By Dalia Karpel

With its lovely stone buildings, red-tiled roofs, old pine trees and picturesque alleyways, Jerusalem’s German Colony is an enchanting area. But in the 1930s, a branch of the Nazi Party operated openly in this pastoral neighborhood, established by the Templers, who belonged to a messianic religious cult that came to the Holy Land from Germany in 1868. How many of them were Nazis? Were they just a tiny minority, as Templer scholar Alex Carmel claims? German journalist Ralf Balke researched the matter and found that in 1939, the Nazi Party in Palestine had 350 members, out of a total of 2,100 German inhabitants.

In 1869, an agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Prussia permitted Germans to buy land in Jerusalem, and Matthaus Frank, a Templer, purchased plots of land in Emek Refaim. His house was the first to be built in the Colony, in 1873, and that same year, the Templer Committee decided to build the movement’s spiritual center in Jerusalem.

By 1910, the German Colony had about 400 inhabitants. For the most part, they eschewed farming and worked as craftsmen and merchants. The Colony also boasted three inns, a Templer bank, a flour mill and a bakery. There was a general physician, an apothecary, two obstetricians and a well-known painter. Architects, engineers and builders from the colony also played an important part in building western Jerusalem. David Kroyanker’s new book, “The German Colony and Emek Refaim Street” (published jointly in Hebrew by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and Keter) provides a fascinating, photograph-filled history of the German Colony from the 19th century to the present, and also suggests walking tours of the area focusing on prominent Templer architects and builders.

Kroyanker, an architect and researcher who worked on this project with his wife Leora, devotes a chapter of the book to the Nazi period: “In the Shadow of the Swastika: 1933-1939.” In addition to previously published materials, like the writings of journalist and author Haviv Canaan, Kroyanker relies on new, compelling sources from private archives, such as Templer manuscripts and memoirs published in Australia in German, and adds rare photographs that are being publicized for the first time.

Kroyanker was intrigued by the human side of the German Colony’s history. His book describes the customs and ways of life of this group of people whose arrival here from south Germany was akin to “landing on the moon.” They settled on rocky farmland that was purchased from the Arab village of Beit Safafa and built a “model settlement.”

“Look at the family photos and you’ll see that they look like they stepped out of a late 19th-century magazine,” he says. “They were photographed in Jerusalem dressed in their finest clothes in order to represent a European way of life in the heart of the baksheesh [a tip or bribe] wilderness. In some of the memoirs, you see their contemptuous attitude toward the Arabs because of the baksheesh culture, which was a problem that particularly bothered them.”

Kroyanker stresses in his book that until Hitler came to power, the Templers and their Jewish neighbors enjoyed good relations. The Germans patronized the Jews’ shops and went to Jewish doctors, while Jewish business owners stocked products from Germany and the cinemas screened German films. There were also partnerships between businessmen and merchants from the two communities.

Not all the Templers were swept up in the nationalist fervor after the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany. There were some, primarily from the older generation, who worried about Nazi ideology taking precedence over the Templer ideology of messianic longings and the striving to create a Christian religious utopia. Kroyanker quotes an article from the Templer journal Warte, which criticizes Nazi ideology, saying “It ought not to be viewed as Christian, since it is founded on an Indo-German faith that leads to idol worship.” But that didn’t stop the growing support for Nazism.

Heil Hitler

The founder of the Nazi organization in Palestine in 1933 was the architect Karl Ruff, from Haifa. Nazi party branches were established in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem and in several other Templer colonies. The Jerusalem branch was the largest; in April 1934, it had 67 registered members (the Haifa branch had 48). Ludwig Buchhalter, a teacher in the Templer school in the German Colony, was appointed head of the branch; he received instructions from Berlin and worked in coordination with the German consulate.

