“JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS MEETING.”
That song from Twelfth Night—“It Was A Lover and His Lass”—sounded through my mind as we made the trans-Atlantic crossing on the solstice, June 21, and flew back to the States. From the haunted, death-soaked soil of Auschwitz, we had driven south and west to the clear, bracing air of the Swiss Alps to spend our last days in Europe amid the old-world luxury of a grand hotel. Amy’s Uncle Jim, a professor and diplomat, loved to stay at the Hotel Waldhaus in Sils-Maria, an inn that has been owned and operated by the same family since 1908, and we came in remembrance of him. Three days of Alpine hiking and gourmet dining did much to restore our bodies and souls. On the morning of the longest day of the year, we returned our faithful little Meriva to the rental agency. Its odometer now read 20,177; in our six weeks on the road, we had driven 9,214 kilometers, or 5,725 miles, nearly twice the width of the United States.
On the plane ride back to Washington, I reflected that those six weeks seemed to have lasted a long, long time and yet to have passed in the blink of an eye. I recalled that before I left, I had feared both that I would be unable to uncover much information about Alex and Helmut’s lives and that the trip would feel more of a mockery of Alex and Helmut’s suffering than a tribute to them. Looking down on the world from thirty-six thousand feet, I decided that those fears had not been realized. I had learned a great deal, factually, from the archives in Bückeburg and Helmut’s school records in Oldenburg; from the newspaper clippings in Boulogne and the saga of Adolphe Poult and René Bousquet in Montauban. And I learned a lot, viscerally, at Barracks 21 in Rivesaltes and Barracks 7 and 20 in Auschwitz.
How deeply moving it had been to stand where Alex and Helmut had stood, to see what they saw, to feel just a bit of what they felt, if not the danger and terror they experienced. I recalled walking the docks of Boulogne, imagining how hopeful they must have felt as their ship pulled into what must have finally seemed like a safe harbor. Driving through the smiling countryside of the Vosges, I again had imagined their hope as they saw the lovely fields and hillsides that might have become their new home. The ruins of the Hotel International in Martigny-les-Bains had sharply reminded me of the futility of that hope. Peering through the locked gates of the Poult factory gave me the first inklings of what they must have felt as prisoners and enemies of the Vichy state. And, oh, the bleak, windswept emptiness of Rivesaltes! It was there that their hope must have begun to die. The catacombs of Camp des Milles had given me the sense of being buried alive; the view of the boxcar from the brick factory’s second floor was chilling in the June heat. And though I learned nothing of their final moments together on the railroad siding of Birkenau, I now had that terrible place forever fixed in my inner eye.
Dozing in my seat, lulled by the hum of the engines, I felt comforted by those thoughts and eager to begin setting them down. But Shakespeare’s confident declaration kept occurring to me and giving me pause. Journeys end in lovers meeting. I patted Amy’s arm and told myself that I had traveled with my lover these past six weeks; how then could I meet her when our plane landed at Dulles Airport? Closing my eyes, I thought, “Old Will can’t be right about everything.”
As it happened, however, my journey was not quite at its end.
What actually greeted me upon our arrival was what Winston Churchill called his “black dog”—a shroud of depression that descended on me over the next several weeks as I found it difficult to shake off the sadness brought on by those hours in Auschwitz. Perhaps it was merely the routine of daily life following the exciting days of discovery on the road. But I was also constantly conscious of one overwhelming and incontrovertible fact: impossible though it was, I had failed to save Alex and Helmut, those six weeks and fifty-seven hundred miles notwithstanding. Auschwitz was the punch line to their story after all. The bad guys had won and my family had lost; never mind my good intentions, I had been no more successful in preventing the murders than my father had been. That, at least, is how it seemed to me during the long summer days. The hopes I had felt as I drove away from Poland were proving difficult to sustain.
With the coming of autumn, however, I did my best to chase away the black dog by beginning to write the story of our journey through Europe. By recollecting the details of my discoveries in the tranquility and safety of our home office, surrounded by an untidy pile of notes, books, maps, and photos, I began to think of the trip as a pilgrimage and an act of love that might, in some mystical manner unknown to me, reach my relatives and grant them a measure of the peace I so wished for them. I began to think that by setting down the story so that others could learn about it, I was fulfilling my long-held desire to place flowers on their graves, blooms that had the potential of lasting far longer than the little yellow, purple, and white wildflowers I had buried along with Alex’s photo in the ruins of the crematorium in Birkenau.
