Joske Ereli

Joske Ereli (2007)

Joske Ereli (right) with his Bad Kissingen school friend, the physicist Jack Steinberger (on July 23, 2008 in Bad Kissingen)

Joske Ereli , born as Hans-Josef Ehrlich (born September 13, 1921 in Bad Kissingen , Lower Franconia ; † November 4, 2014 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli of German-Jewish origin, a former spa manager and tourism director of the Israeli kibbutz En Gedi . He was the initiator and active "motor" of the partnership between the Bad Kissingen and Tamar districts , for which he has received several awards. He is one of the few foreign winners of the German Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon .

Life

His father Ludwig Ehrlich ran the prestigious fashion house "Felix Ehrlich" with his wife Grete and his brother Franz in the spa town of Bad Kissingen (Ludwigstrasse 17), at that time the largest shop in the area. His grandfather was the first Jew to be elected to the Bad Kissingen magistrate in 1908. Hans-Josef had a sister Shoshana and a brother Felix .

Since 1935 Ehrlich (Ereli) was no longer allowed to attend the Kissingen school, which is why he switched to a Jewish boarding school in Coburg . From March to September 1938 he helped in his parents' fashion store, after which he worked in agriculture in a preparation camp for emigrants to Palestine because he wanted to become a farmer.

In the same year Ehrlich emigrated to what was then Palestine, where he later served in the Israeli army and had himself renamed Joske Ereli as an Israeli officer - according to Ben Gurion's instructions for all officers . He soon found his new home in kibbutz En Gedi on the Dead Sea , where he still lives today (2012). Later he was managing director of the health resort in Kibbutz En Gedi - a purely coincidental parallel to his native town. It is also thanks to him that the kibbutz has become a popular tourist destination.

In 1959 he returned to Bad Kissingen for the first time. On his second visit to Germany in 1972, as a visitor to the Olympic Games in Munich , he witnessed the terrorist attack ( hostage-taking of Munich ) by the Palestinian group " Black September " on Israeli athletes.

Services to German-Jewish reconciliation

In 1979 a group of young people from Bad Kissingen stayed in Kibbutz En Gedi through the mediation of the youth union from Tel Aviv. Since he was the only one who spoke German in the kibbutz, Ereli was asked to look after the German youth. This meeting was the impetus for him to campaign for reconciliation between Germans and Jews, especially between the German district of Bad Kissingen and the Israeli district of Tamar. In 1984 there were the first official contacts between the two districts. A regular youth exchange followed, but it was not until 17 years later, in 1997, at his unstoppable urging, that an official partnership between the two districts finally came about, which has been intensively pursued by all those responsible ever since.

Honors

In 2001 Ereli received the citizen's medal in silver of the city of Bad Kissingen and the silver medal of the Bad Kissingen district. On August 17, 2009, Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann presented him with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in the house of the Jewish Community in Munich on behalf of the Federal President and in the presence of Charlotte Knobloch , President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany . The official reason was: "Joske Ereli (80) from Israel has made lasting merits through his tireless work for international understanding and reconciliation between Israel and Germany." Ereli is one of the few foreigners to have been awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit.

literature

• Isolde Krapf: Joske Ereli celebrates 90th birthday , in: Main-Post from September 13, 2011

Notes, individual references

1. ↑ This age is just as wrong as some information in the official press release; see: Official press release of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.