Bonn may be embarrassed no matter what it does. Official policy is to accept some Soviet Jews directly, but none via Israel. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble decided last week to extend the visitors’ tourist visas by six months but said that in the end they will have to return to Tel Aviv. In light of the past some Germans think the government should accept the Jews permanently. Says Rosenkranz, “We have a special historical, moral responsibility to accept them.”
Meanwhile, Israelis aren’t exactly rallying to the visitors’ cause. “It makes me sick,” says Gad Ben Ari of the Jewish Agency. Rampant unemployment among the 250,000 Soviet Jews who have arrived in Israel since 1989 makes it “only natural” for some to want to move elsewhere, he concedes. But it galls him that any Jew would play on German guilt to secure a new home. Bonn’s relations with Israel could suffer if Germany decides to let the Jews stay. But if it deports them, the spectacle could conjure up the worst kinds of memories on all sides.