As autumn descended into winter and then as the light slowly began its cherished return, three happy things happened that, together, managed to all but banish the black dog from my door forever.
It has been nearly twenty years since I first met my friend Tamara and we made the astounding discovery that her aunt had known my parents in Berlin in 1940. My father had often regaled me with tales of how he and my mother had defied the Nazi curfews by sneaking out after dark to play chamber music with a small group of friends, and when he did he would mention Gerti Totschek, who wasn’t a musician herself but who had always been the life of those perilous parties. Gerti’s younger sister, Ursula, managed to escape Germany via the Kindertransport, the British rescue mission that saved nearly ten thousand Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Ursula became Tamara’s mother, and it was a source of great joy for Tamara and me to learn that her Aunt Gerti had played such an important role in my parents’ lives in those far-off dangerous days.
So Tamara and I already had forged an important bond. But then in the autumn of 2011, she gathered together a group of eight friends, all of whom were children of German, Austrian, or Czech survivors of the Holocaust. Most of their parents had been participants in the Kindertransport, and all of us were bound together by our unique ancestry. We began meeting monthly to share potluck suppers and talk endlessly about our common heritage and what it meant to us to be the second generation of Holocaust survivors. A frequent topic of discussion was fear and guilt: how, despite our sheltered, upper-middle-class upbringings, we had all been, and in many cases were still, subject to an irrational fear of that knock on the door in the middle of the night and a belief that we were somehow responsible for what had happened years before our birth. At one of our first gatherings, I was struck by a story Vicki told. At age seven or eight, she fell off her bicycle and scraped one of her legs. She limped painfully home and then crept upstairs to the bathroom to clean the blood from her leg in solitude. Somehow, without her parents ever saying a word to her, she had absorbed the understanding that something terrible had happened to them, and something even worse to their parents, and that a skinned leg paled in comparison. “I knew—at that age!—that I had no right to complain about something so piddling,” Vicki confessed, shaking her head. “Nothing that happened to me could ever amount to the pain my family had suffered, so I had better just learn to deal with my petty problems on my own.”
Learning that my guilt and fears were not unique to me was therapy of the most comforting kind, and the monthly meetings of what I have come to call the Tamara Group have had a profoundly healing effect for which I remain deeply grateful.
The next happy occurrence to befall me is one I have already mentioned. In February 2012, I quite unexpectedly heard from a cousin I didn’t know I had, Steven Behrens, of Cheshire, England. Steven and I share a common great-great-grandfather, Elkan Simon Behrens, father of the Bremen coffee importer Ludwig Behrens and grandfather of Toni Behrens, who married my grandfather Alex. Thanks to Steven’s prodigious genealogical research, I learned some key facts relating to Alex and Helmut’s whereabouts in the winter of 1939–1940, as well as some details of their transfer from Rivesaltes to Camp des Milles. As important as that knowledge was in filling in the gaps of this story, it was also extremely gratifying to learn that my small damaged family was larger and healthier than I’d realized. Steven and I began making vague plans to meet in person one day, plans that soon came into sharper focus thanks to the third happy event.
As winter melted into the warm spring of 2012, I heard from my friends Hilu and Roland Neidhardt in Oldenburg that Carsten and Monica Meyerbohlen were still considering placing a plaque on the side of my grandfather’s house on Gartenstrasse. But Roland wrote, with sorrow, that Carsten had been visited by an unruly black dog of his own. He was apparently having a very difficult time confronting the knowledge that he and his wife had been living contentedly in the beautiful home that had been seized from Alex Goldschmidt, and he was finding it difficult to design the memorial plaque that he deeply wished to display.
Looking up from the computer screen after reading Roland’s news, I was struck by the similarity of my long-held and enervating rhetorical question—“How do I have the right to feel true and lasting happiness when my grandfather was murdered in Auschwitz?”—to what seemed to be Carsten’s current quandary—“How can I go on living in this lovely house that was forcibly taken away from a man who would end up in Auschwitz?” He had bought the property only ten years ago, with no knowledge of its former owners, yet he could find little comfort in the awareness that he had no complicity in the crime that eventually delivered the house into his hands.
