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.
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