After: Part One

I’m writing this post from an airplane 36,000 feet above the Atlantic off the coast of Iceland.  I left Berlin this morning after a surprisingly tear-free goodbye to M at the airport.  I think I’m cried out.  I gave up wearing mascara two days into this trip because there was no point when I ended up looking like a raccoon by noon anyways. 

It would be futile to attempt to tie up loose ends; we’re all on emotional roller coasters right now.  The interesting thing is, they seem to be relatively synchronized, at least with Natty and I.  It’s been up and down for days now, especially between Haus Wannsee on Wednesday, my story on Thursday, goodbyes on Friday, and a day in the city yesterday. 

After I told my story on Thursday, we were technically finished.  We had some final dialogues to do—wrap-ups, conclusions—and pay our bills at the desk, but other than that, the only thing left was breakfast, lunch, and a group photo.  Thursday night we were all up pretty late just having non-Holocaust related fun together, eating all of Natty’s chocolate and drinking wine and making jokes and just sitting around like a family.  I was okay on Friday because I knew that I’d see the facilitator and N one more time—we planned to meet for dinner—and I was staying with Natty at M’s home for the weekend.

Which, by the way, was so, so lovely.  He has a great, really welcoming house with a beautiful yard out back with roses and a playhouse on stilts that he built and a cherry tree.  R, his wife, is fantastic—gracious and funny and just wonderful, and they have two absolutely adorable sons.  It was the perfect place for the weekend, we could all be together and talk about things if we needed to, but really it was just so nice to be there.  Example: when we woke up on Saturday, M asked how it felt to have stayed in the house of somebody whose family was involved with the Nazis.  Even though we were technically done with the program, things like this came up all weekend; thoughts about our week, incredulity that it’s actually finished, musings on what happened, blah blah blah.  Anyways, Natty and I told him that it felt like staying in the home of a family member.  Because that’s what it was.

Saturday was really, really lovely.  We took the bahn into the city to go shopping and look around, and then M met up with us later on to have coffee with A and do some historical sight-seeing with us.  Even though we felt Hol-accosted (a word which spontaneously popped into my head, but which fits our emotions at the end of the week perfectly) we went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews  of Europe (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), which I think is one of the most thought-provoking out of the many I’ve seen. 

(some size perspective)

When you start to walk through, you can see over the stones, but they’re very quickly over your head, towering above and closing in.  As you go down the paths, you can’t see what’s coming as you come to the places where they intersect; people just jump out or bolt right past you.  They block sound, so it’s eerily quiet when you’re in the middle, and they’re all clean and dark and smooth.  From above, they appear to be arranged haphazardly, and the general effect kind of resembles a city skyline or a very, very crowded cemetery; but you know that they have been systematically arranged in perfectly neat rows.  They also look a little like coffins from above.  It really is a very well executed memorial.

Something I took note of is the language they use to talk and write about the Holocaust in Germany.  The entire time I was there, I never saw anything that said “died 24.4.1943” or “millions perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”  The word is “murdered.”  I don’t know if it’s accidental, just a fluke of the translation, or if they did it to assume responsibility (“murder” is a bivalent verb and implies the existence of both a murderer and a murdered, whereas “die” is simply something one does).  I’m going to go on the assumption it’s a purposeful choice; as I understand it, they are never careless when it comes to talking about the Holocaust. 

Anyways, the memorial was interesting, and there’s a small museum underneath.  It was pretty typical, as far as Holocaust museums go—honestly, it’s a little terrible that I am so used to them, that is pretty much the opposite of what needs to happen with the general populace.  However, at the very end, they have computers where you can search various databases for victims’ names.  Of course, I had to see if this Grandpa Charlie mistake was everywhere, or just that one book at the Wannsee House.

Well, it’s everywhere.  The good part is that the record I have now is pretty detailed, and hopefully it’s accurate besides the last part.  According to what I now have, Karl-Heinz Lichtenstein (b. 22/01/22) was taken on transport III/2, train Da76 from Köln to Theresienstadt on 27/07/1942 (exactly sixty years ago this Friday).  Two years later (28/09/1944), he was transferred to Auschwitz on transport Ek, listed as prisoner number 726.

Having information like this—dates, transport numbers, even prisoner numbers—is somehow comforting.  There is so much unknown about what happened in transport and in the camps.  My grandparents knew dozens of people before the war, including some close family members, whose fates they just don’t know.  It’s especially interesting when I come across a date that is relevant or approaching: this first transport to Theresienstadt is next Friday; the day we visited the memorial at the Grunewald bahn stop, there was a transport of 99 Jews taken from Berlin to Theresienstadt through that station; the final day of the program was the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler, organized in part by Adam von Trott, to whom Haus Schwanenwerder is dedicated.  These things keep happening, and while I don’t want to sit and dwell over these moments, I can’t help but feel like they warrant some sort of recognition.  I quietly said kaddish for the victims of the transport from Grunewald, and every year on April 15^th I take a few minutes to think about the fact that my grandma was liberated that day. 

After finishing the program and having a few days at home, I know my next steps.  I know that I have to start doing research, and compiling information for my family’s story. I don’t know why I want so badly to have everything chronicled; maybe part of it has to do with the fact that there is so much we aren’t sure of, and there are a lot of facts I have to ask my dad about over and over again.  Most of it is just wanting to know, and wanting to be able to pass that information down to my children and grandchildren.  Again and again, I come back to the idea of bearing witness.  It’s become my touchstone for this trip, and since I figured it out, it’s an idea I keep coming back to.

I’m sorry for the lateness of this post; I did indeed start writing it just around Iceland, but then I needed to put it down for a few days, and I really did change it around (you’re lucky, the original was crap).  I’m back in real life now, and while I’m still thinking about all of this constantly, there are things interrupting that thought flow.  I’ll post again once or twice this week, and a few more times after that.  I can’t start researching yet—I’m not quite ready for that.  Some day soon, I will, and I’ll post updates on that here as well.

Finally, I want to thank you all for keeping up with this process.  There have been nearly 1,600 hits so far on this blog, and that absolutely baffles me.  I know people have been sending it along to their families, friends, and communities, and a handful of people in France, Russia, and Guatemala have been reading as well (who they are and how they found it, I have no idea), along with a large portion in Germany.  I hope you find something in here—hopefully a good something—and feel free to leave comments and such.  It’s good to know you’re all on this process with me, and by following, you’re becoming part of our story, so thank you.