I recalled that initially I had felt a deep ambivalence at the Meyerbohlens’ offer of a plaque. In the months since, I had continued to turn the matter over in my mind, never quite arriving at a satisfactory decision. On the one hand, I thought, this was a generous offer by Carsten and Monica; they were under no obligation whatsoever to let the world know about the history of the house they had legally bought. The plaque would tell one small story of the countless acts of cruelty and violence visited upon the Jewish citizens of Oldenburg. Perhaps it would be the first of many; perhaps this decision by the Meyerbohlens would inspire other families to erect similar monuments throughout the city. It could mark an important new chapter in my ancestral home.
But, I argued to myself, does this let Oldenburg off the hook too easily? Would this single plaque enable the town elders to briskly wash their hands of the matter, to say to themselves, “There, that’s done . . . problem solved. Our collective conscience has now been washed clean”? Can a small piece of plexiglass, no matter how elegant or eloquent, make up for what I lost, for what Oldenburg lost, for what Germany and all the civilized world lost?
Am I being played for a sucker?
I was never more grateful for the emotional and rational resources of the members of the Tamara Group. I didn’t have to explain the complexity or the ambiguity of the issue to them. They understood the question at hand and the deeper general questions of loss and guilt and the possibility of reconciliation, all too well. After many nights of discussion, I came away convinced that some tangible notice of what had happened to my family was far better than nothing at all. I wrote to Carsten and Monica to tell them that I was aware of the issues they were wrestling with, that I was deeply grateful for their offer, and that I hoped plans for the plaque could move forward. I sent them a couplet from a poem by Emily Dickinson that I’d discovered, words that I thought would be perfect for inclusion in whatever memorial they might choose.
So it was with a great deal of satisfaction that I received notice from the Meyerbohlens in early June that they had settled both on a design for the plaque and on a date for its unveiling, September 27. Throughout the summer months, I looked back on the days Amy and I had spent in Germany and France and looked forward to what I now realized would be the end of the journey, when in some small way I would reclaim the family home.
I wrote to my newfound cousin, Steven, and to my long-cherished cousin Deborah, to invite them to join us for the ceremony. To my delight, they both declared their eagerness to attend.
About a week before our departure for Oldenburg, I met with the Tamara Group for our monthly get-together. “What should I say?” I asked them. “How do I strike a balance between expressing gratitude for this important gesture and making a strong statement on behalf of my murdered family?” We considered various ideas for hours, sitting around a wooden table on Tamara’s deck, eating, drinking, and occasionally laughing as the early autumn dusk deepened into a warm, breezy night.
“I’m sure you’ll find the right words,” Anne assured me. “Just make sure you remind everyone why you’re there.” I nodded, profoundly grateful for such simple, direct, and important advice.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2012. A cool, damp day in Bremen, forty miles or so from Oldenburg. Amy and I stand in the midst of the bustling central railroad station, peering discreetly into the faces of strangers, searching for Cousin Steven.
Sentimentally recalling my many twilight conversations with my father in his last months, I had decided to travel to Oldenburg via Amsterdam. We arrived in Oldenburg yesterday, welcomed warmly, as ever, by Roland and Hilu. This morning Amy and I drove to Bremen, where we have arranged to meet Steven and his wife, Helen, who yesterday flew to Hamburg from their home in Cheshire and this morning have taken the train to Bremen. We have arranged to meet under the station’s big departure-and-arrivals board shortly after their train arrives at 10:42. For some reason, however, we have not exchanged photographs, so I have no idea who among the hundreds of hurrying passengers walking briskly past us is my cousin.
But then a man pulling a wheeled suitcase, a jacket over his arm, pauses a few steps away. He is about my height, with less hair but also less girth. Our eyes meet, we both raise our eyebrows and nearly simultaneously exclaim, “Steven?” “Martin?” His broad smile must mirror my own, and we embrace. Needless but jolly introductions follow, as I present Amy to Steven and Helen. There has doubtless been many a happy scene in this station over the years, as friends and lovers meet, but at this moment, I am willing to bet that ours is among the most joyful. My little family has just increased by two.
