Alex's Wake (12 page)

That afternoon I try to explain my complicated feelings to Roland and learn that his emotions are no less in turmoil. He has been wrestling with the guilt of his German childhood for all of his adult life.

“It is so tempting,” he says, “to think that modern German history has a clear line of demarcation—the year 1945—and that on one side of the line there is National Socialism and on the other side democracy.
But the reality is so much different. I was born in 1941 and in my first fifteen years or so I hardly ever came into contact with people who had not been Nazis—and many still were.”

Roland tells me that, with very few exceptions, all of his teachers were former Nazis. In his teenage years—the 1950s—he encountered a wall of silence when he tried to talk about the
NS Zeit
in his hometown. Sometimes, he heard words that were far more painful than silence. “You would think that those few brave souls who had stood up for the Jews, those who sheltered them or brought them food or performed even the simplest acts of charity such as that woman who bought those little fish from your grandmother, that these people would have been lauded and held up as model citizens,” Roland says. He shakes his head sadly, and when he resumes speaking, his eyes are blazing. “But no! People here looked upon such people with mistrust or even disgust. They did not want to hear about such heroics. Rather they wished to emphasize that they were being discriminated against by all these efforts to compensate the Jews for the property that had been stolen from them. For instance, my uncle Dieter, a master of figures and statistics, calculated that a certain house had been seized from a Jewish family in 1938 and the owner had been paid about 5 percent of its value. Efforts were underway to make things up to the victim's family. And yet so many people here in Oldenburg were angry about those efforts, saying that the original transaction had been carried out in an orderly and lawful manner. These people would declare loudly, ‘
Was rechtens war, kann heute nicht Unrecht sein!
' ‘What was lawful then cannot be unlawful today!'”

Roland is silent again for several long moments. Then he closes his eyes and tells me about his parents' family doctor. “This man had participated in the euthanasia campaign of the National Socialists in which handicapped and other ‘undesirable' people were put to death. Ghastly experiments on human beings this man had also done. He had been sentenced to prison in 1945. And when after ten years he was released from ‘internment,' as people called it, in some parts of the Oldenburg population it was considered a matter of honor to choose this man as one's family doctor, just to make a statement.”

“It is hard to imagine,” Roland says to me sorrowfully, “how hypocritical the established citizens of Oldenburg were.”

Roland Neidhardt has spent many decades trying to forge relationships of trust between his German countrymen and the Jews. He has learned to read and speak Hebrew fluently and spends part of every year in Israel. It is obvious that he remains deeply wounded by the same long-ago events that continue to cause me pain and anguish. The past is still very present for Roland, too.

“But things are different today, are they not?” I ask myself. There is that memorial in the AGO, and every year on November 10 the city recreates the march through town of those forty-three Jewish men. There are so many good and decent people in Oldenburg, from Dietgard Jacoby to Jörg Witte to the citizens who attended Farschid's film the other night. And there is the family that kept my grandmother's fish for years until they could be returned to me, their rightful heir.

These people are deeply aware of those events of the 1930s and '40s, I think, and are trying to make amends, even if that proves to be an impossible task. Are my countrymen doing as much to account for the sins of slavery and the annihilation of the Native American population? Is it not eventually up to us, the descendants of the victims, to offer some form of forgiveness?

As I ponder these questions, the phone rings. Hilu answers it in another part of the house and I hear her speaking rapidly, with unmistakable excitement in her voice. After a few minutes, she comes to tell us that a couple who saw a story in Saturday's newspaper about my visit has called with some remarkable news: about ten years ago, they purchased the beautiful house at 34 Gartenstrasse. They want me to visit my grandfather's former home. In mere moments, I register my pleasure at the invitation and ask Hilu to call back with our acceptance.

That evening, the four of us drive to my family's home. We are greeted by Carsten and Monica Meyerbohlen, who usher us inside. He is an architect, tall and silver-haired, whose English is about as accomplished as my German. She is younger, dressed elegantly, born in England to an army officer who was later assigned to postwar Germany.
They welcome us with great kindness and understanding for the welter of emotions they know I am experiencing.

