It's one of the strangest migrations of the 21st century — Israelis moving en masse to the former Nazi capital Berlin.

Foreign Correspondent's Eric Campbell met some of the young Jews making a new home in a city their grandparents fled.

Ori Halevy

It's Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel and Ori Halevy is pondering how to work it into his stand-up comedy routine in Berlin.

"What else do you do on Holocaust Day?" he quips.

"If you go to Israel and tell a Holocaust joke, everybody's going to be like, 'we've heard it'."

He's one of an estimated 13,000 Israelis who have moved to a city once synonymous with anti-Semitic terror.

But Berlin is now determinedly welcoming and so international that even the comedy scene is in English.

Ori Halevy plays on the tension of being Jewish in Germany in his stand-up comedy.

That's a rich comedic mine for Mr Halevy, who enjoys making politically correct audiences squirm.

"I don't feel I should be paying for stuff here," he says at the start of his routine.

"Like a waiter comes up to me, 'that'll be 10 Euros, sir,' and I'm like, 'Really? Really? You're not aware of the history?' 'This is a Vietnamese restaurant.' 'Yes, but still, still'."

The foreigners in the audience guffaw while the Berliners smile uncomfortably.

"Germans don't laugh at that," he continues.

"They take Hitler way too seriously. Which I think was the problem in the first place, when you think about it."

Berlin continues to evoke repellent images for many Holocaust survivors and their children who built the State of Israel. It was where the Nazis planned and directed the genocide of 6 million Jews, spurring the establishment of Israel as a safe haven.

But young Israelis — the so-called "third generation" — are more likely to think of Berlin as the capital of cool.

Shirah Roth

Shirah Roth was attracted to Berlin by the city's low cost of living and vibrant arts scene.

"It's the best place to be poor and creative," says Shirah Roth, a 36-year-old singer who, like Ori Halevy, dabbles in stand-up comedy.

"I left Israel with debt, like I owe money, and I actually had to move out of Israel to pay it back."

Berlin's vibrant arts scene and relatively cheap rents have long attracted young expats from around the world, particularly after West Berlin reunited with the formerly communist East Berlin in 1990.

But Israelis were slow to join the influx.

Ofer Waldman

Ofer Waldman remembers being a novelty when he moved from Jerusalem to Berlin in 1999 to play in an orchestra.

"Most Germans had never met a Jew actually. Now with all the Israelis here, it becomes more and more rare, but I remember when I just got here [people would ask] 'Bist du Jude — you're a Jew?' It's like, 'Oh my God we've never seen a living one'," he says.

Things started to change in 2011, when cost of living protests broke out across Israel.

Ofer Waldman runs the German chapter of a human rights group which criticises Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Young people began talking about Berlin as an affordable alternative. And Germany encouraged them to come.

"The German authorities, based on the Jewish-German past are, I would say, more open for Jewish-Israeli immigration," he says.

"So getting a visa, getting a permit to work I think may be slightly easier for Jewish-Israelis."

Seven years on there's now a visible Israeli "scene" in Berlin. The number of actual migrants is still tiny compared to other nationalities, but it's become highly symbolic.

"I think the Germans are happy to celebrate the fact that there are Jews again in the public sphere," Mr Waldman says.

"You have Israeli restaurants, you have kosher shops, I think you didn't have in Berlin before. You have vivid Jewish life. So I think it's something that the Germans felt they need in order to maybe reach a kind of closure regarding the past."

Back in Israel, many are less delighted.

Chaim Fischgrund

Chaim Fischgrund says he does not understand why any Jew would choose to live in Berlin.

Chaim Fischgrund, a retired teacher living in Tel Aviv, was part of the traditional German-Israeli migration … one way to Israel.

He was born in 1946 in a displaced persons' camp in southern Germany to Holocaust survivor parents.

At the age of four, his family moved to the new Jewish homeland. He grew up thinking of his birthplace with horror.

"When I was young I wanted nothing to do with Germany. I never bought German products. I didn't buy anything that was manufactured in Germany. I wanted not to hear German," he says.

Mr Fischgrund says he appreciates why young Jews might want to move to other countries for economic reasons. He spent much of his youth in the US because Israel was then too poor to give his sister the medical help she needed.

But he doesn't understand why any Jew would choose Berlin.

"It's upsetting more than if someone that I know would move to England, Australia, the United States, Canada. Why Berlin of all places? It's hard to say. It was the capital of the Reich."

The number of Jewish migrants in Germany is still relatively tiny but has become symbolic.

But many Jewish expats we met say they felt more comfortable in the former Nazi capital than in the Jewish homeland. It wasn't just the cost of living that drove Shirah Roth to leave.

She says she was sick of the never-ending conflict with Palestinians.

"This conflict will end badly for everyone. No one will be happy. Maybe this is a dead end. I don't know. That's hard to say," she says

"Because I do love Israel. I miss it very much and I'm heartbroken by it. I'm disappointed by it. I feel that it's kind of slowly pushed me out."

Such sentiments may be one of the reasons there's surprisingly little contact between young Israeli expats and Berlin's small German Jewish community.

We filmed a gathering marking the Holocaust. None of the secular, hipster Israelis attended.

Community president Gideon Joffe made a speech condemning Israel's critics, saying "For years, Israel has been criticised and discriminated against in the UN — more than any other country in the world."

Ofer Waldman, in contrast, runs the German chapter of New Israel Fund, a human rights group that criticises Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"We believe in the deep connection between Germany and Israel," he says, "and we believe that from here we can maybe encourage the Israeli civil society, or Israelis to support civil society in order to bring Israel back on the right track that it used to be on."

Ohad Leev Roage has befriended migrants from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan while living in Berlin.

Rather than hanging out with Berlin Jews, some young Israeli expats gravitate to Arabs, finding they have more in common with fellow Middle Easterners.

"You know, the thing in Israel, you cannot go to visit the neighbours," says Ohad Leev Roage, a rock musician who moonlights as a waiter at one of Berlin's hippest restaurants, owned by an Israeli and a Palestinian.

"Here I can meet people from Syria, from Lebanon, from Jordan, and I can be friends with them and I can see their own perspective about how they grew up and what their culture is like and it's really mind-opening. I haven't really had any bad experiences."

Some Jews have had very bad experiences. Berliners were shocked in April when a young Israeli wearing a kippah was attacked by a Syrian-Palestinian refugee.

The conflict with Palestinians at home still weighs heavily on the minds of Israeli expats.

Rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe has also made its way into Berlin.

On our first day of filming we came across an openly Neo-Nazi Polish-German spouting abuse at Jews, Roma and gays.

It's more to worry about for the young expats' parents in Israel … and rich material for Ori Halevy's jet-black humour.

"I moved to Berlin recently," he explains to his audiences each night, "which shows you how f***ed-up things are in Israel if I'm moving to Berlin, thinking, 'whoo, this'll be safer now'."

But beneath the irony, there's a genuine pride in making a new life in a city that once filled Jews with fear.

For Shirah Roth, whose grandmother fled Berlin for her life, it's the best revenge a Jew can have.

"I'm not going to let the Nazis ruin me and tell me where I'm going to go and not go."

Watch Eric Campbell's Foreign Correspondent report on ABC iview