The Wait is (nearly) Over

Tags

American Jews, Article 116, Berlin, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust

Perhaps it was the golden angel we met in Dresden who brought me good luck.  But 73 years after my parents and grandparents fled Nazi Germany, I received notification that my German citizenship application has been approved.  The notification came 15 months after I submitted my application to the German Consulate in San Francisco.  I feel happy and relieved. I envision a future for our family where we can divide our time between Germany and the U.S.  The news has not quite sunk in yet. Perhaps it will feel more real when I return to Rathaus Schoeneberg to pick up my Einbuergerungsurkunde (naturalization certificate).

When I began the application process I had no idea of the intense emotions that would be wrung from me at each hurdle I encountered along the way. I had a breezy optimism that I might have to wait a bit, but that the rubber stamp would come without much fuss.  My eligibility for citizenship was as solid as it gets with two German Jewish parents who were Holocaust escapees.  My advice to those who are beginning the process of having their citizenship restored is to brace yourself for a high stakes journey.  What began for me as a chance to connect with my heritage eventually became a struggle to obtain what was rightfully mine. That struggle caused many fits of anger and tears, but also brought me many kind expressions of support from my wonderful friends in the U.S. and new friends in Germany. 

When my brother-in-law Todd first told my husband and I about the opportunity to apply for German citizenship, neither of us were that interested.  We were busy with our family and work life in the Rockies and were not prepared to add this project to our plates. Our feelings changed when Brian received a job offer in Berlin and when we took the time to reflect on the benefits of dual citizenship for our family.  Now that the process is drawing to a successful conclusion (we still have to apply for passports and id cards), I am glad that I stuck it out and want to support others who take this step.  You may not need a golden angel, but it’s good to know they are out there.

Time Out from the Full Circle Journey

Tags

American Jews, Berlin, German citizenship, German Jews, Jewish identity

The opportunity to contribute a column to The Jewish Daily Forward came up during my three-week summer interlude in Bozeman.  I emerged from jet lag to the realization that my little home office was an excellent vantage point to reflect on all that I had embraced and struggled with over the past year.  There was too much to squeeze into my 900 word allotment, but I packed in what I could.  My overwhelming sense is that the past year’s mental and emotional journey took place in a parallel time span where a day equalled a week or even a month.  I want to go back to Germany to continue this journey, but I am so relieved to hit the Pause button from my peaceful perch in the Rockies.

The Forward column is about how I have been able to tie together some of the loose strands of my identity while living in Germany.  I sent the column in two weeks ago but have yet to be given a publication date.  Perhaps they’ve changed their mind and I’ll pitch the column elsewhere or just post it here.  I’ve begun to experience the frustrations of being a rookie journalist, but I will keep writing.  And in a few days I will be back in Berlin, ready to experience life as an immigrant in a country that beckons and stimulates me, and helps me to uncover parts of who I am.

Here is a link to the essay I published online last month about the long road towards my German citizenship: http://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/reclaiming-my-german-citizenship/. I tried to call the German Consulate in San Francisco yesterday to solicit their help in getting me through the final stage of the application process.  I gave up after being put on hold and then getting disconnected twice.  Maybe I will have better luck today.

A Year of Blogging

Tags

American Jews, Berlin, diaspora, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust, Jewish identity

My first blog post was just about one year ago.  Now the school year is drawing to a close which means I will have less time for writing and reflection over the summer.  This blog has helped me to chronicle and process the incredible experience we’ve had as “a German American Jewish family in Berlin.” 

The bumpy path towards my German citizenship, an expansion of my Jewish identity, and discoveries about both my ancestors and living relatives have stimulated my life enough to shake me out of the mid-life malaise I was in back in Bozeman.  I haven’t shared all the emotional highs and lows of the past year: the fresh grief over the loss of my father (a quintessentially German Jewish man), the pain upon seeing the photo of a family member who perished during the Holocaust, the guilt and anxiety about how our choices have affected others.  I’ve spent days on end gripped with an angst that never found its way into my writing.  The moments of joy have been no less difficult for me to capture with words, what it feels like to find a cousin who needed you before you knew her, or to see your son put on your father’s bar mitzvah tallit for the first time.

I plan to keep writing and hope to develop and publish some of the thoughts I’ve recorded  in this personal forum.  I’ve just had a piece accepted for publication on a writer’s blog and will provide the link when it appears later this summer. I appreciate all of the comments I receive from readers (most come via email) and find a lot of support and inspiration from them.