“When we saw our address in the paper in this extraordinary context,” Mrs. Meyerbohlen says, “we knew that we had to get in touch with you, to meet you, and to welcome you here. Please, let us show you everything.”

Over the next hour, we tour the elegant house from top to bottom. The entrance hallway is lined with bookshelves and adorned with paintings. The living room is spacious, with dark beams high above well-crafted furniture, fronting a glassed-in veranda that overlooks the rear garden. There is an immense dining room and an equally large library, each with twelve-foot ceilings, that look out through tall windows of heavy glass to the traffic that whispers past on Gartenstrasse. The floors of the entrance hall, dining room, and library are finely stained oak; lush woven rugs muffle our steps in the living room. The kitchen has been designed for someone who clearly loves to cook; a big stove with six burners dominates the room, which includes every conceivable culinary gadget.

The floor above boasts four large bedrooms surrounding a central master bathroom. The floor above that has been transformed into a gallery hung with Mr. Meyerbohlen's architectural drawings and sketches, with a balcony that offers a view of the nearby Schlossgarten. The basement includes the former servants' quarters, now converted into cozy guest rooms, and a well-stocked wine cellar.

My head is swirling as I attempt to take it all in. Yes, the mansion has been updated and modernized, but the essential “houseness” of the building is unchanged from when Alex, Toni, Bertha, Günther, Eva, and Helmut lived here in the splendor that Alex's business acumen had won for them, until it was taken away in an instant.

We walk out into the back garden of deep green grass, rhododendrons in bloom, a sunken pool, and a host of fruit trees. One of them, an apple tree, has the wrinkled bark and twisted branches that suggest old age. I conclude that it was probably here in the 1920s, perhaps providing a dappled shade with its springtime blossoms while Alex enjoyed a well-earned Sunday snooze. I picture the peaceful scene,
and it is finally too much for me. I lean against its sturdy trunk and weep anew for my lost family. Amy comes to my side and holds me tenderly.

Carsten and Monica, noting my emotion, retreat silently back inside. When we rejoin them a few minutes later, they invite us to the dining room to share a bottle of wine. We tell our stories, and our hosts explain that when they purchased the house in 2001, they had no knowledge of its history. I can see that they are uncomfortable, and I assure them that in no way do I hold them even remotely responsible for the theft of the house in 1932.

Carsten speaks then, and Roland translates. “Ever since we learned from the newspaper story that a Jewish family lived here and was forced out of this house,” he says, “we have tried to think of a way to acknowledge what happened. And here is what we would like to do: we would like to erect a plaque on the outside gate, right on Gartenstrasse, that says something like ‘This house was owned from 1919 until 1932 by a Jewish businessman, Alex Goldschmidt. He was forced to sell it for far less than it was worth during the time of National Socialism. He was later murdered in Auschwitz.' Carsten pauses. “What do you think of that idea? Would we have your permission to do that?”

I pause for a moment, then quickly say that, although I would have to think about the particulars of the plaque's wording, the idea itself is very welcome, very moving. I tell him and Monica, “
Vielen Dank!
Thank you both very much for your kindness.”

We exchange addresses and phone numbers, promise to keep in touch regarding the plaque, say our goodbyes, and silently drive back to the Neidhardts.

That night it takes me forever to fall asleep. Again and again, I move through the beautiful house, admiring this or that aspect of its treasures. I imagine Alex's family celebrating holidays there, birthdays, graduations, and the coming of spring. I remember Alex's strawberry patch and Günther's chicken run. I estimate that the house is probably worth 2, 3, or even 5 million dollars and recall that Alex received a paltry 26,000 marks for it, approximately 10,400 U.S. dollars. I think of the Meyerbohlens' offer of a plaque and my ready acceptance of the offer. As I lie awake, staring upward through the darkness, I find myself
wishing that my response had been different. I imagine being back in the elegant dining room with its clinking wine glasses, saying to the Meyerbohlens, “Yes, a plaque would be a nice way to acknowledge the crime that took place here nearly eighty years ago. Or we could do something else. I could give you twenty-six thousand marks and
you could give me back my fucking house!
”

