back to berlin

Like so many others in this fine nation, I'm what you'd call a Euro-Jew mutt. (Some might dispute my claim of being Jewish, as my mom converted after I was born, but they're just haters. I was bat mitzvahed and they can fuck off.) Both grandmothers were of Russian heritage. One was a princess and the other was...well, not. My mom's dad was the son of a Norwegian plumber, and my dad's is a German Jew.

I guess I can blame the patriarchy for the fact that, Jewishness aside, I feel more German than any of the others. My grandfather's family left Berlin in 1936. This summer, I was the first person in my family to return. I had a year of college German and a pretty good knowledge of 20th century Germany history under my belt, not to mention a love for beer and sausages. I was ready.

...at least I was for the most part. Unfortunately, to get back to where I was staying from the city center meant taking the U-Bahn in the direction "Wannsee," which meant I was told that I was going there several times every day-- by a computerized public transit voice, no less. Every once in a while, something like that would trigger icky Holocaust thoughts, but the people were wonderful, and I had a great time.

Then, I got an email from my father containing information about our family history, including the names of family members who died in the camps and the locations of my dead German ancestors' graves in Berlin. Among the graves was that of my great-grandmother, Erna Unger, a neue Frau architect and interior decorator who died of cancer in 1933 at the age of 40. I decided, then and there, that it was my duty to visit my family's graves, and to be the first to do so in over 70 years. I felt I owed it, at the very least, to Erna, whose name is never uttered, and about whom I know so little.

Yet, every trip I tried to take to the cemetary failed. Either I got distracted, or the weather wasn't right enough, or I was too tired that day. When I came down with a cold with two days left in the city, I knew it wasn't going to happen.

I boarded the plane at Tegel with an enormous sense of shame. How had I managed to screw this up? Had I been too scared? I took my seat and watched the Fernsehturm get smaller and smaller as we ascended, I watched the thick forests go by, and I heard something. Voices, speaking, no, they're whining to me so faintly in German. What were they saying? I focused hard to pick out the words...

"...and you don't even stop by?"

As if my living relatives aren't enough, I have to contend with an army of kvetching ghosts.

I dont travel well, and a guilt-trip on top of it all is too much.

"I'll visit next time I'm in Berlin."

I hear a chorus of disbelief.

"I mean it, I promise I'll come back." And I do mean it.

The voices grow more faint as the plane climbs higher and higher, flying away from the city where my grandfather was born, from the country he so firmly renounces. I'm not sure if I leave the ghosts or if the ghosts leave me, but we are seperated nevertheless. I whisper goodbye to Germany, and to all those, living and dead, who remain there.