Jennifer's Thoughts

Parking at Auschwitz is like Parking at Disneyland

We drive an hour to Auschwitz; my mom, my father, my sister and I, in silence.  Well, not in silence, but we do not speak.  

Much of this journey has been about this culminating moment, this one you cannot be ready to experience.  And we know what we will see- we have seen it in movies, museums, photos and in our minds in the darkest hours- yet I was not, I am not, prepared.  We see things grossly familiar.  I do not cry.  I say little.  We leave and I wonder, did I let myself take it in? I am asked what I thought about the day.  What can I say? I think.  I cannot get over the fact that parking at Auschwitz is like parking at Disneyland. 

I have never been a fan of Germany, which is unfair of me.  I do not know Germany.  I have never allowed myself to know Germany.  For as long as I can remember, I have known my mom was adopted. She was separated from her family.  She was the only one who was adopted.  Because of the Germans.  Because of war. As I sat on her latch hook rug in our living room as a child I asked, “why don’t you want to meet them Mom?  Maybe they are famous.”  Short response, “they are not.” This was because of those people, the Germans.  And yet, when I travel in Europe, or find myself on a layover in a German airport or on a Lufthansa flight, everyone always speaks to me in German first, and then English.  Do I look that German I wonder?  I guess I do.  Why wouldn’t I when my mom was born in Berlin.  I am a first generation American and yet, when someone speaks to me in German I am ashamed, disgusted and want to hide, or yell- I AM NOT A GERMAN!  German stands for evil, does it not?  Being blonde does not help.

Having the opportunity to travel with my mom and experience with her where she lived, where her siblings went to school, where they prayed, where they ran to safety, where they were hidden, where her mother died- it is nothing short of amazing.  But of all the things I anticipated, I did not expect this to be a trip about forgiveness.

We begin our journey in Berlin where our guide takes us to visit the Track 17 memorial— was Lina, my grandmother, deported from here?  We have read document after document so well compiled and composed by my late Uncle Alfons- we track the dates and destinations on the ground, which of these could memorialize her?  Yet we forget she did not go to Auschwitz first – or did she?  And we want it to be specific, we want to know, but does it matter?    

It is actually a peaceful and eerily beautiful place in a quiet, wealthy suburb.  Off the beaten path—we Lanes like to be out of the ordinary, on a road less travelled, we are proud to be somewhere we don’t think many people would go—it makes us feel “special.”   Our tour guide is Jewish.  A smart man, he chaperones us well and we are haunted.  

We drive west, past the Palace of Charlottenburg - summer Palace of King Fiedrich Wilhelm (Charlottenburg was an independent city from Berlin until the 1920s I’m told).  We pass the old town hall, a beautiful old brick building built in 1900.  It was a statement that Charlottenburg was separate from Prussia.  Berlin is a city of separations.  My mom remarks, “Wow, Berlin is such a tourist city, I never knew that.”  I think, well that’s silly, of course it is.  But I never go on to say out loud that I, too, agree, why would anyone come here knowing its history?  This is not a place to be celebrated.

The Levetzow Strasse memorial, with its railroad Track “cattle” car and marble statue, is practically on a roadside- we disembark.  The dates, the destinations, stand tall on a rusted structure, very different from Track 17, less haunting in my eye.  Lina could have been deported from here as well; we think her “date” is on the wall.  We learn of another, Heidereutergasse--closer to their neighborhood, there are so many, we can’t possibly see them all.  

Tall is the triumphal column which Hitler ordered moved during the war.  It commemorates the 3 last victories in Prussia vs Denmark, Austria, and France in the 1870s and it was the end of Prussia.  

We walk now to the famous Brandenburg gate which is next to the Adlon hotel -- “Michael Jackson held his son out the window here” our guide says and I am jerked back to reality, but only for a moment.    The gate is a symbol of the end of the war and of a divided city—I go back into my protective den.  1 million people gathered the day the wall came down.  The sun comes out. 

Our guide teaches and asks us, “This is The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.  Did you know the word ‘Holocaust’ isn’t used in Germany because it is a derivative of a Greek word meaning ‘burnt offering’?”  No.  Offering? Like Isaac?  To whom?  For what?  No, I did not know that.    

More information, “Platz is a square AND a roundabout.  I'm plots- Yiddish comes from plotzen in German means to burst as in tired, a balloon. “You can tell someone’s point of view by how they use the word Platz,” he says.   This is too much for me.  “Did you know you can string many words in German together to create one long word?”  He rambles the longest word I’ve ever heard, something about a man who is Doctor (or something) on a boat who is asked to dine at the Captain’s table and he’s from a strange city and this is all one word.  He speaks quickly, inserting interesting bits amid nonsense but… I cannot joke here.  Why is he telling jokes?