In April 1934, Buchhalter hosted a party for local residents at the party headquarters in Jerusalem to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. The event began with a performance by the boys choir from the Schneller orphanage. “After that, Buchhalter, the branch leader, called for everyone to honor the 45-year-old fuehrer with a triple Sieg Heil salute. Of all the fuehrer’s qualities, he emphasized the man’s humility.” Buchhalter also read aloud a chapter from the book “With Hitler on the Road to Power.”

On May 1, 1934, the consulate hosted a festive reception and “it was decided that the members were now obliged to greet one another with a Heil Hitler greeting and straight-armed salute on the street, too, on condition that the greeting would not be interpreted as a provocation to others.” Buchhalter summoned the party members to the Sport Club in Katamon, for a meeting with the chairman of the Nazi party in Stuttgart, who had come for a visit. That location was also used for lectures by professional Nazi propagandists, who promised their listeners that victory was assured and that they need only be patient.

Until 1934, a British branch of the Scouts operated in the German Colony and held varied activities, for boys and girls separately. The youths went on hikes and erected tent camps in the Wilhelma Templer colony, learned Morse code, knot-tying and first aid, and sang British songs. In 1934, the club was converted to a branch of the Nazi youth movement, the Hitler Jugend.

Haviv Canaan, who was an officer in the Mandate police at the time, described in his writings what Kroyanker calls “a typical National Socialist street scene in the second half of the 1930s”: “Visible through the open windows of the mostly one-story houses was old but distinguished furniture, and the walls were adorned with pictures of leaders of the Reich. On the sides of the balconies, under the roof, swastika flags lay folded.”

The architect and builder Hermann Imberger used to stroll down the Colony’s main street every Sunday, with a swastika band around his arm, and the Arabs he passed “saluted him with admiration.”

The residents, wrote Canaan, who were almost all Templers, “gazed with curiosity upon the new policeman who came to guard their safety, and it was obvious that they were uncomfortable with the fact that this policeman was a Jew. I clearly sensed looks of scorn and incredulity. A few days later, I noticed that when they passed by me, the German residents would salute each other with a loud ‘Heil Hitler’ and a Nazi salute.”

Kroyanker also tells about the resistance that existed within the community to the Nazi activity: Philip Vorst, head of the Templer Association, banned the Nazi salute from the schools in 1935. Hala Sakakini and her sister, daughters of the renowned educator Khalil Sakakini, attended the Templer school, and Hala wrote about it in her memoir “Jerusalem and I: A Personal Record,” which was published in English in 1990: “In 1935, secret gatherings of the German students began happening. Within a few months, the gatherings became open and full of fervor. We soon learned the names of the groups to which they belonged - the boys in the Hitler Jugend and the girls in the League of German Girls. They had symbols and a special uniform that was ordered from Germany.”

Aviv Canaan described in his memoirs how frightened he felt when he saw “members of the Hitler Jugend practicing signaling and hand-to-hand combat in the rocky fields of the Katamon neighborhood. The British would just shrug their shoulders and say: ‘It’s Scouts. Why not?’ At the time, I saw this minority with its arrogant pride and its worship of the fuehrer, how ecstatic it became at the sound of every hysterical screech on the German radio, celebrating the conquests of the Saar, Memel, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia.”

Ban versus ban

During the Arab revolt against the British, which began in April 1936 with a general strike that lasted six months, some Arabs saw the Templers as prospective allies in their struggle, and hoped that Nazi Germany would conquer Palestine from the British. Buchhalter told the German journalist Ralf Balke, whose book about the Nazi party in Palestine was published in 2001, how he would travel without any problem in his car, which had a Nazi flag attached, through areas that were under Arab control. And that once, when he forgot to remove the flag from the car, he “entered an area under Jewish control and came under fire from Jewish vehicles.”

