I Sleep in Hitler's Room (44 page)

A thought. Just a thought. An impression. A “first impression.”

One more thought: The need to worship authority is, at least in part, a need to not think on your own but have someone else do it for you. This way, you never have to take personal responsibility. That “someone else” can be the God of the Bible, a Prophet from America, or the Collective. That last one is especially powerful these days. Germans whom I met attach almost a sacred meaning to the collective, which is basically a group that they’re part of. If you’re a member of a group—a
Verein
, of course—the group thinks for you. And if the group decides it doesn’t matter whether its decisions are right or wrong, you, the individual, just follow the group. Size doesn’t matter. The group can be as big as the UN or as small as a WG.

In practice, this is the way it works: If you fancy yourself a radical leftist, you throw broken glass at the faces of police officers. If you delight in being called Christian, you stand on line to get a blessing from an American prophet. If you love being peace and love and you flash two fingers two thousand times a day, the sweet dream of killing everyone who’s not like you makes you feel safe. If you believe yourself to be an intellectual, you must be pro-Palestine. If you view yourself as a soccer fan, you raise the flag as high as stupidly possible. And if the group you belong to is the media, you desperately want the head of a little mayor. If this is true, it does neatly explain much of what I’ve seen so far during my time here. Also, if this is true, there’s not much of a difference between worshipping the “group” or worshipping an individual. Group is a name. Hitler is a name. Both connote the same idea: I don’t think for myself and I’m not responsible.

Why are the Germans like this, if they are? Because they are babies. They have a Chocolate Museum. I shiver when I write this, but it seems to be the truth.

There’s one more place I must see before I move to Görlitz.

Do you want to know what it is? Join me for the ride.

Wow! This is a beauty. Have you ever been here? Have you ever been to Asisi Panometer? You must experience it at least once in your life. More important than going to Mecca.

Here you experience Baroque architecture head-on. In this awe-inspiring work, Asisi gives us Dresden and its Baroque art as it was hundreds of years ago. Housed in an old gasometer, the panometer, whose name is a hybrid of the words
gasometer
and
panorama
, will make you fall in love with Baroque and classical painting. Go up the stairs in the middle of this museum—yes, there’s a staircase here—and you’ll be transported back in time, as this painting has a 3-D quality to it. It’s alive. It moves with you as you move from point to point at the top of the staircase. Stick around and experience the light scheme employed here. The time of day moves from night to day and, as it does, you feel as if all of this were real. House, churches, grass, water, people: All “real.”

Just amazing!

This is Dresden. This is Germany. Land of masters, visual masters. Geniuses. And when you experience this, you’ll thank God that Germany exists.

Now, finally, I can safely go on to Görlitz.

Have you ever been to Görlitz? What a gorgeous little place!

Görlitz, a beautiful German city across the river Lausitzer Neiße from the Polish city of Zgorzelec.

The two cities used to be one, all Görlitz, but the war separated them.

As the locals tell it, the German citizens on the other side of the river were forced to flee in 1945, making room for Polish citizens who were forced to flee from their homes on the Ukrainian border. Double refugees here. But when the various nations agreed in 1990 to Germany reunification (“The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany”), they stipulated that all German claims to ownership of previous areas had to be abolished. Tough luck.

The good news is that the people did not elect to be refugees forever and to stew in their own miseries for eternity. On the contrary: They did everything and anything in their power to move ahead in life. And whatever German borders took shape in the end, they did their part to rebuild what was left in their hands.

Görlitz, a city left almost intact following the Allied bombardments of Germany in World War II, was left to rot during the GDR era. After the Wall fell, some thought that most of the buildings in the city would have to be demolished. But the people of Görlitz instead decided to fix and reconstruct. A wise decision indeed. Today Görlitz is a beautiful city, ancient and new. Walking its streets is a pleasure both to the eye and to the spirit. It’s as beautiful a city as you can imagine. And it’s full of history.