I search for a family resemblance as the four of us walk out to the car, chatting a mile a minute. I peer avidly into Steven’s friendly face, not sure at first but immensely pleased at the opportunity for future discovery.
The four of us spend a delightful day in Bremen, first as tourists—as I show my family what I know of such famous sights as the beautiful eleventh-century Bremen Cathedral, the sixteen-foot-tall statue of the medieval hero Roland, and the sculpture of the Bremen Town Musicians—and then as ancestral sleuths. We walk along the handsome city boulevard known as Am Wall in search of the home of my great-grandfather Ludwig Behrens, the son of our common great-great-grandfather Elkan. We find the address, but the area was heavily bombed during the Second World War and the street is now lined with commercial ventures and office buildings. We then drive to a residential area in the eastern part of the city in search of the graves of Ludwig and his wife, Jeanette. We find the cemetery that we’re looking for, but as it is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the gates are bolted shut. The detective work and close reading of maps, hurrying down strange streets in search of what turn out to be blind alleys, serve to bring us closer together. By the time we drive back to Oldenburg in late afternoon, Amy and I feel as though we have known Steven and Helen for years rather than mere hours. I am very happy.
At dinner that evening at the Neidhardts, we are again joined by the Lutheran minister Dietgard Jacoby, whom I am eager to introduce to my English cousins. Looking forward to tomorrow’s unveiling at the house on Gartenstrasse, Roland and Dietgard tell me the somewhat awkward story of previous attempts to commemorate the persecution of the Jews of Oldenburg. In dozens of other cities across Germany, it has become common in the past two decades or so to place what are called Stolpersteine, or Stumble Stones, in the streets. Often simple cobblestones covered in brass, the Stolpersteine are laid in the roadway outside houses that once belonged to Jewish families, inset with their names, their birthdates, and the dates and sites of their murders. Literally thousands of these stones have been placed in German cities from Aachen to Zittau, but up until now, there have been none in Oldenburg. “Why not?” is my logical question.
Roland and Dietgard exchange long looks before answering. The “blame” seems to be somewhat equally shared by reactionary elements in the Oldenburg establishment, who have gone in for the sort of historical airbrushing decried by Roland during my last visit, and—somewhat surprisingly, it seems to me at first—the local Jewish community. Most of Oldenburg’s Jews are fairly recent Russian émigrés and, led by their New York-trained rabbi, they have declared that these stones, at ground level where they are both literally underfoot and subject to such indignities as being urinated upon by passing dogs, are not fitting or dignified memorials to the murdered. As a result, other than the maintained ruins of the synagogue on Peterstrasse that was burned to the ground on Kristallnacht in 1938, there is no public commemoration of the fate of the Jews of Oldenburg. So the plaque on Gartenstrasse will break new ground tomorrow, as my father’s hometown slowly begins to join the ranks of German cities trying to come to terms with the unspeakable legacy of the Third Reich by creating lasting memorials.
But what, finally, is the best way to accomplish these attempts at remembrance? Can something so monstrous ever be adequately memorialized? Is it even possible? The German philosopher Theodor Adorno famously declared, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” implying that the only justified response is sorrowful silence. To that end, Dietgard mentions the Square of Invisible Witnesses in the German city of Saarbrücken.
Between 1990 and 1993, a German art teacher and his students surreptitiously removed 2,146 cobblestones from the public square in front of the Provincial Parliament building in Saarbrücken and replaced them with similar stones so that the originals would not be missed. They chose the number 2,146 because it represents the number of Jewish cemeteries that were desecrated during the Nazi era. The “vandals” engraved the original stones with the names and locations of the cemeteries and then reinstalled the stones with the engraved sides facing down, to remain in the square as silent indictments of Nazi brutality. The citizens of Saarbrücken were thus unaware that they were walking on anything more remarkable than an ordinary cobblestoned square . . . until the artist came forward and confessed what he and his students had done. Perhaps surprisingly, the Saarbrücken City Council then retroactively commissioned this already completed memorial, giving it its official blessing. Today, to the uninitiated eye the Square of Invisible Witnesses is just an ordinary cityscape.
