ABSTRACT
For Zalman Shazar, the third president of Israel, the night of the 19th of August 1965 was sleepless. His spokesman did not hide this fact from the numerous reporters from around the world who congregated in his quarters in Jerusalem the following morning. To the right of the president was the Israeli foreign minister, Mrs. Golda Meir; to his left, Dr. Rolf Pauls, who was now to be confirmed as Germany's first ambassador to Israel. While the ceremony in the president's house was taking place, thousands of demonstrators congregated in the narrow streets around it, many wearing concentration camp uniforms. Recent years, argues Zimmerman, have witnessed a process of "diminishing actuality of the Holocaust with regard to relationships with Germany", which has two apparently contradictory manifestations. German-Israeli relations are closer than those with any other European country. "The intensity of these relations is exceptional", says Mordechai Levi, of the department in the foreign ministry dealing with the EEC.