We quickly visit the Topographie des Terrors and I am faced with the Germany I’m expecting.  This is where the Berlin Wall still stands and excavated below it is a former Arts and Crafts school that the SS took over as their headquarters in Berlin.  Studios were dug out and became interrogation and torture rooms where thousands of people were killed.  It's a morbid juxtaposition—the wall stands here and the Nazi headquarters below it--one would not have existed without the other.  This wall would not have existed if WWII had never happened.

Deeper we go into what is personal, into our family. My mom’s childhood neighborhood is quiet and this is where my first emotions start to flood in. Uncle Alfons wrote about where they lived and what they did, and I feel my first connection here, Grenardier Strasse No 31, 1929-1939 and then they moved to Dragoner Strasse No 48. (Now this street is called Max-beer Strasse). 

It was a mixed, and one of the poorest, neighborhoods.   The criminal center of Berlin and the Nazis used it as an example to show how the Jews were so dirty.  This is where she, Lina, was the janitor. Nothing of the original building still stands - 48 is now a retirement home.  Both at the back where the courtyard would have been, and at the front, people come out and they offer to help us (in German of course).  So nice they want to help us, I am surprised.  We drive past Alexanderplatz again and learn-- there was a 3-story bunker under where they often went to hide about 2 blocks from Home.  I remember, oh yes, they knew in advance because of the secret radios.  My grandfather the tinkerer.  Is this where Rusty gets it?

As we continue our excursion, we see the plaques on the ground were the synagogue was which my mom’s family attended and my late uncle became a bar mitzvah— There is a stone monument at the Alte Synagogue site which is where Alfons at one point joined the choir (page 11).   My late Uncle Alfons’ packet is in my hand- he is here, with us, our guide.

It was at this site that I came to an amazing revelation.  As I was re-reading the packet and looking at the death record I realized, with my dad by my side, the date of my grandmother's birthday- July 16, 1899.   Tomorrow is July 16, 2017.  What a coincidence?  Or is it?  We decide.  We will celebrate her birthday in Worin.  A town we do not yet know, but strikes us as a place of safety, a happy place. Today is Saturday.  Shabbat.   The four of us say Kaddish for Alfons and Lina in this still holy place.

We drive to where the girls attended Jewish school, while they were still allowed; to the old hospital where they were incarcerated for almost a month.  August Strasse 14/16. The gym in the complex now houses a 1 star restaurant.  Later in the day we actually tried to eat here but could not get in.  I think, people were held here against their will but you can now have a 1 Star meal in this same place.  Why did we try to eat here?

Past the boys’ school of the Jewish community -- the free school where anyone could go-- and Alfons attended.   We are taught about the stumble stones, brass memorials in the ground all over Berlin. They denote the last residence where people in Berlin were executed that was a residence chosen by them of their own free will.  How many memorials are we seeing?  They are everywhere.  Berlin is a city of memory and rebirth.  Our guide tells us, “it’s good to be a Jew in Berlin today, we have a lot of making up to do.”

The historical part of our day comes to a close and we are inscription and history numb—we shop for shoes we don’t need.  Perhaps this is my joke?  I reflect in my journal, It was an emotional day all around.  Amazing to think of all that happened here.  I've enjoyed re-reading parts of Alfons' accounting of his past and relating it to today.  Not just how this could have happened, but what would it have been like?  I imagine Gertrude taking my mom by the hand and running to the bunkers.  Mom said the sirens of today remind her of the bombing and they're scary.   She has few memories.  Maybe seeing her mom for that last time walking away from a window?  She doesn’t offer them freely, she was so little.   

Sunday morning we wake early before we drive to Worin.  My mom and her siblings were hidden here for 2 years.  They ate raw potatoes.  Again, in the car we are quiet but I feel we are still communicating and feel the same excitement, apprehension and curiosity about the hours ahead. The road is long and smooth.  When Alfons travelled it in a truck every weekend I imagine it was a rough and bumpy ride- but he would have been looking forward to seeing his sisters and the "safety" of the farm.  

Stories, mom please.  It wasn’t until after she had lunched with Mary Lawrence (the director of the Jewish Children’s Bureau in Chicago) that she decided to contact her birth family. Her lunch was at The Standard Club in 1986—I think to myself, ah, the ‘if these walls could speak’ speech I gave at Elliot’s Bar Mitzvah, reflecting on so many important family ‘rites of passage’ that happened at The Standard Club-  I did not know of this very important one.  This is shortly after my mom broke her neck skiing.  Mary asked my mom if she'd ever contacted her family.  Mom said no.  And then soon after she calls Gertrude.  It would not have been a simple choice.  1946 to 1986.  They'd been separated 40 years.  Gertrude calls it my mom’s wandering in the desert.   

