Written in 2004 after a family trip to Leipzig Germany
Diamonds Are Forever
A reflective essay about returning to Germany
by Renée Snyder
“Achtung bitte”, a soft female voice announces over the speaker system in the Frankfurt airport. These are the first German words I hear spoken on German soil and the utterance stings a bit, as though it has been spoken by an SS officer in a movie. Can’t they find another word instead? After an hour of several more announcements initiated the same way, the words no long bite, as I board the plane for Leipzig ready for my personal evolution of tolerance and acceptance.
I had expected that I would never step foot on German soil again, but three years ago, something changed. In my role as family chronicler, I recognized my special duty as the guardian of our family history. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to just preserve it in a book. I needed to see it for myself. I wanted to see the city my parents called the “diamond of Germany”, and I needed to be able to see it through the eyes of my sisters and brothers, since I was just a child when we left in 1939. The city that once expelled us has now invited us back.
Our plane approaches Leipzig/Halle airport, flooding me with a dichotomy of excitement and trepidation. My mind wants to be open and receptive, but I fear my heart won’t follow and my animus towards Germans will interfere with my objectivity.
The moment we arrive and are greeted at the airport with a long-stemmed rose, and a warm welcome from Thomas, the coordinator of the EinladungsProgram, my fears begin to fade. Thomas explains that we are part of a group of forty-two Jewish people who left Leipzig because of fascism. Nine members of the group are my family of five siblings, some spouses and a nephew. The other thirty-three people came from all over the world, and like us, many of them are back on German soil for the first time in sixty-five years.
The airport is in a suburb, which gives us the opportunity for some sightseeing on the way to the hotel. As we pass two automobile manufacturing sites, Thomas makes a reference to the GDR and points out that since reunification, Leipzig and its surroundings form one of the fastest-growing economic regions in Europe. It is the first time I notice that East Germans count time from the reunification of Germany in 1990, much like survivors speak of “before the war” and “after the war”.
The sight-seeing conversation is interspersed with some meaningful references to the program that is planned for us in the coming week. "We want to show how Germany has changed.” Thomas tells us. His contempt for the Fascism of the 30’s and 40’s seems equal to ours albeit for different reasons, and his love affair with Leipzig reminds me of my parents’ affection for their diamond city. My feelings of apprehension are turning to raw anticipation.
As we approach the Marriott Hotel we pass Leipzig's Train Station. The Hauptbanhoff has long been famous for being the largest railway station in Europe and a major transfer point for trains to just about anywhere, even though the station is a dead end, meaning trains pull in and then must back out. My mind flashes a picture of trains filled with people on their way to concentration camps, but I quickly return to the present as we are told that the station also features three floors of underground mall. This combination of railway hub and crowded mall creates staggering foot traffic in front of the station.
I wonder, “Is there anyone in Leipzig who might remember a family named Katz that used to live here in the 1930’s?” Probably not; but one of the advantages of returning with a group of former Leipzig residents is the opportunity to find these connections through them. On our first day of touring, we stop at the memorial to the Napoleonic Battle of Leipzig, where the group exits the bus to view the superb panorama of Leipzig’s city center. My sister starts a conversation with a nearby woman and asks her name. When the woman answers, Mary's heart begins to race as she asks a few more questions, locates the woman’s husband and queries, “What is your name?”?”
“Hans Last” he replies.
“Ich bin Mary Katz” my sister divulges.
“Marichen” he screams, with uncontrollable excitement.
Hans was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, one of only two surviving members of the family that lived on the same floor, in the apartment next to ours at 41 Nordstrasse.
“Your cousin Wolkowitz? … Did he survive?” Hans enquires about his childhood best friend.
“See the tall man over there”. Mary points to David standing a short distance away.
“And Wolf, where is he?” Hans asks, referring to his other close friend.
“Over there.” Mary responds, designating my brother Billy.
“We’re all here, together”, spreading her arms to include my other sister and me who are standing alongside.
“You must be HelaLili” he says to Helen, and then turning to me he puts his hands in front like a fisherman displaying the size of his catch, and with unbridled nostalgia he indicates the size of an infant, and declares ” little Regina”.
Hans had come all the way from Australia, hoping to find someone from his past to connect him to his early life and the wonderful times he had before Hitler’s regime destroyed life for every Jew in Germany. The excitement is indescribable.
During the first tour of the city, I am surprised by Leipzig's beauty. I had preconceptions of a shabby, socialist metropolis marred with scars of WWII and grayed by it’s domination by the Soviet Union, but the refurbished city center and its magnificent historical buildings have an aura of charm and splendor. We drive past Augustusplatz, which is unrivaled by any other area in Leipzig and is a fairly complete lesson in the architectural history of Leipzig. The neo-Baroque Mende Fountain is a place where my father used to take the children to feed the pigeons and take family photos. The north side of Augustusplatz is taken up by the new Leipzig Opera House, which replaces the structure seen in the background of our old family photos. The new Leipzig Gewandhaus, which forms the southern side of Augustusplatz, is closely associated with Leipzig’s international status as a city of music.
The University of Leipzig also has its home in Augustusplatz. Since its creation in 1409, it has been home to many important people, most notably Goethe and our Aunt Mary who graduated from the University of Leipzig in the early 1920’s, one of the few Jewish women in attendance here at that time. The bus takes us past the Mendelssohn Conservatory of Music. We inquire if this is the same building that was the conservatory in the 1920’s, and the affirmative response confirms that this place is where Tante Gina and Onkel Abraham studied piano and violin, before their lives were cut short at Auschwitz in 1942.
