Andreas Nachama, one of the few Jews in Germany today descended from the prewar community, is not so confident about the future as the official body, the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

The threat is not physical or political, but demographic, he believes.

A rabbi, he is the son of Estrongo Nachama, the Greek-born chief cantor of the Berlin Jewish community who survived Auschwitz and, according to his New York Times obituary in 2000, “did as much as anyone to revive Jewish life in that city after Hitler destroyed it.” His mother was a native Berliner.

The younger Nachama, the former leader of the Berlin Jewish community, points out that in 1998 there were 200,000 registered Jews in Germany. Today the figure is half.

The reason for the decline is that many of the Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) who flooded into the country in the 1990s were older and they have since died, he said. In addition, young Jews are leaving the country for jobs elsewhere.

Nachama is dean of the master’s program in Holocaust Communication and Tolerance at Touro College Berlin, a branch of the American institution founded under Jewish auspices. Started in 2007, the Holocaust course’s enrolment is small, but the great majority of students are not Jewish.

The college is in a suburban home originally owned in the 1920s by a Jewish department store owner but which was later confiscated by the Nazis.

The vibrancy of Jewish life in Berlin is “quite something” for such a small community, Nachama says, but “it is only surviving because the German authorities are financing it,” as well as the array of Jewish-related museums and memorials that have been created

since the 1980s.

Born in 1951 in Germany, Nachama said living there feels normal.

“I have never felt anti-Semitism. I read about it sometimes in the papers, or I hear about someone who moves out of an apartment because of something, but that is part of the reality probably for Jews in most places in the world,” he said.

The past is always present, he said, adding with a shrug, “It is what it is. If I think about all the people murdered, I would jump out the window.”

Asked what concerns him more: the political far right or radical Islam, Nachama responds: “Middle East terrorism is the main threat to Jewish institutions and life. Since the 1950s, polls have [consistently] shown 25 per cent of Germans are potentially anti-Semitic; and five per cent will vote for the far right. Until now, that has not been a threat to the Jewish community.

“Middle East terrorism is a completely different scene. I don’t know how it will develop.”

Another skeptic is Chana Schutz, deputy director and chief curator of the Centrum Judaicum, a museum and documentation centre in the former Neue Synagogue, which was once the largest shul in Germany when it was built in 1866.

She says the number of Jews is going down. Those from the FSU are “commuting” regularly back to Russia and Ukraine. The young are emigrating, often to Israel or the United States, like her own two children.

Schutz is a convert to Judaism who met her American Jewish husband in Jerusalem.

Among those Jews who settled in Germany by choice and remain glad they did is one of Nachama’s students, the American Sharon Kuckuck who came in 2001 with her German artist husband.

Her family questioned her decision, and her mother still sends her media stories about how bad things are for Jews in Europe.

“I’m always aware of history, but what keeps me here, besides being an exciting place and cheaper than elsewhere, is that I don’t feel marginalized. I feel at the centre of society. Absolutely everything is open for discussion,” she says. “People here are still unpacking history, it’s not like in the U.S., where if there is one Holocaust program, they say we’ve done that.”

Zohar Bonnie, an Israeli guide at the Jewish Museum Berlin, came 10 years ago. As a musician, Berlin was the place to be. His enthusiasm hasn’t waned. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he said.

His Canadian colleague at the museum, head of archives Aubrey Pomerance, has been living in Germany since 1983, pursuing academic interests.

He, too, sees signs of the decline. The Calgary native is pessimistic about the survival of Jewish communities in the small towns, which is where the government has been encouraging immigrants to settle. He also thinks the Israeli influx is transitory, and that the level of Jewish identification of those from the FSU is questionable.

Their children are fully integrated in German society, he observes. “We now have Russian-Jewish-German authors.”

Jewish life is “fraught with complexity,” he said, not the least of which because it is completely dependent on the German state.

“There are no Jewish community centres here as there are in North America, which would be so important. The real challenge is getting the young involved,” he says.

Certainly, the German government wants to stem any slide in the Jewish population. Felix Klein, the Federal Foreign Office’s special representative for relations with Jewish organizations, said the government is re-activating the open-door policy extended to FSU Jews in light of the strife in Ukraine.

At the same time, Klein said Germany does not want to compete with Israel, which is encouraging Ukrainian Jews to make aliyah. About 60 people are inquiring each month at the German embassy in Kiev, and a similar number in Moscow, he said. “They can come and live here right away. They are treated like ethnic Germans. They have citizenship within two months.”

Klein seems genuinely enthused. “It’s a miracle what has happened here,” he said, referring to the return of Jewish life. “Sometimes, even I can’t believe it.”