As we sit before a cozy fire after dinner, we debate the effectiveness of such memorials. Dietgard finds the Saarbrücken square to be a powerful and poetic monument, in keeping with her belief in the hidden energy of the unseen. Roland, a more practical sort, thinks that it allows the citizens of Saarbrücken to ignore the horror as they blithely make their daily way over the buried testimonials of the silent stones. Feeling hopelessly noncommittal, I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with whoever is speaking at any given moment. But I find it remarkable, and not for the first time, that Germany continues to have this lively debate over the best way to remember its criminal past when, too often it seems, my country continues to give only lip service to the issues of slavery and the slaughter of our Native population.
Around 9:00 p.m., we drive Steven and Helen to their hotel, and then Amy, Roland, and I set off for the airport to pick up my cousin Deborah. With her arrival, my family bolstered by yet another loving and supportive member, I feel fully ready for the unveiling on Gartenstrasse.
Thursday, September 27, is another cool and cloudy day, with intermittent showers. In the late morning, Amy and I meet Deborah, Steven, and Helen at their hotel and then spend several hours on a walking tour of the town. We first pay a visit to 34 Gartenstrasse, and I proudly show my cousins what I can from the sidewalk, pointing out the obvious grandeur of the place and such hidden details as the former location of my father’s chicken run at the side of the house. I am very aware of something new; on the side of the house facing the street, there is a patch of blue cloth covering what I know to be the memorial plaque.
From the house, we stroll down Gartenstrasse and enter the beautiful Schlossgarten. I lead the way to the quiet corner of the park where, sixteen months ago, we scattered my father’s ashes. It begins to rain softly and, unfurling umbrellas, we walk through the park admiring the flower beds, ponds, and gently curving paths. I tell my cousins about my father’s sweet memories of the Schlossgarten; I tell them that in his final years, as he struggled with a clouded mind, he spoke lovingly of these cherished surroundings and his memories seemed to bring him peace. They nod, and I feel how deeply they understand.
Leaving the park, my tour takes us next to the Altes Gymnasium, where I show them the memorial to Helmut and his fellow students. We then enter the narrow streets of the old city, and I lead the way to the corner of Achternstrasse and Schüttingstrasse, where Alex once had his store. I am aware of a flood of pride within me and realize that I am sharing with my family a sense that, in some profound way, this is my home and they are helping me reclaim it after a very long and difficult time.
We enjoy a warm lunch in a cozy little restaurant, then agree to meet again in the lobby of their hotel that evening. At the appointed time, with Roland and Hilu joining us, we all walk solemnly to what I still think of as my grandfather’s house. The ceremony is about to begin.
Carsten and Monica Meyerbohlen stand in the front garden of 34 Gartenstrasse, greeting the thirty or forty invited guests, who arrive in twos and threes. Farschid Ali Zahedi is here with his cameras. It is overcast and cool but the afternoon rain has moved off to the east, leaving behind a few shimmering drops in the leaves of the beech trees and on the rosebush that has been nurtured these past months by the last of my father’s ashes. Carsten grasps my hand firmly in a welcoming grip, but I imagine that I see some lingering pain in his eyes. I realize that he may be entering into the evening with his own feelings of ambivalence. My eyes return to the blue cloth on the front of the house and I notice that a small spotlight is trained on it.
We file slowly up the front stairs, pass through the entrance hallway past the library and dining room, and turn into the grand high-ceilinged living room. Much of its furniture has been moved to the perimeter and the space filled with folding chairs. Steven, Deborah, and I take places in the front row, with Amy and Helen seated directly behind us. I crane my neck to discover that the room is full to overflowing, with many people standing against the walls. As the murmur of voices slowly falls silent, Dietgard Jacoby hurries in and gives me a sad smile. I return her smile and pat my chest above my heart to show my appreciation for her presence.
Oldenburg’s deputy mayor, Germaid Eilers-Dörfler, rises and extends a greeting from the city’s Mayor Gerd Schwandner. She declares that this is no ordinary gathering and asks rhetorically why there have been no other gatherings of this type, since, as she notes solemnly, “We have, after all, had reason and opportunity enough.” She acknowledges that the Free State of Oldenburg was the first state in the German Reich to deliver power to the Nazis and that “an ominous signal was sent out from here that would prove to be irreversible.”
