in the Hungarian parliament, as the group advocates compiling a list of Jewish figures in official positions.
Addressing a US Congress Subcommitte debate on anti-Semitism in Europe last month, Rabbi Andrew Baker, the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Director of International Jewish Affairs and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Personal (anti-Semitic) words are no longer confined to street corner rallies; they also echo in the halls of Parliaments. Jobbik leaders demand a public listing of Hungarian Jews whom they accuse of undermining national identity”, as he insisted tat whilst popular attitudes about Jews are often derived from inherited prejudices and media coverage as opposed to first-hand experience, negative depictions of Israel in the Media at times “crosses over into anti-Semitism”.
The end of the Cold War contributed greatly to making Germany one of the few growing Jewish communities in Europe, with a population today of approximately 200,000, for the most part comprising immigrants from the former Soviet Union over the past 20 years, making it the third largest community in Europe, after France and Britain.
The influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union was aided by the Quota Refugee Act implemented by the federal government, by which the ministers of Germany’s 16 federal states in early 1991 agreed to the demands of the federal government to admit Russian-Jewish immigrants to Germany, as long as they could be verified as Jewish according to Russian documents.
Although not immediately granted German citizenship on arrival in western Europe, the quota refugees were entitled to apply for it after a certain amount of time and were likewise eligible for work permits, social security benefits and integration assistance, such as linguistic training and housing assistance. The Quota Refugee Act was suspended with the introduction of the Immigration Act of 2005, although further Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union were permitted into Germany beginning two years later, although subject to stricter requirements than previously.