JERUSALEM — Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz in late January 1945, advertisements are appearing on the front pages here encouraging former Polish Jews and their descendants in Israel to apply for Polish citizenship. What's more, as many as a quarter of a million Israelis who fled Nazi Germany and their descendants have obtained German citizenship.
In applying for European Union passports, these Israelis are supposedly taking advantage of their right to "return home," having fled the countries of their birth as victims of persecution. But that's not what this is really about. Few of the Israelis who are seeking to renew their former citizenship actually regard themselves as Poles or Germans, and they obviously don't intend to restart their lives in Warsaw or Berlin.
Some Israelis say they obtained foreign passports "for the sake of the children": One day they may want to study or work in Europe; they even may want to live there. No, not in Poland, probably not even in Germany, but perhaps in England. Others say they do it because the passports will make it easier for them to travel in countries where Israeli passports are less welcome.
But beneath consular and bureaucratic convenience there lies a deeper explanation for why Israelis want European citizenship. Many Israelis still feel, at least in the back of their minds and very much in Jewish tradition, that "you never know" what hazards might befall you or your country. Obtaining a Polish or a German passport thus -- quite ironically -- reflects the personal lessons many Israelis have drawn from the Holocaust: You are never really safe. Threats to the Jews can reemerge at any time. It always makes sense to have a fallback plan.
The decision to take on additional citizenship offers a rather embarrassing affront to the Zionist ideology (which proposed the creation of a safe, secure homeland, a refuge to which Jews could always "return" when they were in danger).
One of the country's first laws, passed in 1950, made every Jew in the world eligible for Israeli citizenship. "The Law of Return," as it was called, owes its name to the basic idea of the Zionist creed -- that all Jews stem from the original Hebrews of Palestine who were exiled from their homeland 2,000 years ago and hence have an inalienable right to come home.
But the Law of Return has not always worked quite as smoothly as many had hoped.
