Alex's Wake (11 page)

People ask detailed questions about Alex, about my father and mother, and about the new project that has brought me back to this city for yet another visit. A young woman asks how I feel about being in Oldenburg, where my family was treated so cruelly after their many years of service. I pause and then attempt to explain my very ambivalent feelings about this place, which did indeed betray the Goldschmidts but which has been so warm and kind to me. I mention my dear hosts, Hilu and Roland, Farschid, Pastor Jacoby, and the current faculty of the Altes Gymnasium. I mention the warm, inviting, attractive character of the city, with its lovely park, graceful church, and thriving theater. I conclude by saying that, although I am every inch an American citizen, there is something in my DNA that is decidedly European in general and German in particular and that, the horrors of the past notwithstanding, a part of me feels very much at home in Oldenburg.

The crowd claps politely and, it seems to me, with a certain relief that this particular Jewish descendent of the Holocaust doesn't hold them personally accountable.

At that moment, I see a hand raised at the back of the room, and a man who appears to be a few years my junior slowly gets to his feet. He is carrying a small parcel. He begins speaking haltingly in English and then gives up, asking Hilu to translate his German for me. He says that a few years ago, his great-aunt told him a story about a poor Jewish lady who, down on her luck during the ugly 1930s, had held a sale of household items to raise some badly needed money. His great-aunt had bought some small articles just to be kind; she didn't need them but figured that the money she paid would stand as a loan until the woman was back on her feet and the items could be returned to their rightful owner. But the poor woman disappeared shortly thereafter and the items remained in the great-aunt's possession.

The man swallows, pauses, and then continues in English. “Now I think it is time for these things to go back to their family. Here, Mr. Goldschmidt. . . . I believe these are yours.”

With that, he comes forward and hands me his parcel. With trembling fingers, I unwrap it and discover five little oyster shells carved into the shape of fish, each with a tiny, shiny inlaid eye. Hilu excitedly tells me that such fish were part of a smart table setting in German households of the 1920s and '30s; they were placed above the plate when fish was served to hold the bones that the diner discreetly extracted from the creature during the meal. “These belonged to your grandmother! These fish were in your grandparents' house! They have been in this man's family for seventy years and now they are back where they belong!”

I stare at each little fish in wonder and amazement, taking several moments to comprehend Hilu's words. I clasp them to my heart, my eyes flooding with tears. I hand them carefully to Amy and then embrace the man who has so kindly preserved this treasure for me and has tonight brought me such joy. The crowd cheers. I am overcome.

The following day, Sunday, we spend the morning sleeping late, enjoying a splendid breakfast with Hilu and Roland, and taking a walk through a nearby nature preserve. We delight in the day's brilliant sun and puffy white clouds, which race across the sky at the urging of a frisky breeze. As we walk, I prepare myself emotionally for the task I've scheduled for the afternoon: scattering my father's ashes.

Since his death and cremation in the spring of 2009, his ashes have reposed in a heavy cardboard box in an upstairs closet in our home in Maryland. The many tender, though fanciful, conversations my father and I enjoyed in his last years at Arbor Place, during which we planned his return to his hometown and the park where his warmest memories were born, convinced me that it was meet and right to allow his dust to mingle with the rich soil of the Schlossgarten. On Friday night, I told Pastor Jacoby of my plan and asked her to please accompany my father on his homecoming. She readily agreed.

So on this Sunday afternoon, Roland, Amy, and I drive down to Gartenstrasse, Amy holding the box containing the ashes on her lap. We leave the car on a side street and walk solemnly to the Schlossgarten entrance that is nearest the splendid old house where my father grew up, walking the path that he, Bertha, and Elsa undoubtedly took when they visited the happy realm they called the
Anemonen Reich
, their Anemone Kingdom. Dietgard Jacoby is waiting for us.

Our little four-person procession enters the park and turns left onto another of the Schlossgarten's well-tended paths, the weighty box in my arms. My deliberate steps bring me to a grove of rhododendron bushes, ablaze in red and purple blossoms. My father spoke lovingly of the rhododendrons of his youth and I know this to be his proper resting place. But now that the appointed time has come, I find myself frozen, fearful of the finality of what we are about to do.