Back to Worin. We spend the day with the Schülers and Arthur Schmidt’s grandson.  We learn he did not know until a year ago that his grandfather did something selfless, something courageous, putting himself and his family in harm’s way, against his wife’s wishes, he did something HUMAN.  He saved my mom and her family once Lina was taken away.  When we arrive, Herbert was so moved he turned his back to us and toward his small, green house.  He collects himself as he is overcome with tears.  This man does not know us, yet he does, and we are met with genuine warmth, compassion and embraces.

I had also not fully internalized what it meant that we are also meeting THE Arthur Schmidt’s grandson, (also an Arthur, as was his father and is his son!).  Arthur never met his grandfather and shares that his father never spoke of his grandfather’s good deed and I wonder, did he know?  He must remember as a boy, no? Was he even alive?  This Arthur Schmidt is humble and takes no credit, he has travelled a long way to meet us and quietly takes in the scene.   “Come and take a photo, sit here in the middle next to Ginger,” we beg.  “No thank you, I am fine here.”  While less outwardly emotional, he is an artist and, looking in his eyes, behind his glasses, we simply know he feels deeply.  He must have questions of his own which will go unanswered.  His father and grandfather are gone.  He only knows today because of the application my Uncle Alfons submitted for his grandfather to be named Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, an honor to those who were selflessly courageous, who took risks, who took action.  

We have lunch and visit, take photos, look through albums, visiting, walking to the farm where my mom’s memories are not jogged. We learn there was another woman and two boys that were outside in the village hidden- more risks, more HUMAN.  We have a lovely dessert and can’t say much more-- shame on us for not bringing a translator.  However, without one this visit is very raw and personal and emotional.  Our smiles, tears and hugs are our language and as we leave I feel and know I am changed.  I am struck, “all of these people also stand for what it means to be German.”

Back in Berlin we relax in the bar, sharing our thoughts and daydream.  

Tomorrow we will go to the Jewish Cemetery and other memorials.  We learn about the arguments over who copied ideas, who left each project.  They are all honoring those who died, are they not?  Isn’t that good?  Who are we to judge?  Late in the day we head to Krakow and prepare to go to Auschwitz.   

Krakow is a beautiful city—old and historical.  With the walls of the Wawel Castle looming over the cobbled streets and the Vistula River—Beth and I take a morning walk along the water and quickly through the Jewish quarter.  We then drive an hour to Auschwitz; my mom, my father, my sister and I, in silence.  Well, not in silence, but we do not speak.  

As we pull into the parking lot I am floored by the number of busses and cars.  This is not the road less travelled.  Big tour busses, small cars, adults, and even a few kids with cameras and teenagers, somewhat inappropriately dressed in my opinion, who run to get in line.  They are not laughing, but they are eager.  Too eager?  We pull into our disability parking space and unload.  It is hot and there is little shade.  There are large displays outside telling Auschwitz stories to keep us busy while we wait in the long line.  I’ve been to places like this before.  Do we exit at the gift shop?  As we begin to enter, two women approach and beg our guide to join our English-speaking group—they have travelled and waited for hours and could only buy tickets for the Dutch tour, “we don’t speak Dutch.”  These women are begging to enter Auschwitz.  I build a taller wall around myself.  Our guide Anna takes us through both Auschwitz and Birkenau.  We tell her our family story.  She is lovely and her tone and demeanor are perfect.  Every so often she makes a statement, “blessed are the memories of those that lost their lives here.”  She is not Jewish but grew up in this area.  When asked “why?” she offers, “it is important to honor those that have died here.”

Early on I decided not to post anything on social media while we are on the trip.  I want to be present, I don’t want to be reacting to comments.  I want to “be here.”  When we returned to Chicago I finally went to post and I was disgusted that the photos I’d taken of Auschwitz were artistic, dare I say I found them intriguing, artful, grotesque in their beauty, and I was ashamed.  Do I post them?  How can some place so wrong, so evil, be so striking?  It is not picturesque, but it is picture-worthy.  We need people to see it.  The parking lot is full of people, people from everywhere, including Germans to whom I feel I now owe forgiveness.  They too have come to grieve, to acknowledge that this was not that long ago. Each visitor is a virtual stone, we remember.  Each visit an opportunity for one to come away reminded that we all have the ability, the obligation and must find the courage to do what is human.

Thankfully, parking at Auschwitz is like parking at Disneyland...and that’s okay.  In fact, it is good.