I am of the generation of Jews, fast disappearing, who grew up in the 40s and 50s of the last century, close on the heels of the Holocaust. My mother’s sister, her husband and their three children were murdered in Auschwitz, so the atrocities committed by the Germans were not an abstraction. They were in full view on the family tree in places where no lines leading to the next generation are visible.
Whether they had relatives who were killed by the Nazis or not, most of our generation were trained not to buy German products, especially cars. We cringed at the guttural sound of German, the language – so it seemed to us – of prison guards and executioners. My parents were not travelers, but if they were, Germany would have been last on their bucket list. For many of my age mates that travel ban persisted for many decades beyond the end of the war. In the late 80s we planned a trip to Eastern Europe which required a brief layover in Munich. We were racked with guilt sitting in an enormous outdoor beer garden among people whose links to the Third Reich were unknown to us.
In 2012, I decided it was time for me to confront my demons head on. We rented an apartment in Berlin and invited Elana, son-in-law Ben and 2+ year-old Dalia to join us. It was a transformative experience. At every turn we were surrounded by reminders of and memorials to the victims of the Holocaust – in the train station from which Jews were sent to their deaths; on the sidewalks in front of the houses where they used to live where Stolpersteine – Stumble Stones – embedded in the sidewalk containing the names of the former residents, their dates of deportation and their fates, if that was known. In one park where Berliners came to relax, their peace was disrupted by a simple sculpture of a breakfast table, where one of the four chairs was overturned, suggesting an abrupt and probably violent disruption of a previously peaceful life. In a neighborhood that was once the home of a large Jewish population, placards hung from the trees, each containing one inhuman restriction of Jews’ rights after another, as prescribed in the Nuremberg Laws – when Jews were allowed to shop in local stores, what signs of their Jewish identity they were required to display.
Several years ago, Clint Smith, an African American journalist and poet traveled to Germany to learn how that nation dealt with the horrific crimes against humanity it had committed. The result of his explorations was contained in a prize-winning cover story in The Atlantic entitled “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” in which he describes many of the same memorials we encountered. He reflects on the fact that Americans have done far less to acknowledge and ask forgiveness for our original sin of slavery. He was writing in 2022. How much more would he have to say today about the current efforts to erase or downplay that sin, destroying those few acknowledgements of our guilt and responsibility that exist.
Primo Levi, the great chronicler of the Holocaust, was often asked whether he was able to forgive the Nazis. His reply was that forgiveness is possible but only when there is evidence of remorse. It seems to me that the Germans have passed that test, a test that too many Americans are a long way from mastering.
On our Rhine River cruise this past week, I felt none of that simmering anger toward Germany and the German people that haunted me for so many years. That famous river meandered through Switzerland, France and Holland, but the majority of the time we were in Germany. At every stop we encountered pleasant and bustling cities, many of which were 90% destroyed by American bombs, which were then restored with American money from the enlightened Marshall plan, which paved the way for the creation of postwar democracy. The vast majority of the population we encountered was born after the war. There is little sign of resentment toward America, although I wonder if that was true of earlier generations, who suffered through those bombings. But today’s population recognizes that Germany itself owns the responsibility for all the destruction, although they may be growing tired of being confronted at every turn with that historic guilt.
There are places along the Rhine that have rich Jewish histories. In Speyer, we visited a Jewish museum adjacent to the ruins of a synagogue built in 1100, which was the center of a thriving Jewish community for 400 years. Speyer was part of an alliance of three towns that included Mainz and Worms, the center of Jewish rabbinic law in the whole region. In Koblenz, we encountered a Stolpersteine, which we had thought existed only in Berlin. I think it was also in Koblenz that we came upon a puzzling sight. In front of the Town Hall stood four flag poles containing the flags of Germany, the town, Israel and Ukraine. Seeing the Magen David in this unlikely place shouldn’t have been such a shock, given the almost unqualified support Germany has shown for the Jewish state, although the wars in Gaza and Iran have weakened that support among younger Germans, just as it has here.
There’s evidence of a resurgence of antisemitism in Germany particularly in the former East Germany, which is the stronghold of the right-wing party AfD, which has risen in strength mainly on the basis of its anti-immigration platform. It’s a disturbing trend, but it’s not uniquely German. We see it here and in many other European countries. It feels not entirely connected to the dark years of the Third Reich.
For many, forgiveness for the deaths of millions of innocents was already granted decades ago, but it comes late for me. I live now with the contradiction that, on the one hand, I have purged my demons, but on the other hand I will never forget what my people suffered.
