If I had written this post earlier, directly after our afternoon at the Wannsee house, it would be much different. There would be a lot more swearing, and the sound of my typing would be much louder. I've had some time to calm down; I went for a run, took a shower, ate dinner, and walked around for a bit. A disclaimer: there are some choice words coming--if you have sensitive eyes or are a small child, shield your eyes.
Consider yourselves warned.
The Holocaust fucking sucks. Today, I heard incredible stories of survival from two of the other participants. Their families were absolutely decimated, almost entirely wiped out, between 1942 and 1945. This isn't uncommon. It's the rule. I have never met a single Holocaust survivor whose family survived as a unit. And the thing is, hearing the stories from the German participants, I'm starting to realize that no family who had any involvement, from any side, in the Holocaust, came out intact. In any way.
It's clear that the effects of genocide are multigenerational. There are studies. And I'm seeing it right here. Perpetrators leave a legacy of guilt, shame, responsibility, anger, and loneliness. Survivors pass on many of the same burdens, along with fear, paranoia, sadness, and blame (and dozens of other positive things, but that is not the point right now).
I expected to be moved by the physical place I visited today. I stood in the room where Hitler gathered fifteen of his closest friends to figure out how to kill every Jew in Germany. I looked at the same lakefront view, climbed up the same stairs, and walked through the same door as Hitler's henchmen. And I was wholly unimpressed. I read through a document which somebody had thought out carefully enough to include protocols for dealing with a child whose mother is one-quarter Jewish and whose father is one-half Jewish. A twisted mind conceived those details. I wasn't angry yet; just disgusted and, as usual, sad. And then I went upstairs to the library.
As I mentioned before, I have a copy of a sworn testimony stating that my grandmother died in Theresienstadt. Today, I found a record in a Memorial Book in the Wannsee library stating that my grandpa, Karl-Heinz Lichtenstein, died in Auschwitz.
This feels like a slap in the face.
There is a picture of my grandma's parents' wedding that sits on a shelf in her apartment. There are over 40 people in this photograph. Growing up, she lived in Kobern with her parents and three brothers; the rest of her family was close by. My grandpa also grew up surrounded by family in Oberwesel.
There are seven people in the photograph from my grandma's wedding.
She is ninety years old. She was married to my grandpa Karl-Heinz for thirteen years, before he died at 38 from heart failure related to what happened while he was in Auschwitz. She was married to my grandpa for forty-eight years before he died at the age of 99 on her birthday last year. Five of the six other people in her wedding photograph are gone.
They--the Nazis, the men who sat in the conference room at the Wannsee house, the participants in the Holocaust--do not get to claim this name. It infuriates me to think that this record exists, that Karl-Heinz Lichtenstein died in Auschwitz in 1944; he died in a clean hospital, surrounded by doctors trying to save his life, in Bergenfield, New Jersey, in 1960. He had a family to leave behind, and a grandchild to be enraged about this.
Downstairs in the exhibit there are photographs from inside a barrack in Bergen-Belsen just after the liberation on April 15, 1945. These women are emaciated and terrified. Every time I see a photograph from somewhere I know she was, I search for my grandma's face; I don't know what I'd do if I found it. And every time I don't see her, I imagine her just outside the frame, seeing what I see. I am infuriated that her eyes had to look at and live in this image for nearly three years.
I am used to pictures like this, but today, I have had enough. Of course, I will never stop looking at them, in case I find one of her--but also so that they will never be unseen. One of the German participants said that he also searches for his father's face in images where he thinks he might find him, and he doesn't have a clue what he'd do if he found him, either. Another participant was similarly--loudly and passionately--angry that after pictures like these were taken, and after families were wiped out, the architects who sat in the conference room at Wannsee, and those who engineered the Holocaust from their own homes, walked free. Some of them lived into their eighties.
This is bullshit.
The fact that this dialogue group has reason to exist is bullshit.
The fact that we are all here, generations after the Holocaust, bearing what has been passed down from our families, is so fucked up.
The fact that my grandmother has outlived nearly everyone she knew, but is recorded as having died in Theresienstadt in 1944 is beyond words.
I am finishing this post sitting in the foyer of the haus--by candlelight, because the light switch is in the kitchen, which is locked--in the middle of a thunderstorm (seriously, this is some Macbeth shit going on). I am literally illuminated by the light of my laptop and a five-armed candelabra. I have been writing for over an hour and a half, trying to simultaneously figure out what the hell I'm going to do tomorrow.