Near the site of Augustusplatz is the oldest and largest church of Leipzig, the St. Nikolai Church. It was here that the peaceful revolution began which paved the way for the liquidation of the communist regime and finally to German unification in 1990; and it is here that a church leader heads an organization that is involved in actively bringing Jews and Jewish life back to Leipzig - a notion that boggles my mind.
Old family photos taken in front of our house, with the St. Michael’s church in the background, give us a landmark to guide us to the proper location of the place where we used to live. We walk the five long blocks in the direction of the church steeple, looking for something familiar, but the area preceding our block is completely new, an indication that this area had been badly bombed during the war. When we arrive at the vicinity of our home, we see many buildings that look similar to the one we lived in, but our house on the corner has been destroyed by the WWII bombings. In its place is a Nursery School, sheltered by a piece of wall, painted with beautiful graffiti, which remains standing from the original building. We continue walking to the next block where David lived with his parents in the same building with our grandparents. The building is being renovated and is covered with scaffolding, but nothing can keep us from approaching the entrance.
As we stand at the front door of 49 Nordstrasse, peering into the window, to the carved banister of the staircase leading to the second floor apartment where my grandparents had lived, I think about how my parents hid under that staircase on the morning after Kristallnacht, when they ran the short block from our house to this house to get my grandparents to safety; only to find the SS men, with guns drawn, already pounding on my grandparents’ door, ready to ship them to Poland. David steps back to indicate the room that was his bedroom and then points to the glassed-in atrium style room on the corner of the building. He remarks that our grandfather had kept his sewing machine in that room, but Mary recalls that room as our grandparents’ bedroom. None of us worry about the discrepancies in their recollections.
One evening, there is a concert given in our honor at the Alte Handelsbörse, (The Old Stock Exchange) a gilded baroque structure. The orchestra conductor announces they will be playing the music that was being played in Leipzig during the 20’s and 30’s; the room swells with the universal language of music and we are all swept away to another time. Mary nods in agreement when I whisper, “Mother used to sing this song”, and Billy sways to the strains of The Blue Danube Waltz which never sounded so rich or more fitting. I look over at David, whose father was the orchestra conductor at the Crystal Palace Hotel, and I realize that this is exactly the music that Uncle Abraham must have played for the dinner guests in the 1930’s.
One day we shop in the magnificent city arcade Madler Passage and have lunch at Auerbachs Keller, where Goethe used to dine. Another day we stop for lunch in a restaurant that was frequented by the composer Mendelssohn. We make a trip to the St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach flourished as the organist and choirmaster. At the site of the former Temple which my family attended, we visit the memorial to the 14000 Leipzig Jews who were killed during the holocaust. We admire the original floors with their Mogen David pattern in the building which formerly housed the Carlebach School, the only school available for Jewish children during the Nazi regime. We attend Shabbat services, banquets, meet with dignitaries, playfully kibitz with waiters and converse with shopkeepers. We are enjoying the city, its history and its people without the intrusion of any more ghosts from the past.
Towards the end of the week, we are invited for a group visit with the mayor. After some poignant speeches, we are all asked to sign the city guest book, an honor that is extended only to visiting dignitaries. I am deeply stirred by the Mayor’s comments, and moved to tears by the ceremony to sign the “Golden Book”. The others in the group seem to be equally emotional and I realize how much healing and closure has occurred over the past week.
The Rotary Club arranged for us to be invited to the homes of some Leipziger citizens for dinner and friendly conversation. Our hosts are a retired, world renowned orchestra conductor and a concert violinist, and the evening is filled with intoxicating conversation. Horst talks of how his travels allowed him to see that citizens in other countries had personal freedoms not granted to East Germans and tells of his involvement in the peaceful demonstrations of 1989. His fascinating stories are filled with his profound love for music, liberty, and Leipzig. By the end of the evening, we are making plans to get together again in Florida next December.
The last day of our trip, we are taken in groups of two to speak to school children about our holocaust experiences. We take turns telling short anecdotes about our escape from Germany and what life was like for our families during that time. Soon the teens begin to ask questions about how it feels to be a stranger in a new land and what it is like to be persecuted. I ask if they have witnessed any sort of discrimination in their school. They don’t even understand the word. These children of parents who were educated by the Russians don’t understand segregation or social distinction, a characteristic of being East Germans. Before we leave the school, one of the teachers takes us down the hallway to a display of a class trip to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. Among the photos and descriptions, I find several original poems written by some of the students and I am moved by their sensitivity to the horrors of the holocaust. Mostly I am touched by their strong desire to try to comprehend how such atrocities could have happened.
I have no answers for the children, and no explanations for myself. I can’t understand how the ideology of a madman was allowed to flourish, or how I could have returned to this country and made friends with its citizens. Before this trip it would have seemed unimaginable to me that Jews are again settling in Germany and re-establishing Jewish communities here. What seems unthinkable today is the often virulently negative comments from many Americans about Germany and my decision to visit there.
Leipzig is a city that invites one to take advantage of freedom and experience self-realization. They call this "Leipziger Freiheit". Like my parents, who referred to pre-Nazi Leipzig as the “diamond of Germany”, Leipzigers still view their city in grand terms with perhaps a touch of arrogance. Like a diamond found in the smoldering ashes of destruction, the city is being re-polished into a brilliant gem. Refining and burnishing it to exceed its previous luster and elegance, the citizens are like jewelers who understand that diamonds are timeless treasures with history and urbanity; and Leipzig is just that.
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