My loving wife comes to my assistance. She takes the box from me and opens it. I stare at its contents, not comprehending that this grey ash, no different from the substance I recall from countless campfires and cozy fireplaces, was once the man who gave me life.

I look then at the three serious faces gathered around me and try to smile. “Günther Ludwig Goldschmidt was born here in 1913,” I say slowly. “George Gunther Goldsmith was my father. May he rest in peace.”

The ash is smooth and silky. I grasp a handful and toss it over the nearest rhododendron. I pass the box to Amy, who scatters her handful. Then Dietgard takes her turn, and finally Roland, who accompanies his toss by intoning,
Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad
. We continue until the box is nearly empty and the red and purple blossoms have
taken on a grayish cast. Dietgard hugs me then and whispers in my ear, “He will always be here. He will always be with you.”

I struggle with a trembling voice to proclaim, “The king of the
Anemonen Reich
has returned to reclaim his kingdom.” Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I am crying, partly because I am saying a final farewell to my father and partly because I suddenly have a vision of Günther as a boy of ten, romping through this magical park with his dear little friends and without a care in the world.

On the way back to the car, I make a detour to 34 Gartenstrasse and sprinkle the remaining ashes over a pink rosebush in the front yard. So even though Alex was forced to sell his beautiful house, Günther will always be there.

That evening, we pay a call on Anneliese Wehrmann, an acquaintance of Hilu and Roland. Now ninety-one, she was a friend and classmate of my Aunt Eva years ago when her name was Anneliese Meyer. The two girls attended the Cecilia School and spent many hours together, at least in the years before the Nazi accession. Anneliese enjoyed the great privilege of “Aryan ancestry.”

She invites Amy and me into her snug apartment and offers us tea and cookies. Her nearly white hair is up in a neat bun and her eyes sparkle as she recalls her earliest memories of Eva Goldschmidt. She was a good-natured and good-humored girl, says Frau Wehrmann, although her bad leg made it difficult to run and play with the other girls and she was further isolated by being one of the few Jews in her class. Eva was sometimes mischievous and enjoyed speaking in a hushed voice to lure Anneliese closer and then shaking her head briskly to playfully lash Anneliese with her braids. Eva would then break into such a merry laugh that Anneliese would have no choice but to join in the laughter.

But by 1936 or '37, when the girls were sixteen and seventeen years old, it became increasingly dangerous for non-Jews to associate with Jews. There was no written law, says Frau Wehrmann, but the Nazis had created such a toxic climate of fear that people naturally concluded that spending time with a Jew could bring consequences. There was a time, for instance, that Anneliese wanted to invite Eva to her house to
study. Her parents thought it over for a long time and finally gave their consent, but only under certain conditions. When Eva knocked, insisted her parents, Anneliese should open the door immediately and hustle her friend upstairs to her room. When the studying was over, she must usher Eva out herself, without involving them in order that they might maintain a position of plausible deniability should the authorities inquire. Similarly, when Anneliese attended a birthday party at Eva's apartment, Anneliese was to look both ways carefully before knocking, to reduce the chance that anyone would see her entering a Jewish home.

Frau Wehrmann must see the sadness on our faces as she tells these unhappy stories, for she pauses, looks away, and then says softly, “I had no choice, you see. None of us had a choice.”

She rises then to get more hot water for our tea. Then settling herself heavily into her chair, she shares her last memory of her long-ago friend. Eva was one of the Jewish children dismissed from her school on November 15, 1938. A few days later, Anneliese saw Eva across the street and waved to her. Eva's eyes widened, she looked around her, then she covered her mouth with her hand to indicate that Anneliese shouldn't call out, that it wasn't safe for her friend to be seen talking to her. Eva then ducked her head and hurried away.

Frau Wehrmann looks at us then and I see tears in her eyes. “That was the last time I ever saw her. To this day I am haunted by that image of her running away from me.” She is silent for a long moment. “And . . . I suppose . . . what happened to her?” she asks in the smallest of voices.

