No Words

How do I begin to describe the last two days? Yesterday, there were simply no words. In the morning, we toured the the monument at the old train station from which Jews were deported to the concentration camps. Lists of names, and railway tracks, were so powerful that most people broke into tears. There were simply no words to describe what I had seen or what I had experienced.  In the afternoon we toured one of the concentration camps. Although this was not considered to be an extermination camp but rather a work camp, it was clear that the expectation was death by work. One does not dig in the clay and water with bare feet and minimal clothing and food in the winter for very long without dying.As I walked through the grounds I thought about those who walked the same steps and those who died there.

Today we  attended a luncheon at City Hall hosted by the deputy mayor of the city of Hamburg. The place cards read  "Senate lunch for  persecuted former citizens of Hamburg  in Hamburg City Hall. "   The deputy mayor made a beautiful speech, a very sincere speech, talking about the atrocities that had occurred and welcoming us back to the city that had so betrayed our families.

 Afterward, a Rabbi, a lovely gentleman, asked me for my father's name and said that he would say Kaddish for him during Shabbat on Friday. The tears fell again. None of us have cried so much in front of strangers in our lives.

All of us met for dinner tonight for the last time. Tears flowed again as we hugged and exchanged email addresses and added each other to Facebook. We have truly journeyed together. We do not want it to end. We are bonded. I learned another new vocabulary word: Jekke. It means "German Jew".

I am a second generation Jekke. And I am proud and grateful to finally understand what that means.

Hamburg day 2....The discovery

It is impossible to encapsulate all that I have seen, done, and discovered today in one blog post. There are two "first gen " in our group. One does not speak of his time in the camps. One  stood before us and sobbed as he told of coming back to Hamburg at 14 years of age, looking for his mother and finding no one. He described how he asked someone if there were any Jews left, and how he was directed to an apartment in which he found a relative who cared for him.

I listened to the Rabbi describe the return of the Torah to Hamburg and the mixture of joy and sorrow on that day.   I walked the halls of the Jewish schools and saw the pictures of the children who were deported and murdered. I have developed new vocabulary: My father's immediate family "fled".  They "survived." Those who disappeared were "murdered." My mother/father/uncle was "not right afterwards."

I spoke to gentile high school students, one of whom confessed in a whisper that his grandfather had been taken from his home at 16, and forced to guard one of the camps, and how he had never recovered from what he had seen. I tried to offer some sort of forgiveness nearly 90 years later.

In the early twentieth century there were over 20,000 Jews in Hamburg. There are today about 2000. And....none are "German Jews." They're all immigrants from other countries. The Rabbi commented that Hitler was successful in that way. One of the first gens remarked "Well I wish old Adolf could see us now!" And there was laughter in the midst of sorrow.

I have befriended a woman whose father and grandparents lived in the same apartment building as my father and my grandparents. They surely knew each other, as they were the same age. I believe we are now connected forever.

In the streets I believe I see the shadows of all who came before, and I am grateful for the opportunity to honour them.

Hamburg day 1....

As I flew in over Hamburg yesterday, I was overwhelmed to be entering the city of my father's birth. I thought about him as a young child, walking the streets of the old city centre. I became teary-eyed, but I couldn't decide if it was due to exhaustion or emotion. As we were taken from the airport in to the hotel, we rode with another couple who had arrived for the same program. I realized then how different it was to be able to  share this experience. This had never been a shared experience for me. Arriving at the hotel and meeting 30 other people who also were here to share this, was an unbelievable opportunity. Isn't that what life is  about? Shared experiences. After five decades of keeping this a secret, it seems strange and almost dangerous to speak so openly.

This morning, we came together for a meal and  introduced ourselves. As people told their  stories, I watched grown men and women just like me cry from the pain which had permeated their lives. Our stories were so similar, and yet most of us had endured in solitude. Stories of lost lives, lost homes, of exile and relocated families. Of living with damaged parents, of silence and secrets.  As I write this we've spent approximately 9 hours together and have bonded in unimaginable ways. We've come to realize that our parents and grandparents may have lived on the same street, or that they may have done business together. Puzzle pieces being put together, connections made. In 24 hours I have spoken more about my father and his life than I ever have in my life. What our parents could not do, we have begun. Like a Phoenix from the ashes.

The Journey Continues

 

Late in 2016, I was approached by a representative of the government of Hamburg Germany, the city from which my father’s family fled. I was invited to attend something which roughly translated as “The Welcoming”. In the past years, the city of Hamburg has invited small groups of Holocaust survivors and/or their descendants to come to Hamburg for a week, and to attend several events. The visit culminates with a dinner with the city council and mayor, and includes a reconciliation of sorts. I of course immediately accepted, even knowing my father would have hated the entire thing.

We leave in 3 days for this exciting journey. At the end of the week in Hamburg, more than a dozen of my family members will descend en masse to the same hotel in which we’re staying for an impromptu reunion. I am deeply touched and blessed by their enthusiasm and generosity in welcoming me to Europe. I haven’t seen many of these folks for more than 30 years.

This month has been a very tumultuous and trying time in my life. Everything I have held near and dear (with the exception of my husband) has changed dramatically and quickly. My only child graduated from college, and accepted a job 2400 miles away. In a great whirlwind we helped him pack up and move. Amazing, exciting times for him. I remember that time of life when the entire world was filled with possibilities and I rejoice for him. How hard it is though to be so far away.  Then this past week I was forcibly early retired from a career which has spanned my entire adult life. As I sit here, I am still reeling from the shock and hurt that accompanies such a thing. In one week, my entire reality has changed dramatically through no action of mine and without my consent.