Olivia, Sam and I went to Vienna last weekend to see our new-found cousins (see  Shrinking the Family Diaspora) once more before they move back to Israel.  The coincidence of our families living in Europe at the same time has been one of the best gifts of the past year, one that will sweeten and enrich our lives for years to come.  Now I am looking forward to the next trip, back to Bozeman for three weeks this summer.

Family History Tour: Wiesbaden

Tags

American Jews, German Jews, Holocaust, Wiesbaden

Nana Ilse was a very refined woman, I told my kids, upper class and well-heeled, moody, but also a loving grandmother. She was the only one of my four German Jewish grandparents who wanted to teach me German when I was a child living in New Jersey. Trips over the George Washington Bridge to visit my grandparents in New York City meant a chance to learn a new song or poem in a language that always beckoned to me.

We traveled to Wiesbaden over our Spring Break to visit my grandmother’s final resting place, 200 kilometers from where she was born in Kassel, Germany in 1906.  She had fled to the U.S. as a young married woman when my mother was 5 years old in 1938.  For many years she tried to make the U.S., and later Israel and Switzerland, her home.  But it was Germany where she returned towards the end of her life with my step-grandfather.  She died in 1987 and this was my first visit to her grave. The visit became a family adventure when we learned that the Jewish cemetery was closed for Passover and would not reopen during our stay.  We waited until the maintenance workers at the Christian cemetery next door weren’t looking and quickly climbed the fence and had the entire cemetery to ourselves.

Nana Ilse had good taste in all things, and her choice of Wiesbaden as a home was no exception.  We had fun exploring the city’s parks, architecture and shops and even managed to find time for a brief excursion to the Rhein.  We were also taken on a Jewish history walking tour by Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler who has devoted herself to various Holocaust memorial efforts in Wiesbaden and throughout Germany. By chance, the City of Wiesbaden had just dedicated its new Holocaust Memorial (shown below) after many years of effort by local residents. 

Bringing my husband and children to this beautiful area of southern Germany from where I trace my roots fulfilled a goal I have had since we relocated to Germany last summer. From my upper crust grandparents on my mother’s side of the family to the earthy leather workers from Altwiedermus, we now have a better picture of our lineage to carry with us into the future. 

Family History Tour: Altwiedermus

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Altwiedermus, American Jews, German Jews, Germany, Hessen Jews, Holocaust

My father was born in 1929 in the tiny village of Altwiedermus in the state of Hessen, Germany. Altwiedermus had a population of 300 when Hitler came to power in 1933, including 27 Jews. Many of those Jews were relatives of my family. Thirteen of the Jews of Altwiedermus were killed during the Holocaust. There are no Jews living in Altwiedermus today.

Thanks to Gisela Lorenzen, village historian, for her painstaking efforts to piece together the story of the Jews of Altwiedermus. Gisela has put together part of my family tree dating back to 1770 and she shared many details  of her research with us on our recent trip to my father’s birthplace.

Altwiedermus must have changed a bit since my father fled to America with his mother and sister in 1938, but it is still a sleepy little village with a population of less than 1,000. One of the most remarkable buildings we saw was the old synagogue. Built in 1866, the synagogue had its own mikvah and appears to have been just large enough to fit the small number of village worshippers. It is one of the smallest synagogues in Germany. The synagogue is now a historical monument although there are no funds to adequately restore or preserve the building.

 

My father’s family had a successful tannery business. The family property (shown below) included a large house with separate buildings for leather working and animals. All three buildings are still standing. The house was passed on to refugees from Silesia in 1945 whose descendants live there today.

  

The trip to Altwiedermus was very emotional for me. Most of my father’s family got out of Germany in time to save their lives. One who didn’t was Meta Adler, my grandfather’s sister, for whom we hope to initiate a memorial project. She was an unmarried woman without the means to devise her own escape.

We bid farewell to Altwiedermus from the medieval Ronneburg castle set in the hills high above the village. I’m not sure when or if I will ever be back, but thanks to Gisela I now have a better appreciation of my family history. Even more important, I have photos and documents to pass along to my children and future generations of our family.

