Yesterday--which seems like last week--I had an incredible day walking around the city. I was planning on writing a post, but I got to the house late and thought I'd include it in today's post.
Wrong. Today overshadowed yesterday. I'll tell you about yesterday in person (complete with exaggerated hand gestures and possibly pantomime upon request); today needs to be written out.
Our group is ten participants and two facilitators: it's a mix of 2Gs and 3Gs from each side, spanning at least 40 years (I'm the youngest, and I'm pretty sure the oldest is well over 60). There are 5 from each the survivors' side and the perpetrators' side, with six from Germany and four from the US--one of the 2Gs on the survivors' side lives in Berlin.
Each day, we have morning recap, two stories, lunch, an afternoon activity, and an evening session. Tomorrow we go to the Jewish museum on Oranienburger ßtrasse in the afternoon; Wednesday we visit the Wannsee Conference house, where the Final Solution was engineered. Evening sessions are sometimes guest speakers, or another story. Stories are three parts: each person has half an hour to tell their story however they want; the next fifteen minutes are questions and clarifications; and the final portion gives each person a chance to respond to the story.
We jumped right in today at 10 AM. The facilitators briefly told their stories, and we each went around and gave a short bio of who we are and why we're here. Almost the entire group is made up of writers, filmmakers, journalists, and (best of all) teachers--for me, this was incredible. We are what it means to bear witness. By and large, we could not be more different--we vary in age, ethnic background, education level, socioeconomic stratus, etc., etc.--but we are all here to testify to our history, the one thing we do share.
This next part is hard to explain, but I'm going to try: we're here to talk about the Holocaust. We all know that. And I don't think it's ever very far from anyone's mind. But when we're not in session, our conversation doesn't necessarily revolve around that aspect of our shared history. Sometimes, we have more questions or points we want to talk about with somebody who said something that made us think, and we discuss it directly. Otherwise, it often filters in through conversation. We acknowledge that. But it's not always there, which I think is key. Obviously, we talked about food--a lot. Any group of people will instantly bond over food (see: Jewtinas). We covered family, educational theory and pedagogy (surprise surprise), travel, architecture, this, that, everything.
Tonight after dinner I sat with two German 2Gs; both of them were 50 at the very least. During session, I was sitting across from them as they openly shared their feelings of guilt, anger, fear, and sadness (more on that in a minute). After dinner we sat at the end of our long table, drinking wine and eating chocolates we nabbed from the espresso bar in the lobby, chatting about food and travel and European culture. We sat at the end of the table, giggling like twelve-year-olds, holding our pinkies out from our wine glasses, asking for crumpets in British accents. We now have personal jokes. I have personal jokes with two children of the Third Reich.
That might bother some people. Actually, I know for a fact it will bother some people. But the fact of the matter is--and I had thought about it before, but really realized it today--these people are much more brave for doing this than I am. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my past; I am proud and in awe of my grandma for generally kicking ass at life, and I will never, ever hide the fact that I am the grandchild of a holocaust survivor. That is my legacy. These people--friends? fellow participants?--have a much different load to bear. Many of them didn't know (for sure or at all) that their families were involved in the Holocaust until recently, and they have to reconcile the identities of family members they thought they knew with the images formed by historical documents and testimonies. They came here ashamed of and burdened by their legacies, seeking forgiveness or comfort or nothing at all, because they didn't even feel like they deserved anything of us.
The thing is, they are creating their legacies here--not separate from the ones left by their families, but down a different path. One of the facilitators says that in One by One, we consider our past during the present to change our future (or something like that). M, one of the participants who went today, has spent the 10 years since he found out that his father was involved in the Nazi machine compiling a history of the town whose Jewish population his father decimated. He's been gathering photographs, official documents, legal testimonies, and biographies from archives all over the world to create a legacy for this Jewish community. He has been trying to figure out some way to do something for the survivors and their descendants of this town, something concrete.
When each of her grandchildren was born (there are five of us, plus one great-), my grandma said that we've won--meaning that each time the Jewish people grow, the Final Solution is stamped down once more. I think I agree with that; but I think there is a second part of this that I hadn't expected, which is meaningful in a much different way.
What M is doing doesn't make up for what happened--the Mishnah Sanhedrin states that "whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world" (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 37a). But it means something. He's an educator, and he teaches his students about this specific community in a wider unit on the Holocaust. He has young children, to whom he has already started to explain what the Holocaust was. M isn't just creating his own legacy to pass on; he's compiling a legacy that these people can't pass on for themselves.
I feel like I've been here a week already. It's been a day and I already have enough to think about for a very long time. I have four more days of this, plus two weekends of non-Holocaust-related things to sort out. After how today went, I can't exactly promise happy frozen-yogurt posts; there's just so much to process. It will most definitely be interesting.
Exhausted--more to come tomorrow, I'm sure.
ARL
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