Approaching Trip

Yikes, I wanted to head this "approaching doomsday" or "approaching the end"....I'm soooo
torn by this trip to Berlin.

On the one hand, I have come to grips - big time- with my history and have read about 6-8 books on the Holocaust in the last year. On the other hand - it's horrifying.

So now I'm going to Germany at their invitation and expense and there is a part of me that feels like I'm going into the lion's mouth. It's totally silly I know - thousands of Jews have traveled to Germany since WWII and come back to tell about it. But there is a little teeny part of me that feels like I'll die.

I've never been one of those people who swore never to buy or use German products after the war. I've even met and been civil - I think - to some German people in my time. Arnika was certainly one of them - although I always felt that she thought herself quite superior to us.
Susanne -Toni's foreign student who lived with her for a year - she was easy - she was, what 16?
How could I hold her responsible? But her Mother and Grandmother came to visit while she was here and we hosted them for a couple of days. Her Grandmother especially - a woman nearer to my age - but still................it's the ones who are much older than myself who I have trouble with. And there aren't too many of those now that I'm almost 73. They'd have to be about 90 to have anything to do with the excesses of the Nazi's.

Still, those fears implanted at a very young age don't go away. The more I read about early childhood studies, the more I realize that far, far more is known now of how a baby and toddler's brain works and my joke that the things I learned when I was little are engraved in wet concrete
- well that turns out to be true. The things I learn now are written on Teflon. But those wet concrete years last forever.

I've spoken about this at meetings and I thought it was hyperbole, but the truth is I did live in a climate of terror. I wasn't aware of it, because I couldn't think it through and discriminate but
my parents jumpiness around "authority" figures, their panic in the face of a "uniform", their hiding of the Sabbath candles, their intensity hovering over the radio with the news reports and speeches (Churchill's voice was as familiar to me as my own); a little kid picks up on those things. My Mother would clutch her "papers" with an intensity that left marks - those were our lifeline. My Mother was also terrified of any authority and used me as a translator - so that there wouldn't be any misunderstanding. As if a 7 year old could avoid misunderstandings!!

I don't remember ever being told that I needed to hide - but I was always looking for hiding places "where THEY wouldn't find me". I was still doing it when I came to the USA and not too long ago found myself reverting to that old pattern and thinking "they'd never find me there".

I remember seeing a movie where the Nazis poked hay bales with their bayonets looking for Jews and thinking "Sh-t - I thought that was a good place." - and I was an adult by then.
And you know those scenes in movies where they shoot into the ceiling? Well, damn - there goes another good one.

On a slightly different slant - I've been wearing a Mogen David since I was a teenager. I wear it every day in or outside of my clothes. Do I do that in Germany? Did I do that in Germany last time we were there? That was the 1980's and we didn't stay long. THEN there were still those people around 15-20 years older than me and I looked at every one of them and wondered.......what did you do?

But my reading has made me much more aware of the virulence of the hatred. The intensity with which the German public - in general - despised the Jews. This was a country where - in spite of what they said about not knowing what was going on - there was no attempt to hide what was happening to the Jews, nor was the average German protected from viewing death marches, street murders etc. In fact, I'm told that there are "stompelstein" - brass markers in the sidewalks that commemorate the death of a Jew at that spot - and the word means "stumble stone" - it's intended to remind people to "trip over" their responsibility. Although, some Jews say "they are still walking all over us".

So death and the death of Jews was all around. People eagerly watched the Jews being led away and immediately raided their homes for what they could carry off. This wasn't in far away Poland, or Russia - it was in Germany!

I don't know whether I should just brush those things aside and try to be bigger than all that.
Or whether it's healthier to face it. I know that it's hard for me on a one to one situation to be cruel to anyone - to cut them or reject them..............but..............where do I deposit this anger?