Sakakini writes that the German children were sympathetic to the Arabs and, during recess, would throw stones at the Jewish buses that passed the school. But the school principal, Wilhelm Eppinger, refused to join the Nazi party. In October 1937, when it was decided that the school was to be merged with the school of the city’s German Evangelical community, Eppinger was dismissed and replaced by Philip Vorst, who by this point was going along with the Nazis. Vorst exhorted the parents, students and teachers who assembled for the school’s grand opening to cooperate with one another in keeping with the lofty spirit of Adolf Hitler. The school had 89 pupils then: 51 Germans, 27 Palestinians and the rest a mixture of Britons, Austrians and Americans.

In her book, Sakakini described the changes that occurred in the curriculum. Young teachers recited political and patriotic poems to the students. The German Ministry of Information and Propaganda encouraged Palestinian students to attend the German school in order to create a cadre of pro-German leadership that would govern an independent Palestinian state in the future, reports Kroyanker, quoting from a document in the state archives. Palestinian pupils made up about a quarter of the student population and were also able to study Arabic there.

Buchhalter, the head of the local Nazi branch, used to threaten residents of the Colony who didn’t adhere to the Third Reich’s anti-Semitic demands. Because of the attacks on Jews in Germany, the Jews in Palestine declared a ban on German businesses. Architect Gottlieb Bohrle, a German Colony resident, was a partner with Matthaus Frank and Eliezer Lipman, a Jew, in a business on Bethlehem Road that sold lumber and coal. Bohrle was also the owner of the Orient Cinema. In late 1934, the Jewish cinema owners in Jerusalem, including the proprietors of the Edison, Zion and Eden cinemas, together with their counterparts from Tel Aviv and Haifa, appealed to the film distributors in the country and to the committee that imposed a ban on the screening of German films, arguing that Bohrle was “an agent of Hitler.”

Bohrle hired the services of a Jewish attorney, Dr. Mordechai Buchsbaum, who demanded that the cinema owners withdraw their claim, “in view of this accusation having been made solely for commercial purpose in order to be rid of a new competitor, despite your knowledge that Mr. Bohrle has no connection whatsoever with Hitler’s agents and that he has proven throughout his life and by all of his actions that he has no connection with haters of Israel. Your action has caused offense to my client and is liable to cause him further damage and losses.”

The management of the Zion Cinema responded immediately: “We hereby inform His Honor that we never thought to insult anyone, and Mr. Bohrle in particular, whom we do not know at all; and it is only from the above letter that we learned that the aforementioned person runs a cinema in Jerusalem. In our opinion, the expression ‘an agent of Hitler’ is not a term of insult, and if Mr. Bohrle is offended by this expression, then we greatly regret it and ask his pardon.”

Business with Jews

About a year later, Bohrle rented out the cinema to Eitan Belkind, who continued to operate it after changing its name to Efrat. Bohrle got himself in trouble with his Nazi neighbors, too. In January 1936, he received a threatening letter from Buchhalter: “The local leadership of the National-Socialist party was astounded to learn of the rental of your cinema to Jews. In this context, we direct your attention to the fact that the sale of German property within the German Colonies currently requires permission from the party’s Foreign Organization, and this applies in any case concerning a sale to non-Aryans with German citizenship.”

Buchhalter noted that he was sending copies of his letter to the party leader in Germany and to the party’s Foreign Organization: “In this regard, you should take note of the potential consequences of your moves for you and your family. In the hope that you, as one of the nation, place the interests of your nation above your own, in accordance with the fuehrer’s principle of ‘the common good before the individual good.’ Signed: Heil Hitler!, Ludwig Buchhalter, branch director.”

At the end of his letter, Buchhalter adds: “P. S.: We ask that you keep this letter confidential, and ensure that it does not come into Jewish hands.”

This bit of correspondence was found amid the extensive estate of Aryeh Gini, an architect who worked in the Jerusalem municipality and dealt with city planning until the 1990s. His father perished in Auschwitz, and he was raised by his grandfather, Ben-Zion Gini, who was the first city engineer in Jaffa, starting in 1911, and then the city engineer in Jerusalem, from 1917 on. Aryeh Gini collected documents, maps, letters and photographs related to the city and to the Templers. Some of the photos and letters published in Kroyanker’s book come from his archive, which is now in the possession of his widow and his son, television and radio personality Yoav Ginai.