Take, for instance, the Holy Tomb. Yes, that of Jesus. Really. PM Tillich was right. How did Jesus get here? A cute story: The mayor of the town long ago in the fifteenth century, was involved in a sexual relationship with a married woman. It was good and hot and sweet, but he regretted it afterward. Nobody knows exactly why. There was no Google in those days, no YouTube, no iPad, and no Facebook. He regretted it, and he went to Jerusalem to visit the Holy Sepulcher. How he made the turn from hot love to a cold grave is something that’s still murky. But it happened. Truth be told, even today, as we speak, all kinds of strange stories are set in Jerusalem, a city of angelic Messiahs and flying Messengers. And that’s not all. It turns out that our German mayor went the extra mile: the measurements of the Holy Tomb. He brought them with him and commissioned a replica of it to be built here.

Yes. And for one euro and fifty cents you can visit the place. Cheaper than a flight to Israel. But please pay attention to your surroundings: Adam’s grave is here as well. Yes, really, the one from the Bible. That first man. How do I know? It says so in the brochure that I was handed at the entrance to the Holy Tomb.

Jesus, I am delighted to inform you, is not here. He rose. That’s the whole trick. And, what else, this Holy Tomb, the caretakers here say, is more exact than the one in Jerusalem today. That one, you’ll be informed on entering this holy site, itself is a reconstruction of the original, which was set ablaze a few hundred years ago.

Don’t misunderstand. What all this means is that the Holy Tomb in Görlitz, built five hundred years ago, is more exact than the one in Jerusalem.

I wonder what happened to that woman, the object of the mayor’s desire, and if anybody has a picture of her. She must have been very sexy.

To me today, what’s most fascinating about Görlitz is that it’s the end of one country and culture and the beginning of another. Totally different. Poland, that is. A word of caution here: When you cross the bridge to Poland, a two-minute walk, try not to pay attention to the graffiti on the German side. Ignore the “Sieg Heil” next to a swastika and the “Nationaler Sozialismus Jetzt!” (National Socialism now!), as you might lose your appetite before you even get to try the Polish food, which is delicious. That would be really bad.

Join me. I‘m in the restaurant, across the waters, in Zgorzelec, Poland. Just to have a little Polish cake. I get into a conversation with the waitress. About the English language, no less. After several minutes, I notice that I have my hands on her, the way I would touch a close friend. She does the same, by the way. As if we were very close friends. And I don’t even know her name.

This never happened to me on the other side of the river.

This closeness between people, this friendliness, this borderless and immediate affection, this humanness, belongs here but not there.

Back in Görlitz, I walk its streets one more time, wandering in corners tourists don’t frequent. So many empty buildings, it’s hard to look at them. Once upon a time families were formed and raised here; now only dust.

Imagine if Germany had never waged war. Imagine if the War hadn’t happened.

Imagine if the Weimar Republic had endured.

Imagine if Germany hadn’t tried to grab more land.

Imagine if Germany were much bigger than it already is.

Imagine.

Imagine if Germany didn’t follow.

Imagine if instead Germany led.

There is a big synagogue in town. Its gates have been closed for about eighty years. It’s more of a monument today than anything else. To the people who were there and died, and to the hands that killed them.

But why should we think about it? It’s not my history.

My history is my mom, who had some tough nights with Russian soldiers...

I board the train due north, back to Hamburg, my base while in Germany.

A lovely couple sits in my compartment. He’s doing his doctorate in biotechnology, she’s an undergraduate in the same field. He used to be her teacher, she tells me. Now he’s her husband. They both study in Germany, and both are Persian. He introduces himself as Amir and says something similar to what Farah told me: that the Western world knows nothing about Iran. But he has more detail to share: It’s not the president, Ahmadinejad, who controls the government. How does Amir know this? Very simple: “Everybody knows this.” Everybody? How come I don’t? Well, I’m not Persian. The Persians, so Amir says, know that the person who stands in front, the man who goes on TV, the man who is forever in the news, has not a scintilla of power.

Is this some quirk of the Persian people?

“No. It’s the same in the US. It’s not the American president or the American Congress that decides things. They’re just the public faces of the real power.”

Who’s the real power?

“The Jews.”

Amir’s wife, Maryam, totally agrees. In Iran, she says, she would be “arrested and flogged if caught sitting in a train the way I am now.” No hijab. And that’s not all: Her flowing long hair is showing in all its majesty, her hands as well, and even a little cleavage where men, may Allah save us, can see, Allah forbid, part of her tempting breasts.

