* * *
• • •
But I was still trapped in America after all, at least until Isaac reached adulthood. As my trip progressed and the date of my return drew nearer, I was filled with increasing wistfulness and sorrow. I told myself I would begin visiting Berlin more often, that it would be my place of escape that would give me something to look forward to and plan for the long term. But truthfully, the more I fell in love with the city, the more frightened I became of the inevitable letdown back home, for I knew that by stoking this passion I was only making it more difficult to go on living without it.
On my last night, attending a dinner party, I expressed this to a new acquaintance of mine, a young man named Benyamin who had also left a Hasidic community in Israel and had fled to Berlin to reinvent himself five years earlier. He seemed happy and content in a way I could never imagine myself to be. He said to me, “Why don’t you get your German passport? Every Jewish person I know in Berlin has gotten one, because of their ancestors. Don’t you have someone German in your family history? At least get the passport back, and for your son. You never know, one day this could be very useful.” The words flowed into my mind like a stream of light that spread into my body with tantalizing warmth. Indeed, it was as if an old nerve was tickled just then, for I remembered that old family tree and the letter from my uncle, which I had opened and perused and then set aside, for German ancestry had not appealed to my fourteen-year-old self in search of acceptance and belonging in a world that made impossible demands in exchange for it. It was not as if I thought then, I will get my German passport and move abroad; no, I thought simply: a project; a project that would give me some sense of purpose and groundedness.
The plane ride home was the worst I had experienced. It was as if every fiber of my being was screaming in protest against this movement in the wrong direction. Little did I know it would be my very last journey westward.
* * *
—
In September we continued work on the film in New York, but in my free time I began to study with a German tutor I had spontaneously hired off Craigslist, a young jazz musician from the Bavarian countryside named Michael, with a shock of white-blond hair and a boyish face. We met two or three times a week, sometimes in Brooklyn, where he lived, and sometimes he took the train up north and we studied in the garden, which was now slowly, gently mellowing into a golden autumn. Michael helped me configure some German radio channels; in those days B5 Aktuell, Michael’s local radio station from back home, was running constantly in the background, and I got to know the names of highways, intersections, and towns in that region by heart as I listened to traffic and weather on repeat while I performed housework. But I was most fascinated by the literature programs. Now I could listen to books being read out loud as Hörspiele, a kind of audio theater, and endless interviews with authors and live readings and heated discussions between literary critics. My ideas about what it meant to be German were slowly becoming more complex. First it had been Markus and his mother; now it was my teacher, Michael, a shy, sensitive, and intelligent young man who struggled to help me turn my Yiddish into Hochdeutsch, even though he had never quite been prepared for this challenge. I remembered the advice of that acquaintance Benyamin on my last night in Berlin, and I found that old envelope that I had been so eager to set aside more than a decade ago. I perused its contents carefully, as if for the first time. For to embark on this project was about much more than a passport. It was a betrayal of my community, of my family, of my grandmother—not only physically but spiritually as well.
But I could not resist, not with all the photos and documents in front of me for the first time in many years, the information hitting me in a totally new way. What had my uncle written about this mysterious great-grandfather of mine? His birth certificate stated he was from Munich, but nothing else, which was strange in comparison to the birth certificate of the woman he had later married, upon which even the occupations of her parents and their origins could be read. But there was only his name, Gustav, and of course that was not his real name, just the one his mother must have chosen for him to use among non-Jews, just like my grandmother’s Irenka, or my own recently acquired Deborah.
With a birth certificate like this, in gothic script and with the official stamps of the local offices in Munich, it should not prove too difficult to obtain German citizenship, I assumed. I had little else in the way of official documentation, but I decided to visit the consulate in New York and open a case. A polite young man there took my papers and explained to me that while it was an interesting place to start, in Germany birth certificates weren’t proof of nationality the way they were in America, and therefore it most likely wasn’t enough to qualify.
“But what else am I expected to submit?” I asked. “It’s not like I would have his passport, since it was confiscated.”
“Yes, I understand. But unfortunately this is how the law is written. Nationality in Germany is a matter of blood, not place of birth.” He looked at me inquiringly. “Why do you want a German passport? You know, as an American you can live in Germany without one. You can apply for a student visa, or an artist visa, as you are a writer. There are many other ways to go there. You don’t necessarily need to become a German citizen.”
“Yes, well, citizenship or no, I have a custody agreement that keeps me here.”
“Ah, I see. So why is this necessary to you?”
I hadn’t articulated it until that moment, but now it was suddenly clear. “It’s a part of my inheritance. I want to claim it before it disappears completely.”