Family Stress and Bureaucratic Struggles

Tags

American Jews, German citizenship, German Jews, Holocaust

When your 78 year old mother tells you that black is white and white is black, you really have no choice but to agree with her.  Yes, Berlin is colder than Bozeman, Montana even though it is Spring here and still snowing there.  Yes, I’m not a “real coffee drinker” because I enjoy an occasional flavored coffee in the afternoon instead of a straight up cuppa joe.  And yes, it was me who smashed the bedroom door with my tennis racket during high school, not my sister (wait a minute, maybe she was right on that one!).  Well, it was 10 days of being submerged in a world that didn’t make sense to me, but I am so grateful to my wonderful sister that she chose to spend her entire two-week vacation in Berlin and brought mom along too.

There were loads of stressful family moments, but we got to see grandma ride the U-bahn, listen to the kids chatter in German with her, and hang out at the 5-star Kempinski Hotel. The apex of familial tension came when we gave the update on our homecoming plans.  We have finally decided that Brian will teach at the John F. Kennedy School for one more year before returning to Bozeman High School, but I will come back in time to teach at MSU during the Spring 2012 semester.  We are trying to figure out how to split the 3 kids in half for 6 months, but in all likelihood Sam and Olivia will return in December with me. I do not want my mother to be without family in Bozeman for 2 full years, but we felt that one year in Berlin would be too short!  This approach to our dilemma has all the qualities of a classic compromise; no one is fully satisfied, and my mother is especially aggrieved. Still, we feel we made the best choice under the circumstances.

After making my last trip over to the Kempinski yesterday morning to tuck my mom and sister into their taxi to Tegel airport, I spent a wonderful day of feeling that my burdens were a little lighter.  The highlight was a lunch-time stroll with Brian through the Heinrich Baehr Park in Zehlendorf.  Berlin still holds many treasures to discover and I felt good all day knowing I had done my best to meet my family obligations.

My serene feelings lasted until I arrived home and checked my email to discover a message from a Berlin city official informing me that my application for German citizenship has been lost.  Yes, the all-efficient German bureaucracy lost an application containing many documents that I painstakingly put together last summer to establish my identity as the descendant of German Jews who fled the Nazis.  The official indicated that he could no longer be of assistance to me and suggested that I file a new application and begin the process all over again. I now await word from the German Consulate in San Francisco to see if there is another remedy for such bureaucratic incompetence.  Stay tuned for further updates.

Shrinking the Family Diaspora

Tags

American Jews, diaspora, German Jews, Holocaust, Israel

Meeting the relatives is a life-long process, especially when they are part of the vast  diaspora that resulted from the Holocaust.  Many of my relatives fled from Germany to South Africa in the late 1930s and over the years I’ve met quite a few of them.  As a child and young adult I approached these encounters with mild interest, but as an adult they’ve become more meaningful.  When I heard that I had a cousin who was born in South Africa, grew up in Israel, and was temporarily living in Vienna, it seemed important to meet her and discover if we felt a family connection. Not only did Daniella and I form a quick connection, but our kids are ecstatic about their new 9-year-old twin cousins that they never even knew about until now.

What did I, an American from California and the Rockies, and Daniella, who grew up on a kibbutz where she met her wonderful husband while tending the cows, have in common?  Experiences with our mothers, of course! Our grandparents were siblings and we had many stories to share about our mothers, the offspring of her grandfather and my grandmother. The genetic connection between us is invisible to the naked eye and yet it felt very palpable as we spent a whirlwind weekend together in Berlin. The kids must have felt it too, or else they were just extremely compatible playmates. 

But there was also the sense of wanting to piece together the family diaspora that can help us understand who we are and where we came from. Our personal stories were very different, but there was an overlap of shared experience that seemed to stem from our blood ties.  The temporary Vienna-Berlin connection between our families is a fortunate coincidence to take advantage of before we disperse back to North America and the Middle East.  A trip to Vienna will have to be added to our travel agenda!

Sam, Naveh, Avery, May, and Olivia

Andrea and Daniella

“Why is mommy crying?”

Tags

American Jews, German Jews, Hamburg, Holocaust

It was one of those “shit, we forgot to take pictures” kind of trips.  We’ve travelled so much and have taken so many photos since we’ve been living in Berlin, that we just got lazy.  We had gone on a “Hamburg in 27 hours” trip (not counting the travel time!), trying to show up the “36 hours” trips touted by the New York Times.  And we were dazzled by every moment we spent in the elegant, sparkling city of Hamburg despite the frigid temps that almost kept us off the banks of the Elbe.