Of course, if a man were tempted and she agreed to his advances, she would be “stoned to death. A man can have at least four wives but I cannot have even two husbands.”

But, that said, not everything is the way it looks in Iran. “Ahmadinejad,” says Amir, and Maryam agrees, “is a good friend of the Jews.”

Good friend?

“Yes.”

How come?

“Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. Why does he do that? Doesn’t he know that it really happened? Everybody knows. But because there are many Holocaust deniers out there, Ahmadinejad wants to make sure people don’t forget. And that’s why he keeps bringing the issue to the forefront. His supposed denial of the Holocaust forces people to prove it again and again. Is there a better way to keep alive the memory of the Jewish Holocaust? There is not.”

Ahmadinejad loves the Jews. Maybe he’s even a Jew himself.

“Why is it,” asks the soon-to-be PhD, “that every country sends a flotilla to Gaza except for Iran?” The man has proved his point. Life is so simple, and I never knew.

I also never knew the story of Ulrich, the man who sells kosher wine in Hamburg. He’s a rare sight in Hamburg, a Jew with a big skullcap. Would you like to drink something? he asks.

I sit with Ulrich and listen to him. Germany is good, he says. He’s never encountered any form of anti-Semitism in this country. It’s a good land for the Jews, really good. Is he from Hamburg? Yes, born here. His parents too? Yes, them as well. He’s also a dentist, he tells me. His father too. Not only that: His father was also an insect specialist. He knew beetles inside out, and he collected them. Even during wartime. Life is good in Hamburg. So good, that his papa even survived the war.

How did he do it?

“They forgot to take him.”

Forgot?

“Yes.”

How come?

It’s a complex and complicated story. Ulrich, you see, is a convert. Was German, now is a Jew. His mom was not Jewish, his pop was. Papa even wrote a diary during the war, documenting what happened. What happened? He collected beetles. Papa “wrote about insects” but never about the other stuff. Didn’t. Life is good. Hamburg is good for the Jews. But mama, not a Jew, “lost her mind after the war.” She became a mental case.

Why?

“She was treated worse than a whore” by the regime.

I understand Ulrich. Not because he makes sense. He doesn’t. But I hardly notice it: Somewhere along the tracks of my journey, sense had lost its value. The idea that Germany is not good for the gentiles but good for the Jews seems plausible to me at this stage. Why not?

Insects. He wrote about insects.

And then Ulrich says: “I asked them. They told me they knew. They told me that everybody knew everything. The Jews being killed. Everybody knew.”

To understand an insect isn’t always easy. To understand humans is close to impossible. I light up a cigarette and stare at the smoke coming out. My own little ash cloud.

It was with an ash cloud that I came here. It is with an ash cloud that I end my journey.

My job done. Journey over.

Now that the book has been written, I need a vacation.

Next to a border, just in case.

Everything from now on is a Bonus. Awarded to you free of charge, because you’ve recommended this book to all your friends.

If you haven’t, stop reading here! Now.

Sylt, across the border from Denmark, is where I go.

But this is a vacation. I’m not interviewing people anymore. Whoever has something to say about Nazis, Jews, Arabs, or anybody else, let them keep it to themselves. I’m not interested. I’ve done my part. Sorry. Anybody who wants to fight, a reminder: Without me. The only issues I’m willing to discuss are: money, food, sex. Nothing else. I am on vacation.

First I’m going to Kampen, a little town in Sylt, with big-name designer stores and moneyed shoppers.

This will cover, I hope, the money part of my Personal Trinity.

It’s early afternoon in Kampen. Comfy cafés on the sidewalks. People sit and drink mineral water, not beer. Some, who splurge, have a helping of small fruit juice. Got to keep the weight down. Most of the ladies have the same breast size, more or less. It’s summer, vacation time, time to wear simple clothes, like T-shirts. Only that the T-shirts I see here aren’t coming from the 99-cent stores. They cost. I go to a little store and try out a sweater. Only 1,195 euros. It’s too tight on me. The saleslady says I have to take off some weight. She’s right. I am the fattest man in Sylt.