* * *
• • •
He had advised me to continue my search for documents that would help prove nationality, which, he explained, could only be acquired through the patrilineal side in this case, and he suggested that finding the official asylum documents issued in England for my great-grandfather might be a good beginning. He told me to apply for the birth certificates of all the people in between myself and Gustav in order to prove our connection as well. I commenced upon the search with a surge of energy that could not really be explained by my desire for a European passport, because it quickly went above and beyond archive requests and notary stamps. It did not take long to discover that Gustav had completed a doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, the thesis for which he had submitted in 1934, only a year after the laws had been passed preventing him from attending the classes he had shared with Josef Mengele. The thesis was titled “Verdingungspolitik in München und Nürnberg 1905–1930” (Indenture Policy in Munich and Nuremberg 1905–1930). He had studied federal economics; his special interests had been the impact of war on economic policies in the Bavarian state. A copy of this thesis had arrived at most of the Ivy League universities in 1935, which seemed miraculous. How had a Jew managed to complete a doctorate after 1933? How had his thesis made it to libraries worldwide while it was burned in his home country?
I called the library at Yale University, which was closest to me, to inquire if the copy that had arrived then was still there. It was, the librarian said, but it could not be loaned out. If I wanted to see it, I would have to show up personally, hand over my ID as collateral, and sit in a special supervised area to view it. I did not hesitate, as it was only a little more than an hour’s drive from where I lived. I showed up on the storied campus on a gusty October morning, weaving through gaggles of students loaded down with books and papers.
The library looked almost like a great cathedral, a place of worship for the written word. The reception desk I needed was located under a drafty stone arch. The young man at the desk seemed unfazed by my request; he took my passport and gave me some forms to sign while he disappeared into some hidden storage stacks to retrieve the work. He emerged shortly after holding a small paperbound book, yellowed and crumbling at the edges. It was the only copy, he explained. No one had ever checked it out, most likely because it was written in a
n old-fashioned and difficult German, he surmised.
For a moment I froze. All I could do was hold the fragile sheaf of papers reverently, overcome by the significance. If not for me, would anyone have ever sought this out? I felt for a moment that the responsibility I had been shouldering for so long was more real, for if I didn’t tend to the past, who would? Certainly not my mother, who believed that it was better left buried.
I sat down at a heavy wooden desk, switched on the Tiffany-style desk lamp, and began to peruse the book, but I was left bewildered by most of it. I made quick sense of the dedication, though, and I kept looking back at it. “An meiner unvergesslichen Mutter gewidmet!” (Dedicated to my unforgettable mother!) he had written, with an exclamation point. That would be the Regina on his birth certificate. I knew nothing about her. My uncle had named her Rochel. On a photo of Gustav’s grave I had read his Hebrew name, Naftali, and what I assumed to be the Hebrew name of his father, Avraham. Why wasn’t he in the dedication? Where were the proofs of his existence? If I was to make my case for citizenship successfully, I needed to know more about him.
A few days later, the documents I had requested from the British archives arrived. The asylum seemed to have been officially granted only in 1948 and had been granted to Gustav; his wife, Jetta; and his three children simultaneously. But their collective nationality was listed as Polish, I noted with sharp disappointment. How could that be? I had seen no proof nor heard any rumor of Polish ancestry in our family.
I wondered if the new borders after the war might have had an impact on how Gustav and his family would be perceived by the British government. Perhaps his parents had come from Silesia, and by the time official asylum was offered, this had become Poland? It was a weak theory but it was the only one I had. I decided to submit the documents at the consulate anyway, because I had been assured that once the Bundesverwaltungsamt (Federal Office of Administration) initiated its own investigation, any internal documents attesting to nationality would show up. I just needed a case strong enough to provoke such a step.
Now Isaac took note of my sudden fervor, my frequent trips into Manhattan, and my discussions with archivists on the phone, and naturally he asked me what I was doing. I told him about my trip to Berlin. When I had returned then to pick him up from his father at the end of summer, he had only said to me, “Mom, promise you will never get married?”
“Why would you want me to promise you that?” I asked, surprised.
“Because I am afraid you will get married and forget about me,” he said. I immediately responded with conviction, “Yes, I promise never to get married, and I promise never to forget about you.”
Now I asked him, only half-serious, what he would think about going to live abroad for some time, as an experiment, explaining that I had been so impressed with Berlin as a city. He looked at me and smiled and said, “Mom, I think we are about ready for our next adventure.”
Surprised, I could only mumble, “Well, we will have to see what your dad thinks about that.” I could not have predicted it, not then and certainly not a couple of years earlier, but Eli would soon hear of this conversation from Isaac, and relate it back to me.
“You want to go abroad?” he would ask casually.
“Well, yes, I would. I think it would be a great opportunity for Isaac as well. But of course it’s up to you.” What happened next was in a sense completely out of my hands, for somehow the idea took root in Isaac’s brain, and he must have told his father about the prospect over and over and over, until at some point Eli simply said to me, “Why don’t you just go, then?”
Of course, it wasn’t that simple, as sheaves of papers would have to be signed. I suspected that somewhere along the way Eli would lose heart, and I admit I didn’t really take the idea all that seriously, or at least I didn’t let myself hope until that last custodial permission form bore his signature. Then suddenly it hit me, square in the gut: I was free. This time, really and truly so. After all these years, all those battles, Eli had given me my freedom.
