Reflecting on the insightful conversation with Herr Stern, I note that his English, flavored by the distinct accent, straightaway revealed his roots. Curiously, the more we spoke, the less I heard his Germanic intonation. His English pronunciation improved and his delivery became less stiff and didactic. During our talk I was very aware: “He is German.” While attracted to his mode of thinking, and stimulated by his comments, my attention often shifted to his Germanness. Could he have been a Nazi? Had he served the Nazi war machine? The name “Stern”—could he be Jewish? A concentration camp survivor?
The coincidence tied to the arrival of Stern, fulfilling my wish for a meaningful contact with a Westerner, assumes enhanced import when linked to his German background. My family in principle boycotted German products, places, and people. As an adult, I myself followed looser guidelines. Occasionally I stopped in for Black Forest cake at the German konditorei (confectionary shop), in the Little Germany neighborhood a short walk from my Manhattan apartment. In Ideal Restaurant, a simple German eatery on East 86th Street, sometimes I savored a meal of sauerbraten, pickled German pot roast. And had I not traveled to Zagreb via Germany? Regardless, I still tend to uphold the family custom of shunning things Germanic. This habit I have, until now, not given a second thought. Meeting Stern sets me to ponder further my negative feelings toward his native country.
I first encountered religious bigotry at age six. Wednesday afternoons I attended an after-school children’s class in the Jewish religion held in the local synagogue. One day, class over, outside the synagogue in our mixed Christian-Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, I spotted a classmate from my public school.
“Hi Siegfried,” I said, smiling. I did not question why Siegfried, a German Christian boy, was waiting by the synagogue. I began walking home. In those years, child abuse or abduction were not general sources of fear. Children could go to and from school alone, if considered able to cross the streets safely.
“Dirty Jew! Dirty Jew!” suddenly I heard. Turning around, I saw Siegfried running in my direction, waving a long metal tube in his hand. “Dirty Jew! Dirty Jew!” His shouts launched me into running too, propelling my legs faster and faster. I reached home uninjured, at least physically. Dashing into our brownstone walkup, I left Siegfried behind on the street, slashing the air with the metal tube.
“What is it?” asked my mother as I rushed into our apartment, the door in those days ordinarily left unlocked. I blurted out what happened. She sighed and said: “There are some things you have to know.” She enumerated a child-comprehensible list of the discriminatory treatment one may receive as a member of a minority group. The “Dirty Jew incident” she reported to the school principal, who invited Siegfried’s parents for a talk. From then onward Siegfried totally ignored me, to my relief. As I grew older, I learned the public secret that in America, even on the liberal East Coast, some residential buildings, schools, clubs, and social and work establishments maintained a “No Jews” policy or, at least, a Jewish quota.
After interacting with Stern, I recognize that my behaving as a reverse Siegfried is foreign to my character and natural inclinations. I had, after all, at age nine penned: “Hand in hand to make this land a better world to live in.” Those words won the first prize out of ten thousand entries in the New York City National Brotherhood Week slogan-writing contest sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The judges supported my childhood idealism that a “better” world called for human unity. I believed what I wrote. My inborn instinct for friendship and cooperation obviously clashed with the anti-German attitude I absorbed in my family.
Stern helped widen my perspective. Our exchange underscores that prejudice impedes one’s inner freedom. The seeds of prejudice develop roots very hard to extricate as they twist and twine, clogging our mind and squeezing our heart. My anti-German attitude imprisons me in narrow thinking. Preconceptions restrict me from stretching my limitations. Holding on to prejudice makes me tight and unloving. I want to unshackle myself from the clutter of obstructive opinions. I vow to dissolve my German antipathy. Releasing negative thoughts will create space in my mind, allowing new thoughts to enter. I want to open to the German people of today, to know what kind of people they are.
Stern encourages me to look from my core. His hints at mysteries concealed in everyday matters suggest that my European adventure is unavoidable. I sense something “predestined” about the journey of discovery starting to move me past the boundaries of my circle. As if to bolster my intuition, I remember an incident in my nineteenth year.
During summer vacation, I am swimming in the Atlantic Ocean at Jones Beach on New York’s Long Island. Certified in high school as a junior lifeguard, I usually venture beyond the waves. On this particular day, so etched in my memory, I swim far from shore. When I attempt to swim back, the strong current battles my strokes. I thrash my arms and legs to keep my head above the water.
Scenes of my life flash before me as photographs in a book whose pages flip quickly in front of my eyes. The book covers my life up to the point where I am floundering in the ocean, and then it continues further. It moves so speedily there is only whirling color. I cannot distinguish any specifics. Watching the pages of my future zip along, I glimpse an existential truth: my life has a definite and ongoing story line. I have no details, but I know I will not drown. I am not to take my last breath in this ocean. The process takes barely a few seconds as my head bobs under the water several times.
Suddenly a reassuring arm surrounds my chest. The strong grip of an unknown savior pulls me horizontally above the water. Closer to shore, I can swim again on my own.
Remembering my survival encounter with the mighty power of the ocean, the picture book unrolling my past, present, and future, and the arrival of a rescuer, urges me to wonder: “Is everything happening for a reason?” The memory of my life looking like photos in a book or images in a film calls up Matko’s words in the screening room: “What is real and what is artificial?” I recollect Stern’s forceful assertion: “There is no such thing as coincidence.” Stern supports my unexplainable thought that the stay in Zagreb is directing me in a predetermined way. If this applies to individuals, does it apply to groups of people and nations as well? If so, are wars and violence also part of a “predesign”?
Suppose that our lives indeed guide us toward a predestined end? Why bother to make any efforts? Will not all unfold according to the will of the “Predesigner”? Hmm, this seems a recipe to become passive, lazy, and fatalistic. My best approach, I decide, is to persist in making my best efforts. The word “trust” arises, although in what or whom to trust I do not know. Simply trust in myself and my thoughts, ideas, and intuitions?
Accepting the possibility of an existential predesign, I resolve to stop complaining about the circumstances of my life. The Yugoslavs do not openly complain, at least not in public, and rarely to me, a foreigner. They have to be careful to whom they speak. Who knows who could be listening in? Not complaining gives them a strength I lack. I aspire to adopt the noncomplaining attitude. If my living situation in Zagreb constitutes an immediate testing of my well-meant intention, I do not score high.