Frau Eilers-Dörfler decries the “state machinery of hatred that released unimaginable forces of evil” in Germany. She mentions the destruction of November 9, 1938, the forced march of the Jews through Oldenburg on the following day, and the even worse indignities that were inflicted upon them in the following years. She declares, “The immeasurable suffering experienced by our Jewish fellow citizens in their everyday lives and then in concentration and extermination camps weighed heavily on those who endured this suffering and on those who felt deeply ashamed of it.”
At this moment, Deborah leans close to me and hisses in my ear, “How dare she! How dare she compare the suffering of the Jews with the guilt of the Germans! We all know who suffered more, and it’s not even close!”
I look at my cousin and nod my head in agreement about what, indeed, seems an utterly obtuse remark. But then the deputy mayor speaks of the slow rebuilding of Jewish life in Oldenburg and of how “durable reconciliation is not grounded in repressing history but rather through courage and enlightenment, knowledge, and honesty.” She insists that reconciliation cannot merely be abstract but must be concrete and tangible. “Numbers, even horrifyingly large numbers,” she says, “hardly affect us. It is the fates of individuals that stir us inside. And the fate of the Goldschmidt family gives us an opportunity to feel with real empathy what this episode in our nation’s history has inflicted on humanity. We can see the exclusion, humiliation, heartache, and murder.
“Erecting a plaque on this house,” she concludes, “to remember Alex Goldschmidt and his family here, could not be more appropriate. Our warmest thanks for this privately sponsored initiative go to you, dear Mr. and Mrs. Meyerbohlen, on behalf of the City of Oldenburg.”
There is sustained applause from the witnesses. Carsten stands. In a low voice, in German, he speaks of the pleasure that accompanied his and Monica’s purchase of this splendid house a decade ago, happiness that turned to anguish when they learned of the circumstances that led to its availability. He recounts meeting me and Amy last year, how the idea of a memorial plaque first occurred to him, how we have stayed in touch, and how gratified he is that this day has arrived and that we have traveled so far to attend this evening’s ceremony.
At that point, Carsten pauses, then falls silent, then sits. Monica stands and invites everyone outside for the unveiling. But before anyone can move, Roland Neidhardt stands and says loudly, “I think we should now hear from Alex Goldschmidt’s grandson.”
After a beat, Monica turns to me with a broad smile and exclaims, “Yes, of course! Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Goldsmith, from Washington.” Polite applause. I stand, smile at Roland, take a long look around this opulent room in my grandfather’s magnificent house, smile at Amy, Steven, Helen, and Deborah, and begin to speak, trying to express the many thoughts and feelings I have carried with me since this long journey began.
“Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Carsten. And special thanks to four people whom I have known for more than ten years, who have become dear friends: Farschid Ali Zahedi, Dietgard Jacoby, and Roland and Hiltrud Neidhardt. Thank you all so much.
“We are here tonight for many reasons. We are here, in this beautiful house, because my grandfather, Alex Goldschmidt, who had fought in the trenches of the First World War on behalf of the German Reich and who was awarded the Iron Cross for his efforts, returned to Oldenburg and his Haus der Mode, and worked hard enough and was fortunate enough to be able to afford to purchase this house in 1919. We are here because Alex and his wife Toni brought up four children in this house, their daughters Bertha and Eva and their sons Helmut and Günther, my father, who so loved running out the front door and scampering down Gartenstrasse to the entrance of the Schlossgarten, where he would play and dream for many a happy hour.
“We are here because in 1932, officials from the newly elected Nazi Party—as noted by the deputy mayor—forced my grandfather to sell this house to one of them for a criminally low price. For the next six years, Alex and Toni moved several times, each time to smaller and cheaper lodgings.
“We are here because on the night of November 9, 1938, my grandfather was arrested during the violence of Kristallnacht, and because the next morning he was marched through town along with forty-two of his fellow Jews to the Oldenburg prison, and because the next day he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he remained for nearly a month.
“We are here tonight because my grandfather Alex and my uncle Helmut attempted to flee Nazi Germany on board the refugee ship St. Louis, which sailed away from Hamburg on May 13, 1939, bound for Cuba. We are here because the St. Louis was not allowed to land in Cuba, nor in the United States, nor in Canada. We are here because the St. Louis sailed back to Europe, because my grandfather and uncle were allowed to disembark in France, and because they then spent the next three years in refugee centers and internment camps in Martigny-les-Bains and Montauban and Agde and Rivesaltes and Les Milles.”