I will be the last in the group to tell my story. I was going to post it here, but after talking to the facilitators, I've decided to wait until afterwards. I think it's fitting that I'll be the last in the group. I'm already less angry than I was about four paragraphs back. We've already worked out some of what we talked about today in the dialogue, and to be honest, we were all pretty angry. There was yelling involved. Tomorrow we start again at 9 AM (it's past 11 here), and have stories all day.
I have no idea what my post tomorrow will look like. I'm hoping it will be less angry, and I will attempt to write it out as accurately as possible.
While I was preparing for tomorrow, one of the facilitators skimmed over my grandma's three-page autobiography, translating the details I hadn't heard before. When the liberators arrived, she was a skeleton, and covered in scratches. She stayed in Bergen-Belsen for three months after she was liberated, working with the English soldiers as a translator. Then, she writes,
ARL
This feels like a slap in the face.
There is a picture of my grandma's parents' wedding that sits on a shelf in her apartment. There are over 40 people in this photograph. Growing up, she lived in Kobern with her parents and three brothers; the rest of her family was close by. My grandpa also grew up surrounded by family in Oberwesel.
There are seven people in the photograph from my grandma's wedding.
She is ninety years old. She was married to my grandpa Karl-Heinz for thirteen years, before he died at 38 from heart failure related to what happened while he was in Auschwitz. She was married to my grandpa for forty-eight years before he died at the age of 99 on her birthday last year. Five of the six other people in her wedding photograph are gone.
They--the Nazis, the men who sat in the conference room at the Wannsee house, the participants in the Holocaust--do not get to claim this name. It infuriates me to think that this record exists, that Karl-Heinz Lichtenstein died in Auschwitz in 1944; he died in a clean hospital, surrounded by doctors trying to save his life, in Bergenfield, New Jersey, in 1960. He had a family to leave behind, and a grandchild to be enraged about this.
Downstairs in the exhibit there are photographs from inside a barrack in Bergen-Belsen just after the liberation on April 15, 1945. These women are emaciated and terrified. Every time I see a photograph from somewhere I know she was, I search for my grandma's face; I don't know what I'd do if I found it. And every time I don't see her, I imagine her just outside the frame, seeing what I see. I am infuriated that her eyes had to look at and live in this image for nearly three years.
I am used to pictures like this, but today, I have had enough. Of course, I will never stop looking at them, in case I find one of her--but also so that they will never be unseen. One of the German participants said that he also searches for his father's face in images where he thinks he might find him, and he doesn't have a clue what he'd do if he found him, either. Another participant was similarly--loudly and passionately--angry that after pictures like these were taken, and after families were wiped out, the architects who sat in the conference room at Wannsee, and those who engineered the Holocaust from their own homes, walked free. Some of them lived into their eighties.
This is bullshit.
The fact that this dialogue group has reason to exist is bullshit.
The fact that we are all here, generations after the Holocaust, bearing what has been passed down from our families, is so fucked up.
The fact that my grandmother has outlived nearly everyone she knew, but is recorded as having died in Theresienstadt in 1944 is beyond words.
I am finishing this post sitting in the foyer of the haus--by candlelight, because the light switch is in the kitchen, which is locked--in the middle of a thunderstorm (seriously, this is some Macbeth shit going on). I am literally illuminated by the light of my laptop and a five-armed candelabra. I have been writing for over an hour and a half, trying to simultaneously figure out what the hell I'm going to do tomorrow.
I will be the last in the group to tell my story. I was going to post it here, but after talking to the facilitators, I've decided to wait until afterwards. I think it's fitting that I'll be the last in the group. I'm already less angry than I was about four paragraphs back. We've already worked out some of what we talked about today in the dialogue, and to be honest, we were all pretty angry. There was yelling involved. Tomorrow we start again at 9 AM (it's past 11 here), and have stories all day.
I have no idea what my post tomorrow will look like. I'm hoping it will be less angry, and I will attempt to write it out as accurately as possible.
While I was preparing for tomorrow, one of the facilitators skimmed over my grandma's three-page autobiography, translating the details I hadn't heard before. When the liberators arrived, she was a skeleton, and covered in scratches. She stayed in Bergen-Belsen for three months after she was liberated, working with the English soldiers as a translator. Then, she writes,
Langsam wurden wir wieder Menschen."Slowly, we became humans again."
ARL
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