Prejudice and Discrimination
A Personal Journey
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About the Book
I try to compare my experience of prejudice and discrimination as a non-Aryan which means of Jewish descent, in Germany, with the life of young Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. Although there are differences between both I nevertheless felt many similarities. I am aware that on the one side there is no systematic physical persecution of Palestinian youngsters like it was in Hitler Germany with non-Aryans, but on the other side there is a permanent prejudice in many parts of Israeli society against the Arabs and more specifically against Palestinians. One of the most important rules in a modern democracy is the equality of all citizens before the law; this is not the case within Israel. The young people outside Israel in the occupied territories feel themselves often without identity, underdogs and victims and don't see a sense anymore in their life.
About the Author
The first segment of my life was moulded by the political climate of that era in Germany. I was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1924 but came to Germany in 1925.
During the first years of my life, I was a non-Aryan in Hitler's Third Reich. When immigrated to xenophobic Switzerland in 1935, I was further discriminated against because of my immigrant status. From Switzerland, my new home was to be in the Netherlands because my father had the Dutch nationality. In the Netherlands which was under German occupation, I was discriminated against because of my German heritage. Children at school, seeing me as a descendant of the hated German enemy, were scolding me as a rotten German.
The focus of this book is on the first 20 years of my life and the last 8 years. These years have a symbiotic relationship between discrimination against people of Jewish descent by Germany in the years 1934-1937 and of Palestinians by Israel; the former has profoundly influenced the latter. My early years formed the foundation for the dedicated work for youth in Palestine which I do today, in the last years of my life.