At this point, I am forced to stop and dry my eyes and take a deep breath, which does little to prevent my voice from cracking.
“We are here tonight because in August of 1942, Alex and Helmut were forced into cattle cars and shipped first to Drancy and then to Auschwitz, where they were murdered, executed for the crime of being born Jews. We are here because my grandmother Toni and my aunt Eva were sent to Riga to be executed for the same crime.”
I lower my shimmering eyes to the floor for several moments. I am aware of a profound silence in the room. I wonder for an instant if the deputy mayor, the Meyerbohlens, and nearly everyone else is regretting having given me a chance to speak. When I raise my eyes again, I see through the blur the tear-streaked face of Dietgard. I smile at her with gratitude and continue.
“We are here in my grandfather’s former house for all those reasons. But we are also here because of so many kind and wonderful people in Oldenburg who have made me and my wife and my extended family—Steven and Helen and Deborah, who have traveled here from England—feel so welcome; people like Farschid and Dietgard and Roland and Hilu and many, many others.
“And we are here because Carsten and Monica decided to make a brave declaration by affixing a tangible statement of remembrance to this beautiful house . . . to their beautiful house. They did not have to do this, yet they have chosen to do it. They are among the people of Oldenburg who have made me and my family feel welcome, to feel as though we belong here and that when we pass within the boundaries of this city we are coming home.
“Thank you, Carsten and Monica. Thank you for having the courage to remember.”
I pause again and once more take in the sight of this lovely room. I imagine for a moment how it might have looked on a September evening ninety years ago, in 1922, when my father was nearly nine and my uncle had just experienced his first birthday. Again I feel my eyes begin to overflow, but this time I am smiling broadly. I resume.
“I feel bound to tell you all that when Carsten and Monica first mentioned their idea to me, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. And I must also admit that I have been both sad and sometimes deeply angry about what happened to my family and about the process that forced them from this house. I have felt that way often, in fact. And I must tell you that I have felt guilty about what happened, as irrational as that may seem to you, considering that this all happened years before I was born. So I want to make sure that I share with you a brief story before we go outside.
“The story is of two Buddhist monks, an older man and a younger man, who are traveling many miles on foot to their monastery. It has been raining heavily and when they come to the bank of a river, they find that the bridge has been washed away. Standing on the bank is a young woman. ‘Please, sirs,’ she says to the monks, ‘I need to get to the other side of the river to feed my children their evening meal. Will you be so kind as to carry me across?’ The younger monk begins to explain that their order does not allow them to come into physical contact with women, but the older monk stoops, gestures to his companion to do the same, and then invites the woman to climb onto their shoulders. She does so, and the two monks then wade across the river, transporting her safely to the other side. She jumps to the ground, thanks them profusely, and the two monks continue their journey.
“That evening, as the shadows are beginning to lengthen, the younger monk says, ‘Master, I continue to be somewhat troubled by our encounter along the river bank. We have made certain holy vows, and one of them is that we do not touch women under any circumstances. And yet you broke your vow and caused me to break mine. Why, Master?’
“The older monk stops walking and, turning to his young companion with a smile filled with kindness, says, ‘I set that woman down upon the river bank many hours ago now. Why are you still carrying her?’”
I pause and see Roland nod his head slowly as he reaches for Hilu’s hand.
“I have carried the burden of guilt and anger and sorrow for many years now,” I say. “It may have served a purpose, but this evening, in this place, before you kind people, I vow to set it down. Or at least, to try my best.”
I sit then, closing my eyes. Amy kisses the back of my neck, Deborah grips one of my hands and Steven the other. Loud applause fills the living room of my grandfather’s house.
We then file out the front door into a misty evening. Carsten appears at my side. He is smiling broadly with the clear evidence of tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you so much for your beautiful words. You have given me permission to set down my burden also.”
At a signal from Monica, Carsten and I both grasp a long piece of string that is connected to the blue cloth on the front of the house. We pull gently and the cloth falls away to reveal the memorial plaque. The crowd cheers and Carsten and I shake hands.
