I Sleep in Hitler's Room (15 page)

I stay in an apartment in a beautiful section of town, Kaulbach Street. No Jews here, as far as I can tell. No Nazis either, as far as I can see. And No Smoking is requested. Yes, that’s what I’ve been told. Which for me, a smoker, is a huge problem. Should I smoke here anyway, since nobody can see me? Well, I’d rather not. I promised I wouldn’t. But now, late at night, when all the Jews have already left my brain, my craving for a cigarette got me up from my deep sleep. What am I to do? I must smoke something! I dress up and go outside to puff with extreme joy. I walk the street slowly, looking right and watching left. On the third puff I see a poster with an image of Hasidic Jews. How did the Jews sneak into my beautiful non-Jewish street? Who let them in? I check closer, to make sure that my eyes don’t betray me; but yes, these are Jews. Jews are the First Mountaineers, it says. What? Yes, this is what it really says. It’s a poster from the Alpine Museum, announcing an exhibition that will run through February of next year. Just after I made up my mind to get the Jews out of my head, they show up as mountaineers. Who needs this!

I smoke my rest and swear to forget the Jews anyway! Don’t let one advertisement change my mind, I preach to myself. I finish my cigarette and go to sleep.

In the morning I’ve forgotten all about the Jew Mountaineers and decide to start the day afresh looking for new German faces, new German ideas, new German thinking, new German obsessions, new anything that’s new German. But then I have a strong urge for something old, a cigarette. I go out to smoke. And instinctively take another direction, as far away from the Mountaineering Jews as possible.

Lighting up, I start walking at a leisurely pace. So good not to be bothered with the Jews! The “Germans” are enough for one man, believe you me.

My cigarettes are good. I light up one, then another one, walking as slow as the sun. I check the scenery around me. Here’s an advertisement for the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
. This ad, which is glued to the wall, is a “permanent” ad, meaning it’s there to stay. No rain can take it off. The ad shows a “model” front page of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
. Obviously, this is intended to convince people to buy the paper. As if to say, If you buy our paper this is what you’ll get. On top of the page there’s an image of Japanese youngsters wearing traditional Bavarian clothes. Looks really cute! Under the Japanese there’s a political article, a model article, I guess. The article says that Obama wants to force peace in the Middle East, that the Israelis are stubborn, and that the Palestinians are stuck. I puff and puff and digest the idea put in front of me by this ad: Buy our paper and we will give you cute Japanese, stubborn Israelis, and poor Palestinians. Not bad. Reason enough, I believe, to order a subscription for ten years minimum. And then it hits me: Jews again! Oh, heavens! I can’t walk five steps here without those Stubborn Jews!

Calm down, Tuvia, I hear a voice saying to me. It’s just this street. The rest of Munich is lovely and clean of Jewish obsessions. And so, to calm myself, I move on to another street. Can’t allow “the Jews” to sneak into my head again. This other street has a bookstore. Let’s see what they’re selling today.

I window-shop.
History of Zionism
. Really? Yes. I try to ignore this, just a mistake. Let’s see the other offerings. “Jewish cookbook.” Jews all over. Why? I don’t know. I smoke me another cigarette while pondering why Germans are so obsessed with Jews. I decide, in spite of myself, to dig deeper into German–Jewish relations. But how do I do that? Maybe I should have gone to Palestine, as I initially planned, to talk to the Germans who go there to help the Palestinians, or to Israel to talk to the Germans who go there to help
them
? Wait a second: Why are Germans going to those places to begin with? Well, if the Germans go to the Middle East, let me muddle in their middle. Dachau, I hear, is not far from me. No plane is required; an S-bahn, that quick local train, will take me there even if those ash clouds come back.

I arrive safely in Dachau.

First thing I encounter is the Appellplatz, the Roll Call ground. Here prisoners stood for at least an hour, motionless. The dead among the prisoners had to show up as well. Yeah. Fun place, isn’t it? And that’s not all: On the roof of the maintenance building, as shown in a photo of the original, the following was painted in white: “There is a path to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, hard work, discipline, sacrifice, truthfulness, love of thy Fatherland.” Hannah Aerndt might call this the Banality of Evil, but to me it looks more like the Genius of Evil.

This KZ, the first built by the Nazis, is a dark place, just like the rest of them, the ones I have seen before. Here’s where the killing was elevated into an art form: An exact, scientific, well-organized, cruel, orderly, clean operation. What was discovered here, a man who stands next to me tells me, as he refers to various brutal medical tests conducted on live humans here, “is used to this day by NASA.” I keep on walking. The area I enter seems to be the main building, and here I notice, in stark black letters on one of the walls, a Nazi order: Smoking Prohibited. Then another one, in red: No Smoking. I’m not sure about the NASA thing, but this is something we do “use” today: No Smoking. Walk into the main train station of today’s Munich and the most conspicuous of signs you see, more visible than Coca Cola’s, is the No Smoking one.

To get a fresh perspective on the world of KZs, or
Konzentrationslager
, I entertain a thought in my head: to talk to one of the mavens, the folks who come here every day.

Which leads me to Rosi, a woman with old-style eyeglasses, who is one of the employees of this KZ. Would she be willing to talk to me? She says she cannot give me an interview because she is not allowed to do so. Is that it? Well, not exactly. She can, if I want, share with me her personal thoughts. This kind of interview is allowed. Fine with me, since this is exactly what I want.

Do you go home and think about this KZ?

“No. I have other problems to think of, like my car.”

Do you think often about the horrors that happened here?

“In the beginning, when I started to work here, I had to learn about crematoriums and stuff like that. But now it’s dealing with tourists and answering questions like, ‘Where is the toilet?’ ”

Doing this job, did you learn something?

“Yes. I learned about other cultures and also about different groups in Germany, like farmers, Jews, and others.”