* * *
• • •
Now that the dream was an actual possibility, would I have the guts to go through with it? After all, it was still Germany. I remembered that all it had taken was a couple of glasses of red wine to get Richard and me started on the many German jokes we had in our repertoire, what with my travels and his experiences at art fairs. For years I had been thinking of Germany in clichéd terms, as much a result of the culture I was surrounded by as my own innate tendency to reduce the frightening to the comical. But I had learned, in general, to push past the superficial layers of my own fear, and now I tried to put my preconceived notions aside and see Berlin for what it might be. The city had many advantages, after all, which even Richard had to concede; it was cheap, vibrant, and international. It was also, apparently, full of liberal Americans, especially New Yorkers. Like everyone else we knew with vaguely creative inclinations, Richard and I romanticized the Paris of the twenties and the role it had played in the art and literature of the era. Now there was the dawning acknowledgment that Berlin had become that kind of city, or had perhaps always been one; a perpetual panacea, that magical realm in which no boundaries have been set, where everything and everyone can thrive. The historical legacy of the city seemed to fit well into the pattern of my own destiny, and I believed, perhaps irrationally, that this was something I would actually be able to feel when I lived there, like a vibration in my body, that it would soothe my anxiety like some kind of final karmic reconciliation.
* * *
• • •
I had struck up enough friendships in Berlin during my last visit to feel like it could be a manageable transfer. I sent around emails with pertinent questions about the practical details of adjustment; based on the responses that came in, I made lists of what had to be shipped, what would have to be acquired, and what had to be registered or applied for and in what order. What I feared most was the bureaucracy, but naturally there was another question in the back of my mind that I knew I would have to grapple with. I asked some Jewish acquaintances in Berlin to give me advice about that delicate and uncomfortable matter, namely, how did one go about being Jewish in Berlin? The impression I got from those carefully worded replies was that if one had an American passport and didn’t act Jewish, it wasn’t really an issue. Sure, Jews were attacked on the streets or in the metro, I was informed, but mostly only if they were overheard speaking Hebrew or wearing a kippah, and surely I would do neither of these things. As long as I could avoid sounding or looking Jewish, they told me, in a manner that conveyed a tinge of uneasy shame, I would be fine, and so would my son. I had a conversation with Isaac in which I tactfully explained to him that we were heading to an environment that might have more pockets of intolerance than he was accustomed to, but that was okay; the world was a complicated place, but that didn’t mean we had to live in fear; we just had to have strategies in place to deal with complications, by which I meant it would probably be best if he didn’t talk about his Jewishness with people he didn’t already know and trust. Not that anything would happen to him, but it was better to be safe, I said. Coming from a school where he had been proud to share Jewish customs and stories with his classmates, that was a bigger change than one might realize. He wasn’t old enough to register the snarky remarks that I had heard around town about Jews and their money; anti-Semitism in New England was more subtle. I felt somewhat guilty imposing this new fear onto him. I couldn’t help but remember the terrible tales I had been told as a child, about the people who lurked just outside the invisible boundaries of our community, who would not hesitate to chop me into pieces if I so much as strayed by one city block. In a sense, it was crazy to be volunteering to relocate to a world where just being who we were could be dangerous, when right now our situation was relatively comfortable in that regard. After all, snarky comments rankled, but they were no threat to our physical well-being. Yet today I wonder if it
isn’t the open anti-Semitism I prefer to the more cleverly concealed versions; after all, it’s difficult to grapple with something if it isn’t even acknowledged.
A few weeks before we were scheduled to leave, I ran into my gay Jewish friend Jonathan, another New York City transplant to rural New England, at the local bakery and announced that I was moving. He was more shocked than I expected.
“How can you go live there, as a Jew? I just don’t get it. . . . Do you really think you can be happy there?”
“Well, what were you thinking when you came up here ten years ago with your husband? That you’d be embraced as local color by all these uptight WASPs?” I responded.
“Touché,” he said. “I guess people like you and me thrive on a challenge.”
I watched him head into his car, loaded with coffee and doughnuts. It had been absolute hell to earn the acceptance of the local community when he had first arrived, I knew. And although he had slowly managed to integrate himself here, I wondered if he knew the limits to that integration, and if he cared. Perhaps not knowing, or at least being able to block it out, was a gift. For me, I had decided, it would be the exact opposite. It would be to embrace the very essence of what it meant to be an outsider, to go to a place full of outsiders and live out the experience of marginalization to its full extent.
* * *
• • •
It was more difficult to find an apartment in Berlin than I expected, especially from so far away with only the internet at my disposal, so when a 3,5 Zimmer Altbau mit Balkon became available on Craigslist, I signed a contract immediately, with promise of cash upon key exchange, hoping against hope that it wasn’t a scam. I had talked to the subletter on the phone, and he had seemed genuine, and although the apartment was located in Neukölln, a neighborhood I had not yet glimpsed, when I asked him about it he simply responded, “You’re from New York, right? Well, Neukölln is like New York.” This would turn out to be true, if one’s understanding of New York was formed by its outermost boroughs . . .
Exodus, Revisited Page 26
