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current exhibition

Avraham Eilat

"JECKES - Die Deutschen Israels"

12. November 2021 - 15. Januar 2022

"Jeckes - The Germans of Israel".

They are still a community today, the "Irgun Jeckes", German-speaking Jews who fled to Palestine from the Nazis.

The elders fled to Palestine from German-speaking countries in the 1930s and 1940s. Younger ones moved here in the 21st century. Before the Second World War, about 2,000 German-speaking residents arrived, then during the Nazi era up to 60,000, at which time they made up a fifth of all immigrants.

Jeckes - alluding to the formal suit jackets that the new immigrants often wore even in the Mediterranean heat - are the name given in Israel to the German and German-speaking Jews who came to establish settlements in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.

For some "Jeckes" it was a long-cherished wish, as they grew up in families shaped by Zionist ideals. For many others it was less easy. A large part of the arrivals did not leave Germany voluntarily. For many it was a matter of survival.

The German heritage has very much entered the cityscape in Haifa - in the form of Bauhaus architecture, which has been given a new lease of life in Israel's Mediterranean metropolis in both senses of the word by the architects expelled from Germany in 1933. Mediterranean curves and pilotis on the ground floor to guarantee a little breeze in the heat.

But German-born or German-speaking Jews were also involved in the construction of several kibbutzes.

The works by Avraham Eilat presented in the exhibition are dedicated to these two focal points. The Israeli artist and photographer Avraham Eilat shows the historical Haifa with its beauty of Bauhaus architecture and his picture series "Kibbutz", taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with impressive photographs. Photographic contemporary documents of an impressive density that is so rare.

The exhibition project is part of the programme of the anniversary year

"321 - 2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany".

Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier is the patron of this anniversary year.