That, of course, would be unreasonable. The Meyerbohlens are completely innocent, as I'd assured them. But those who were guilty have managed to slither away through the broken foundations of history, and who is left to settle up? The deadline for filing a claim with the German government passed long ago. My father never filed such a claim, preferring to wash his hands of all bureaucratic reminders of the murders. So what is left for my generation? Plaques? Memorials? Marches? How do these well-meaning but inadequate gestures compensate for what we have lost? Is restitution many decades after a crime rendered meaningless by the passing of those decades? Would a plaque outside my family's house on Gartenstrasse in the tiniest way make up for the legalized theft of that house, to say nothing of the murders of its owners? And would the placement of a plaque allow the good burghers of Oldenburg to heave a contented sigh and say, “Good. That's taken care of. All better now”? Would it take them off the hook? And yet, is no plaque—the continuation of the silence Roland spoke of this afternoon—a more fitting solution? Might someone passing by 34 Gartenstrasse read about Alex Goldschmidt and recognize the plaque as an eloquent warning not to repeat the crimes of the past—especially if that plaque spawned other plaques throughout Oldenburg and across the country?

I try to silence these thoughts and welcome sleep. My journey recommences in the morning with a train trip to Hamburg, and I need rest. But, as I know so well, this is as much a journey into my family's past as it is a venture of the complicated present. Try as I might, I cannot escape those years of pain and sorrow. And I remember the words of William Faulkner that I quoted as an epigraph in my first book. “The past is never dead. It isn't even past.”

4

Hamburg

T
UESDAY
, M
AY
17, 2011. We awaken to find fair May overthrown, her sweet state usurped by an illegitimate and bullying November. Rain falls in sheets, often flung in our faces by sudden squalls, and the mild temperatures of our first week are mere teasing memories. But I enjoy the thought that we will be experiencing Hamburg rather as a sardonic anonymous traveler described its weather back in the eighteenth century, calling it “on the whole somewhat raw, damp and cold most days of the year, just like most of the people.” Alex and Helmut had a similar climatological encounter on a May day in 1939 during their one visit to Hamburg, when they thought they were bidding their final farewells to their European lives.

We drive our Meriva to the Oldenburg
Bahnhof
, or train station, and purchase, for twenty-nine euros, a ticket that would allow Amy and me to travel anywhere by train throughout Lower Saxony and as far east as Hamburg, and to take as many rail journeys as we'd like, between 9:00 a.m. today and 3:00 a.m. tomorrow. We are deeply impressed by this evidence of Germany's support for public transportation We consult the bright-yellow schedules that adorn the central waiting area, and learn that we can board a train on Track 7 at 9:46, arrive in Bremen at 10:39, change trains, and pull into Hamburg at 11:42, having traveled a distance of roughly two hundred kilometers. At precisely 9:46, I discover, and not for the first time, that in Germany the trains do indeed run on time.

Our train to Bremen is a local that stops at several hamlets along the way and in the larger community of Delmenhorst. My father used to tell me that, in his day, Delmenhorst was known as a linoleum manufacturing center and that you could always smell the nascent floor covering from the station. So as we roll into town, I lower a window and inhale deeply, but perhaps because of the wind and rain and perhaps because I have no idea what linoleum smells like, I notice nothing out of the ordinary.

I think of my father again during our brief stopover in the bustling train station in Bremen. As a boy, he frequently accompanied his mother on rail journeys to Bremen to visit her family of well-to-do coffee importers. As a child, he made many a visit to the city's thirteenth-century St. Peter's Cathedral and a single visit to the crypt of the eleventh-century Church of Our Lady, where he was so terrorized by its collection of mummified remains that he still shuddered to speak of it in his tenth decade of life.