I answer far more coldly than I intend to. “She was murdered,” I say. “In Riga. Along with her mother. My grandmother. That's what happened.”

I rise to leave. “Please don't blame yourself,” I say, trying to be kind, but a hardness remains in my voice that I cannot dislodge. “Thank you very much for the tea and for your memories of my aunt.” At the door, I turn to her and add, “And thank you for being her friend. Not everyone was.”

For the rest of the evening and well into the night, I turn my thoughts and feelings regarding Anneliese Wehrmann around and around in my
head. She was my Aunt Eva's friend, she risked her safety and that of her family to see her deep into the 1930s, and yet it doesn't seem right—in fact it makes me clench my fists in frustrated anger—that in the end it was Eva who dragged her afflicted leg and her despised “race” away from Anneliese in order to protect
her
. Dammit, I tell myself, it should have been the other way around: Anneliese should have protected Eva. But how could she have done that in the face of the full force of the brutal gangsterism arrayed against her? As she said, she'd had no choice.

Yet, with no other individual to blame for the violence visited on my family, Anneliese Wehrmann becomes a convenient scapegoat, and I drift off to sleep with malice toward her in my heart.

On Monday morning, the rain has returned. Again, the four of us pile into the Meriva and drive downtown to the Altes Gymnasium for my session with the students. Although the school dates back to 1573, since 1878 it has been in its present prime location, across the street from the Old City and the soaring steeple of the Lambertikirche, just steps from the venerable State Theater, its back bordering the beautiful Schlossgarten. From the outside, it's an imposing building, and yet inside, with students rushing through the corridors, laughing and whistling, greeting friends and teachers, intent on relaying and accepting messages on their cell phones, dropping books and swapping caps, it displays the unmistakable atmosphere of a vibrant school community. We are met by Jörg Witte, the teacher who invited me on Friday evening. He leads us to the site of our gathering: the very assembly hall that was the setting for Helmut's outburst in the autumn of 1938.

As I walk into the room, with its somber black walls bordered by dark wooden carvings, I feel what in the past few days has become a familiar prickling sensation at the corner of my eyes, and the thought rages through my mind, “Can you please stop crying
for five minutes
at least?!” But I cannot rid my imagination of the image of Uncle Helmut staging his hopeless protest against the lies that were being ruthlessly marshaled against his country, his city, his school—lies that he recognized and would not allow to stand. Then my tears give way to a broad smile; I am just so proud of what J. D. Salinger would have called Helmut's “testicularity” at that singular moment.

By way of introducing me, Dr. Witte tells the students, all of them from the tenth and eleventh grades, of the important connection my family has to this auditorium. He points out that Helmut in 1938 was roughly the same age as they are today. “Who among you,” he asks, “would have the courage to do what Helmut Goldschmidt did? Who among any of us would?” he asks us, faculty and guests alike. I speak for perhaps ten minutes, telling the story of my family and of the journey I am just beginning. Then I invite their questions, virtually all of which are echoes of the question asked at Saturday night's film screening: how does it feel to be back here at the scene of the crimes committed during what in German is called the
NS Zeit
, the time of National Socialism. Again I try to sort out my complicated feelings and I tell them that the pain of what happened years before I was born is still very present for me but that it has been tempered by the kindnesses shown me by so many Oldenburgers.

But even as I repeat these words, I am reminded of my angry reaction to Anneliese Wehrmann's story and I ask myself just how well-tempered my true feelings have become.

After the students have been dismissed, we spend a few minutes admiring the memorial that stands at the entrance to the auditorium. It is a simple plaque, bordered in green, accompanied by an austere wooden sculpture. The plaque reads, in German, “The murdered Jewish students of this school.” The names are Paul Gerson, Helmut Goldschmidt, Ludwig Landsberg, Julius Meyberg, Franz Reyersbach, and Max Wallheimer. The students of the AGO see those names every day. I am very glad to read Uncle Helmut's name and to know that he is celebrated for his courage and mourned as the very last Jewish student at the AGO during the
NS Zeit
. But I am also aware of the deep grief this well-meaning plaque cannot now ease, nor ever will.