THE SURVIVORS

Norbert Muhlen is an established magazine contributor -- from the Reader's Digest to The Reporter and this ""Report on the Jews in Germany Today"" might have originated as a series of articles: it is something less than a book. Even so it is interesting to have this perspective, based on the available but not always conclusive evidence, which together with his earlier (1953) The Return of Germany, is a quiet, firm rebuttal of Teten's The New Germany and the Old Nazis (Random House) which appeared last year. Where there were 15,000 Jewish survivors after the war, returnees, converts and the next generation now almost triple the figure. He discusses some postwar incidents of anti-semitism in the ""apparent Nazi revival""- apparent in the operative word- and dismisses the Sumpf case which Look magazine exploited in 1959 and later Tetens in the above book. He attempted to spark anti-semitic outbursts by publicly reading a Jewish newspaper- and failed; he feels that anti-semitism has only ""survived among a diminishing majority"" and indicates the current, militant philo-semitic trend. Jews today only face a real threat in East Germany, and the intellectual affinity between the Jews and the Germans favors a mutually profitable revival, once (?) old wounds heal... A reassuring interim report.