The beauty of Hamburg was made more remarkable for me by the fact that my mother was born there in 1933.  Like so many German Jews, my mother has little desire to reconnect with her native country, avoids speaking German despite her near-perfect Hoch Deutsch (at her age!), and found the idea of our move to Berlin abhorrent. But Hamburg was her home for 5 years before she was forced to flee Germany with her parents in 1938. When I told her how much we enjoyed walking along the harbor, she relayed a vivid childhood memory that she had never before shared with me.  On the day her family fled Germany she sat at the harbor waiting to board the boat and asked her father “why is mommy crying?”

For the many of us who have always wondered and asked about, but could never fully grasp, the experience of our parents and grandparents during the Nazi era, this revelation hit me with a small but powerful punch.  Had we strolled right past the place where she had waited for the boat that would take her to New York and the safety of America? We were just tourists taken in by Hamburg’s clearly thriving port (the third largest in Europe) and the surrounding mixture of old warehouses and ultra modern urban development projects such as Hafen City. But at least now I can almost picture my mother as a 5 year old girl sitting at the harbor and waiting to begin her new life in America.

As I was writing this post Avery reminded me that he had actually brought his camera and taken just a few photos of the harbor and our ferry ride. Although there are many fancy boats to choose from along the harbor, we of course opted for the public ferry and it was lovely and oh so warm! I took a pleasant snooze while surrounded by the sounds of the locals sipping beer and chatting with friends on their Sunday afternoon outing.

 

Echoes of home on Shabbat

Tags

American Jews, Berlin, German Jews, Germany Close Up, Neue Synagoge, Oranienburger Synagogue

Our quest to visit the synagogues of Berlin brought us to the Oranienburger Synagogue this past Friday evening where we were surprised to discover that there was a visiting rabbi from New York.  She even gave a sermon in English about how our attire reflects our closeness to God that was meant for the ears of my ultra earthy daughter! 

Attending the Oranienburger Synagogue had special meaning for us because of the building’s historical significance.  Also known as the Neue Synagoge (New Synagogue), the temple dates back to 1866 and was one Germany’s most famous houses of worship.  Saved from major harm during Kristallnacht only to be severely damaged by bombs during the Second World War, most of the temple had to be demolished after the war and the building was not reopened until 1995.

The Oranienburger service was filled with more than the usual number of Americans that we encounter at events in Berlin.  It turned out that they were participating in a program called Germany Close Up: American Jews Meet Modern Germany which “provides Jewish American students and young professionals in their twenties and early thirties with an opportunity to experience modern Germany up close and personally.” The organization also brings groups of rabbis and journalists to Germany.  Before learning about Germany Close Up, I had been thinking about encouraging our rabbi back in Bozeman to organize a trip of Rocky Mountain Jews to Berlin.  Seeing the warmth between the American visitors and the Oranienburger congregants last Friday convinced me that this would be an enriching experience.

I wrote an earlier post about the need for American Jews to update their image of Germany.  What better way to do this than through a trip that would yield a higher educational value than anything one might read on a blog.  Others have taken the leap and I hope many more will do so in the future. You might even get to have German pastries after Shabbat services!

Time for an Image Update

Tags

American Jews, Germany, Holocaust, Israel, Jews

 

I was full of curiosity and anticipation last week when I attended a lecture by Rolf Schuette, the City of Berlin’s Director of Protocol, on the relationship between Germany, American Jews and Israel. Among other interesting themes, Schuette spoke about why Germany’s relationship with Israel is different from its relationship with American Jews.  Germany and Israel enjoy very warm relations and cross cultural contacts between the two countries, mainly through tourism, have skyrocketed in recent years.  Last year, Israel had the second largest number of tourists to visit Germany of any country outside Europe.  Schuette also cited various polls which reveal the surprisingly positive attitudes that Israelis hold towards Germans.

In contrast, Schuette claimed that American Jews have shown little interest in Germany in the post-Holocaust years.  In the absence of contact, attitudes are likely to remain  negative and friction even erupts in families (as it did in my own) when the American descendant of someone who fled the Nazis wants to return to a parent’s or grandparent’s  birthplace. But even more significant was Schuette’s assertion that American Jews lack a “realistic image” of today’s Germany due to this lack of contact. 

Schuette’s comments reaffirmed my desire to document our experiences as a Jewish family living in Berlin. It is not that I think American Jews must visit Germany, but that 65 years after the Holocaust there may be some basis for updating our image of Germany.  We must find a way to both honor our tragic history and move forward with an open mind.  This is why I say that the door is open and it is our choice whether to step inside.