Gottlieb Bohrle is one example of a Templer who refused to join the ranks of the Nazi party. In a letter he sent to his attorney, Buchsbaum, in August 1950 from Australia, where the British had exiled the Templers during World War II, he wrote that his home and his assets, including the cinema, had been confiscated and transferred to the custodian of absentee property. He asked Buchsbaum, who was also his friend, to try to rescue his property. He repeatedly declared that he had never been a Nazi, that he had opposed the Nazi regime and even received threats from the Nazi party branch. He added that he was treated like a traitor because he refused to fly the Nazi flag in front of his cinema.

From the letters in Gini’s collection, from which Kroyanker quotes, it appears that Bohrle declined to screen Nazi propaganda films in his cinema, and that the Jerusalem Nazis responded by banning people from patronizing his business, which brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. After his daughter married a man who was opposed to the Nazi ideology and even invited some of his Jewish friends to their wedding, the Templer community informed him that his presence was no longer desired at the Sunday prayer services.

Beginning in 1935, the Nazi party branches in Palestine instructed the Germans not to employ Jewish workers, and also recommended dissolving any business partnerships with Jews. The Frank flour mill and bakery at 24 Bethlehem Road was run by Matthaus Frank and his son Edwin in partnership with Eliezer Lipman, a Jew from Safed who lived in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. Lipman had started out as a hired worker and gradually become a partner and friend.

In 1914, Frank helped Lipman obtain Austrian citizenship and thus he was able to avoid being conscripted into the Ottoman army. In the 1920s, the Lipman family moved to a Templer house in the German Colony, which they rented. The chief baker in the bakery was an Arab, and during the 1929 riots, he warned Lipman of the danger that awaited him and his family, and they stayed away from their home for several days.

Aharon Lipman, writes Kroyanker, told about how his father’s partnership with the Frank family was ended. In 1935, Edwin Frank returned from Germany with his Nazi fiancee. Eliezer Lipman was invited to a festive dinner, where he was politely informed that, despite his loyalty and diligence, the partnership had to be dissolved, because of the prohibition on maintaining business ties with Jews.

During World War II, shortly before members of the Frank family were arrested and deported to Australia, Lipman was asked to watch over their assets until their return to Jerusalem. In a secret agreement, Lipman pledged to return their property to them upon their return to Palestine after the war. In return, he was promised that when Rommel and the German army conquered Palestine, they would do their utmost to ensure that the Lipman family was not harmed.

Enemy property

Ludwig Buchhalter reported to the Nazi leadership in Berlin about the possibility of selling two German properties to Jews - the buildings of the Bikur Holim compound and the Schneller orphanage. Kroyanker has also written a fascinating article, as yet unpublished, about the sale of these properties.

Kroyanker says the first structure in the Bikur Holim compound is the impressive building of the former German hospital, which was built in the late 19th century by a Christian order of nuns. The monumental building was designed in the style of public buildings in southern Germany, and features a charming bell tower in the center. “My position is not to oppose the sale of the existing hospital, since no one will be harmed by this,” Buchhalter wrote to Berlin on January 4, 1936. “On the contrary, a future profit could be made by selling it to Jews … A similar problem is the sale of the Syrian orphanage (Schneller), which is also completely surrounded by Jews … Both of these institutions would benefit from a successful sale, which would make it possible for them to be rebuilt outside the city.”

Representatives of the Zionist movement, writes Kroyanker, wanted to explore the possibility of buying the hospital. The architect Wilhelm Hecker, who was active in the movement’s institutions and served as an advisor to the National Committee (Hava’ad Haleumi), wrote on August 11, 1937 to Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, then president of the National Committee: “I have just received a letter from the president of the aforementioned hospital, from Germany, and she will soon return to Palestine and then it will be possible to conduct negotiations on this matter … It will be possible to buy the lot of the German hospital cheaply.”