Did you ever meet a Jew personally?

“No. I think they live in Munich, but I never met a Jew.”

Did Germany, as a country, learn something from its past?

“Germany doesn’t learn the lesson. Germany sells tanks and aircrafts to make wars even today.”

What’s your dream?

“I dream of summer. We didn’t have sun this year, and I dream of going to the Bodensee and having sun. That’s my dream.”

Besides Rosi and her colleagues, there are nuns in Dachau as well, 24/7. Welcome to Karmel Heilig Blut (Carmelite convent of the Holy Blood) Dachau.

The principle here is silence and prayer, or prayer via silence.

The nuns are supposed to pray in silence, let’s see them.

Sadly, I am late.

The place seems empty, the nuns must have gone.

Maybe they’re talking somewhere.

Oh, wait. There’s a bookshop over yonder. Let’s go in and check.

A nun is there. And a little book, more like a brochure:
Edith Stein: Die neue Heilige— Jüdin und Ordensfrau
” (The new saint, Jewess and nun.)

In this place of so many dead, why do they the need to sell a book about yet another dead Jew? Is this such big news

Why is it important to mention that Edith Stein is a Jew? I ask this of Theresa, the nun, who says with a smile, “Because the Mother of God was a Jew, because Jesus was a Jew, and all the Apostles were Jews, and if we remembered that in those days, the Holocaust would not have happened.”

Did Pope Pius XII not know that the Mother of God was Jewish?

“Yes, yes, he knew.”

So, what did you mean when you said—

Here comes a long reply, which I don’t really get. Maybe silence would be better. I change the subject.

Were you ever married?

“No.”

Ever in love?

She blushes, like a child.

So, was there love?

Yes . . . She had one love story, but the man died. That’s it.

She came to this camp when she was twenty.

“When I just got my driver’s license, I drove right here.”

At twenty, your first desire is to go to Dachau??

“I wanted to find out about the human condition.”

Why not go to a Biergarten?

“Because I had a sympathy with the Jews.”

With the Jews. Why?

“Because the Jews are all united, all over the world the Jews are united. Religious or not, they all believe in one God.”

God bless the German people. They teach me everything I have to know about Jews.

Wouldn’t you have liked to have had children?

“I have many children, others’ children. That’s enough.”

What’s the future, what’s after all this?

“After this life, I will be totally happy.”

What will happen to you in the afterlife, up there? Describe it to me.

“I don’t have a good imagination.”

Do you think of it sometimes?

“Jesus said that it will be like a wedding, and I think that’s what will happen there.”

Not only does Sister Jutta-Maria of Munich dream of getting married to Jesus, Theresa does too. I imagine Heaven. Must be a fun place there. Muslim men are busy with their virgin brides and Christian nuns with Jesus. I wonder if Freud has an office up there as well. One day I should write a book about that.

Meanwhile, in this earthly life, Theresa has been in Dachau already for nineteen years.

How does it feel?

“I love this place. So many people died here and they got eternal life here. I am convinced that the people who were burned here now live with God.”

What is God?

“Total forgiveness.”

Is Adolf Hitler forgiven by God as well?

“Yes, I think so.”

What did you have for breakfast today?

“Bread, jam, and muesli. On Sunday we get wurst as well and fruit. Between two and three we have coffee or tea.”

What’s for lunch?

“Wednesday and Friday, no meat. Today, turkey, schnitzel, and potato salad. Plus wine.”

Supper?

“Cold food, but good.”

Vacations?

“I haven’t taken a vacation in the last nineteen years.”

Theresa offers me orange juice and takes me on a tour of the place. She does this better than some real-estate agents I’ve met.

“Would you like to stay here tonight? It’s only 25 euros. I have a room, I can show it to you, this is a room where a Jew usually stays when he comes by. An old Jew, over ninety years old. A survivor. He stays here. It’s a small room, but very quiet. It has a backyard, and you can see the watchtower from the backyard.”

That’s a Room with a View. A stone’s throw from the crematorium.

“You can stay one night, you can stay one week.”

Yes, I will think about it. Life must be pretty good here if she hasn’t taken a vacation in nineteen years.

“I wear a black veil,” she tells me, as if I didn’t notice. Definitely, Theresa could walk into an average mosque and no one would object. At least not on the grounds of Modesty.

“It took me six years to get the black veil. In the first years I could wear only the white veil, because I was studying, and I was not fully part of the order. Not totally. Today I am. A full member. A Carmelite.”

Interesting what makes people happy. I, for one, wouldn’t toil so many years for a black veil. If I wanted one, I would go to a store and buy it for a dollar or two. But, honestly, come to think of it, isn’t life funny all over? In the average university, after six years of hard work you get a paper with letters on it that says something like “Master of Arts.” Here at least you get something more useful: a veil. So, don’t laugh at her!

“Here is the toilet,” she shows me. “And if you decide to stay over, here’s the showers.”

Yes, maybe I should take a shower in Dachau. A good idea. Brilliant!

I leave Dachau, the KZ, but stick around the town. I want to meet the local people of Dachau. An average Dachau family, let’s say.

And before I know it, I get my wish. I am invited to lunch with a local family.

They welcome me with open arms. Food is arranged on the table in the backyard. Herring, cheeses of all kinds and cold cuts of all sorts, filled peppers, various jams, and quite a few beverages. No Cola Light. Would I like multiple-vitamin drinks? Maybe soda? The lady of the house apologizes that the soda today is of the “little-gas” variety. If only they had known that an “American” would be coming, they would surely have had the strong-gas soda.

Yes, they have different levels of gas in their sodas here.

Sounds strange, I know, when you speak of gas in Dachau.

But she has ice for her American guest. Loads of it. Would I like? Little gas with ice.