I am reminded of my father, as I struggle to make sense of my world on the eve of a very important journey to the place where he began. I am reminded of his resilience in the face of losing everything familiar to him. I am reminded of his pain, and his rage, and his perseverance and his survival. How very poignant his journey appears as my own journey begins.

The Journey Begins

In March of 2012, I received an email from a wonderful woman working on behalf of the government of Hamburg Germany who had come across some genealogical information which I had uploaded on the net. In part, the initial email began:

I hope I have now found a member of the family (name redacted), for whom I have been searching for some time. I found your name in the family tree maker side of family (name redacted) on the Internet. For several years I have been working on the project „Stolpersteine - Biografien der Opfer in den Stadtteilen“ that has been initiated by the "Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung Hamburg" and the "Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden". The aim of this project are publications, that are issued by the "Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung Hamburg". There you will find short biographies of the victims of Shoah. You will find it also on the Internet www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de

Thus began a journey which would, over the next four years, result in the sharing of information, the creation of a family page on Facebook and the gathering of several branches of the family that had been long scattered. My father was thankfully still living at the beginning. He died less than 18 months later, but he was able to participate as much as he liked at the start. Pictures were shared, people identified, stories told.

In 2016, a reunion was held in the south of Sweden which I unfortunately was unable to attend. Cousins arrived from all over the world. I watched online as one of my cousins spoke at the opening of the reunion marking the first time that all of the branches of our family were together in over 60 years. It was emotional, it was exhilarating, it was gut-wrenching. The children and grandchildren of those who fled were together again, remembering those who survived and those who did not, those who came before us and who were now gone, those who never lived to see this come to fruition. And that is when the journey became, for me, very personal.

 

I am the daughter of a refugee of war.

 

My Father the Feminist

My father spent 20 years volunteering at the local battered women’s shelter, faithfully spending 20 hours per week there. He was the only man who had ever been allowed in the shelter. He made soup, read to children, changed beds. I have been told that for some women and children, he was the first non-violent man with whom they had ever spent time.  When he died, they invited me to a plaque dedication for him. The plaque hangs in the shelter today.

My mother and I used to joke that he was like a slave owner working for the abolition of slavery. He adopted feminism to an extreme. He had good friends from all walks of life at the shelter. He went to a lesbian wedding when he was 81 years old and rejoiced with them. He lectured me constantly about not referring to myself as a “girl”.  And he truly and honestly believed everything he espoused.

At his front door, it all stopped. It was as if he put on his feminist hat when he walked out the door and took it off when he returned. And he seemed completely oblivious to the dichotomy. He sabotaged every attempt my mother made to work outside the home, whether consciously or unconsciously. He was aggressively verbally abusive. When I divorced my first husband, I tried to explain that his best and my father’s worst were the same single point on a continuum. It was a text book case. He was deeply offended. He seemed to literally have no awareness of his behaviour and turned to my mother in complete confusion wondering how I could be so incredibly hurtful to him. Even as I write this I am entirely sure it was unconscious. He lacked emotional awareness because emotions were dangerous and to be repressed at all costs.

At my father’s funeral many women approached me in tears, expressing their grief. Again I heard how lucky I was to have such a man as a father. And I was without words. Because I loved him and I loathed him, and I grieved him and I resented him, and I was blessed to have him as my father and cursed to have him as my father. And I hated him for it even as my grief overwhelmed me.

 

A Secret Betrayed

I carried the secret of my father’s Judaism throughout my childhood. As I said before, it was always present, always in the background. It coloured our lives. Even my mother’s family did not know. We were involved in a conspiracy of silence so great and so terrible that it almost had a life of its own. Until the day when I betrayed my father and in one terrible moment spewed my anger and pain in a volcanic revelation.

My mother and I were at a family reunion when I was about 20 years old and there were many people there. My mother had 5 living brothers so reunions were not small. My father as usual had declined to attend. My mother’s family found him difficult at best. Part of the conflict was cultural, part was the absolute determination on the part of a few of my uncles to hate anyone whom my mother married, and part (the largest part) was my father’s ever present need to be as combative and provocative as possible.

We were sitting at a picnic table and someone made a joke about Jews and Easy-Bake ovens.  Even as I write this, my stomach clenches and the rage bubbles. Yet I am also aware that the joke was made in ignorance and without malice by a person who would never ever have intentionally hurt me.

I erupted. I said loudly and without thought “I will have you know that my great-grandmother died in a concentration camp!”  Three heartbeats of absolute silence ensued. Three heartbeats in which I realized that I had betrayed my father. Three heartbeats in which I realized that I had betrayed my entire family. It was cataclysmic. The earth shook beneath my feet.  I was up and running, heaving sobs coming from deep inside. The damage was done. Something terrible was going to happen.

My mother later told me that everyone was stunned, in particular the person to whom I had reacted. Even in their bewilderment, there were heartfelt apologies all around as well as words of acceptance and love. I was unable to hear those words both because I was too far away physically but also because of the turmoil inside.  The uncle with whom I was and today remain the closest followed me and encouraged me to come back to the house and to lie down for a while. As he quietly left the room, he said “You should be proud of who you are Karen.”

Not one person ever said another word to me about my revelation that day, but I am completely sure there was a great deal of discussion in its wake. My parents had been married for at least a quarter of a century by then, and this was, at the very least, unexpected.

When we arrived home, I tearfully confessed to my father that I had betrayed the secret.  I had broken the trust. I was devastated. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said “Bet that made a hell of a splash” and kept on reading his book. But I knew, I KNEW, that I had done something terrible. I had clearly set in motion some unknown chain of events, and placed us all at risk. I had exposed us and nothing would ever be the same.