That same year, Dr. Eberhard Gmelin, director of the German hospital, who was also active in the local Nazi party, began dismissing the Jewish doctors who worked at the hospital. In the end, the Zionist movement did not purchase the building, which remained in the Germans’ hands until the outbreak of World War II, and then became “enemy property.” From that point on until the establishment of the state in 1948, it functioned as a hospital of the Mandatory government.

The Schneller complex, which has housed a large military base since the end of World War II, is now one of the most valuable real estate assets in the city. The compound, which abuts the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, comprises about 150 dunams and includes, in addition to several buildings of historical and architectural value, open areas intended for construction of new residential neighborhoods for the ultra-Orthodox. Because of an ongoing dispute between the army and the Israel Lands Administration, says Kroyanker, none of the many plans for the site that have been proposed over the past 30 years have been put into effect, and the area remains untouched.

Kroyanker: “In 1860, Johann Ludwig Schneller, a Protestant German missionary, founded the ‘Syrian Orphanage,’ which became a well-reputed educational-philanthropic institution, primarily because of the professional training it provided to the youths who resided there, most of whom were Christian Arabs. In the 1930s, the Schneller institution also became a center of Nazi activity in Jerusalem. Ernst Schneller, the founder’s grandson, represented the Augusta Victoria Foundation here at that time, which worked to promote German nationalism. The Schneller printing house produced the Nazi party stationery and party members were entitled to a 10 percent discount. Because of the Schneller family’s Nazi ties, the British secret police eavesdropped on their telephone conversations, and monitored their movements.”

From secret police documents from 1936 to 1939, Kroyanker learned that the Schneller institution attempted to import weapons and ammunition from Germany, in order to train Arabs. In 1938, a booklet published by the Schneller institution included an article by Ludwig Schneller describing the feeling of suffocation at the German institution due to the proximity of Jews in the surrounding area, and expressing some blatantly anti-Semitic views:

“The Zionists specifically chose the area of the Syrian Orphanage in Jerusalem … Our institutions are like a remote island in the turbulent sea of Jews. The entire surrounding area, which until now was a rural ara, is about to be declared an autonomous Jewish suburb. Subsequently, they will definitely gain the ability and the necessary legal means to expel us according to their will. The Jewish mayor will then have the legal authority to change the rural land tax we paid up to now to an urban tax and to increase it five-fold in this way. He will have the authority if he so wishes to pave a road 42 meters wide in our territory and to appropriate for this purpose, without compensation, the large area required. He will have the legal authority to take all of our territory, which, over 70 years of ongoing work, we have transformed from a desert and hills into splendid gardens and groves, and declare it to be public parks and thus we will no longer have any control over them.

“Moreover, these settlements (neighborhoods) of Jews from Eastern Europe are not only full of dirt, but also of a very low moral level, such that their proximity is not fitting for educational institutions. For these reasons, we were compelled to decide, already a few years ago, to retreat from the Jews … We found a place for ourselves, and after extensive examination, the area has been found to be extremely suitable. It is near the Mar Elias monastery, on a high plateau with its white building standing like an outpost in the mountains. Before the land prices soared we were able to buy the large part of the needed area at a relatively inexpensive price. A special advantage of this land comes from the fact that, by law, it can never be purchased by Jews, since the lands that border it are Church property and will never be sold to Jews.”

Schneller’s plan never came to pass. Buchhalter lived a long life, says Kroyanker. He died two years ago, over the age of 100. “Until his dying day, he never regretted a thing. As part of the reparations agreement, the Templers received compensation from the State of Israel. Buchhalter got $60,000 for his house in the German Colony.”W

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 and is filed under history. You can leave a response.