Carsten Meyerbohlen and I shake hands moments after the unveiling of the memorial plaque at 34 Gartenstrasse.
The plexiglass plaque has been designed by Carsten himself. Against an image of the house in winter, there appear the words, in German:
From 1919 until 1932 this was the private house of the respected citizen Alex Goldschmidt. With the forced sale of this house to the National Socialists, the sorrowful journey of this Jewish family began. Alex Goldschmidt and his son Helmut in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his wife Toni and daughter Eva in the Riga ghetto, were murdered in 1942.
Below that, in English, are the lines from the poem by Emily Dickinson that I suggested for the plaque:
Remembrance has a rear and front,
’Tis something like a house.
Amy hugs and kisses me. She, who has been with me every step of this long journey, is crying. Then Deborah appears, sobbing, and I hold her tightly as she tries to speak. “They had so much,” she manages finally. “Oh, and they lost so much.” And then my newfound cousin Steven, whom I realize in this moment I love like family, is also by my side, also in tears, and we all wrap our arms around one another, sharing our bottomless sorrow and our heady triumph at having survived the evil efforts of our enemies and our pleasure at this written proof of our family’s existence on the wall above our heads and our great joy at having come so far to find one another.
Journeys end in lovers meeting.
WE REPAIR TO THE NEIDHARDTS’ COMFORTABLE HOME—Amy, Steven, Helen, Deborah, Farschid, Dietgard, Carsten, Monica, and about a dozen other people who are friends of the Neidhardts or the Meyerbohlens. Hilu has prepared a delicious stew and there is amply flowing beer, wine, and mineral water. There is music and laughter and animated conversation. Everyone seems to think that the evening has been a roaring success, and everyone’s spirits are high. It feels like a party, like an exuberant gathering after a solemn occasion. I suddenly decide, with apologies to the Irish, that this is a wake. Alex’s wake.
I stand, a bit unsteadily, and find a spoon to clink against my glass, commanding the room’s attention. “Pardon this brief interruption,” I say, perhaps a few decibels louder than necessary. “I would like to propose a toast. There are many people who warrant toasting tonight, and I’m the right man to do it, since I’m more than a little toasted myself.” I laugh, and if my laughter lasts a bit longer than it should, no one seems to mind.
“To my grandfather!” I exclaim, lifting my glass high. “To Alex!” And from all corners of the room comes the hearty reply, “To Alex!”
I notice Pastor Dietgard sitting in a corner next to an empty chair and, a trifle straight-linishly, I walk over and join her. Turning to her with an enormous smile, I ask what she thought of the ceremony on Gartenstrasse. She is smiling, too, but there is also a look of wonder on her angelic face, as if she has witnessed something truly remarkable. When she speaks, her voice is so tender and soft that I have to lean close to hear her words above the room’s cheerful din.
“Tonight,” she says, “was like a birth, the birth of a star whose light we cannot see for hundreds of years.” Dietgard hugs me and whispers in my ear, “Alex was with us at the birth.”
“Thank you,” I breathe. If I have ever felt this deeply happy before, I cannot remember it.
An hour or so later, the last of the guests take their leave. Alex’s wake is at an end. Amy retires to bed and I drive Steven, Helen, and Deborah back to their hotel. I then leave the car in the hotel parking lot and walk down the road to Gartenstrasse. The clouds have cleared away, and there are now dozens and dozens of stars winking above the canopy of trees that lines the boulevard. Standing in front of the gate of my grandfather’s house, I gaze with enormous pride and satisfaction and happiness at the plaque on the wall. I reflect that, while there will probably always remain a reservoir of sadness within me over what happened to my family, my feelings of guilt and shame have largely vanished. The end of my journey has borne a new beginning.
I think of Dietgard’s declaration that tonight saw the birth of a new star, one that will join the galaxy I am seeing now above my head. And I am reminded of Juliet’s wish for her beloved Romeo: “And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night.” Tonight the light I see reflected from the plaque seems to promise a kind of immortality for my lost family. Alex and Helmut, Toni and Eva, and all of us have come home, and we are safe and happy.
And so, dear Reader, should your travels take you to Oldenburg, I invite you to pay a visit to 34 Gartenstrasse and look up, with a smile and not a tear, at the shining stars.
