Berlin – When Karin Prien’s mother brought her to Germany as a little girl in the late 1960s, she gave him an urgent warning: “Don’t tell anyone that you are Jewish.”
Almost six decades later, Prien is now the first member of the Jewish Federal Federal Warning Cabinet, having been selected as Minister of Education, Family Affairs, Elderly, Women and Young people.
Prien told CBS News that she intended to use her platform to cope with the boom in anti-Semitism in Germany and further, and the fragility of democracy in a country that still counts with its past.
“Well, in a way, I am proud,” said the minister at CBS News in a candid interview. “Proud to be minister in the federal government, but also that I am recognized as a Jew and that German society is now so far (advanced) to accept that the Jewish people have the right to be a conscious element of this society.”
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The political career of Prien and his personal history represent an arc of conflict, tension and reconciliation which echoes that of post-Holocaust Germany itself.
“A question of responsibility”
Born in the Netherlands of the Holocaust survivors, Prien moved to Germany at the age of 4. Same child, she was strongly aware of the silence surrounding the identity of her family. The warning of his mother that it was still too dangerous to speak of being Jewish – more than two decades after the end of the war – shaped his first years.
“There was always a fear. My mother was afraid that there are still too many Nazis,” said Prien. “It was not held for granted that you could speak of being Jewish. This is something you keep inside the house. ”
With the kind authorization of Karin Prien
But this silence ultimately became intolerable. As a young teenager, she said that she had started to understand that the democratic values that she cherished – freedom, human dignity, anti -discrimination – required defense.
“I decided,” I have to do something. Democracy is not something you can hold for granted, ”she said.
But Prien still waited for decades before publicly recognizing his Jewish identity.
The turning point occurred in the early 2010s, when she was already a member of the State Parliament in Hamburg. Prien began to put pressure for systematic documentation of anti -Semitic incidents in schools. When a journalist asked her why the problem counted so much for her, she stopped and then said to him: “Because I am Jewish.”
“This is the moment when I realized that I had a political voice,” she recalls. “I had a kind of influence. And for me, it was a question of responsibility. ”
Lessons from the past for today’s threats
This sense of responsibility weighs heavily on Prien in today’s Germany, where it declared that anti -Semitism is no longer limited to political fringes.
“We see an increase in anti -Semitism all over the world,” said Prien. “They dare to be openly anti -Semitic. I think it is now more than after the end of the Second World War. They dare to be openly anti -Semitic, and it is Also in Germany become stronger and stronger. It has changed. And so we have anti -Semitic trends on the fringes, but we also have it in the middle of society. »»
While Germany once seemed to be a historical calculation model, Prien said that it feared that the complacency is essential.
After a few “honest decades”, during which Prien says that the Germans confronted the austere realities of the history of their country, “now, People die. And now we have to find new ways to talk about it. »»
Prien thinks that this should include a change in the education of the holocaust. She wants German schools to extend from their current accent on the atrocities of the Second World War to also teach the history of Israel, the cultural contributions of the Jewish Germans and the origins of anti -Semitism.
“Jewish identity is part of German identity,” she told CBS News. “Young people need to know that the Jews are not only victims. The Jewish people are diverse. They have a voice. They are part of this company. ”
Prien said that she was inspired by figures, especially Margot FriedländerA survivor of the holocaust who invented the expression: “Be human”.
This said Prien, should be the foundation of any education system in a democracy: the teaching of empathy and human dignity.
But it is not only the historical facts and the universal dignity that must be defended, she said, it is also the democratic fabric of Germany.
“We are an immigration company,” said Prien. “But we are not very good at having a fair and equal chances for children who start with more difficult conditions.”
It considers educational equity and national democratic resilience as intrinsically linked.
Prien is now making efforts to limit the use of mobile phones in German elementary schools, warning that parents and political decision -makers have been too naive about the risk of digital exposure for young people.
“We are worried about the real world. We lead our children to school and in classrooms, but we are not worried about online stuff, “she said. “It must change.”
Asked what message she has for young Jews with political ambitions in Germany today, Prien did not hesitate: “Stay. Don’t make your luggage. He is a different German. It is a country where you can live safely. And it is our work to make this promise true every day. ”