I Sleep in Hitler's Room (12 page)

Yeah. I feel like I’m in another place, in a different world. But where? No, not in Israel. That country is very Western-thinking as well. Shallow. I feel as if I’m in the Arab Middle East. This Jens makes me feel so. Maybe I
am
in the Middle East. Maybe this German-accented English speaker across the table from me is in reality a sheikh. Sheikh Jens bin Mustafa. I go often to the Middle East. I talk to the people there and I am delighted to listen to them. No, not because I agree with them or because I disagree with them. Has nothing to do with it. It’s because they are not empty inside. They might have no “tolerance,” but I still respect them. Tremendously. They have something they stand for. It’s not empty inside. I have had many honest dialogues with the “intolerant” people of the East but to date not a single one with the “tolerant” people of the West. The reason is very simple: The tolerant people of the West are the most intolerant people you can imagine. They are so afraid that you will uncover the emptiness inside them that the moment you start arguing with them their first instinct is: Kill him!

That said, I feel depressed after leaving Sheikh Jens. I need time to think, to collect my thoughts. But not here, not in Hamburg. It’s a beautiful city, Hamburg, but the atmosphere here, the human atmosphere, is a bit too cold for my taste. I’m not making a generalization. It’s just what I feel.

I keep my thoughts to myself. I don’t tell the natives what I think of them. It’s too dangerous. Hamburgers are very emotional about their city. Mention the word
Elbe
and these cold people suddenly become very warm. A man can talk to you about his wife as if she were a tree, no emotions; but talk to him about the trees of Hamburg and he gets extremely romantic. Women are the same. I don’t know how they do it.

Don’t tell them I said it! Hamburg is the World Capital of Militant Bicyclists, and if they know I have some reservations about them they might kill me.

No, I’m not kidding. I was schlepping two suitcases the other day, and the bicyclists here were torturing me. On a narrow sidewalk, which could contain either me with my suitcases or a flying Hamburg militia, as I call them, the militia demanded first right of passage. I had to squeeze myself to a tree so that the militia could pass. Then another militia arrived. Same thing. There was nothing I could do. With their bicycles they are ticking human bombs. I had to stop walking so many times, more than the average man in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment of it some years back. And I was thinking to myself: Interesting how animalistic people can become if only they think that the law is on their side. Maybe we should send a delegation of these Militant Bicyclists to the Middle East. They will get peace going there in one day, maximum.

Anyway, right or wrong, I’m leaving. I am heading south. Guess where? To Munich. Again. I’d rather spend my time with Sister Jutta-Maria than with a screaming Hamburger militia.

As I make my way to Munich I watch Al Jazeera TV. Thanks to my iPad, I can watch cable TV on the go. Al Jazeera has two TV stations, one in Arabic and one in English, and two websites, also in Arabic and in English. The English part and the Arabic part are diametrically opposed. The English one is moderate, more or less like the British BBC. The Arabic part is more extreme than Hamas. For whatever reason, which I’m not clear about, this fact remains a secret in the West. But this fact does not mean that Al Jazeera Arabic is not interesting. On the contrary, it’s much more interesting than its English sibling. Here I can watch news I see nowhere else.

At this very moment they carry a live broadcast from some flotilla that makes its way into Gaza from Turkey. Sheikh Raed Salah, of the Islamic Movement in Israel, is currently giving a little speech. As is his usual routine, he incites the crowd against Jews. Raed Salah can easily claim the title “Biggest Anti-Semite in the Muslim World.” Or, being that he’s an Arab, the Biggest Jew Hater. Raed, who previously accused Jews of mixing the blood of non-Jewish children into their breads, is getting a lot of applause here. The Turkish government wholeheartedly supports this flotilla and this Raed, but if I were Muslim I would sink the flotilla right now. These people make Muslims look like total idiots. They call themselves “peace activists” and “human-rights activists,” but their peace is the peace of the cemetery. As a Saudi man in Riyadh told me two years ago, when I asked him if he thought that peace was possible: “Yes. As it says in this Holy Book, all Jews die and there be peace between all.” He imagined a big Peace Cemetery, where all the Jews will be buried. “We don’t fight cemeteries,” he said, a big smile on his face.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza probably went too far, but the sinking of the flotilla makes total sense to me. What makes no sense to me is this: I can watch, live, on my little iPad, what happens at sea. Where are all the news organizations, with hundreds and thousands of reporters, to report it? I can’t locate one news item about this.

I can’t think too much about the Middle East now. After all, it was my decision to be in Germany now instead of in Palestine. I am here. A fact. And before I know it, I arrive in Munich.

No
Kirchentag
anymore, of course. The religious Germans are either gone or hiding somewhere. But the cultured people are here, all over. Let’s visit them.

I go to the Deutsches Museum. Why not?

Come along with me, it’s an interesting place. Here you can learn things. I do. For example, I never thought about it, but there’s a reason why diesel is called “diesel.” Something to do with Mr. Diesel, the German who changed the world. Impressive, I can’t deny. I live and learn.

This museum, by the way, is arranged very well.

Look here, a table where the first atomic fission took place. That’s something you won’t find in my backyard.

In a section called Electric Power, a lecture/class is given in the dark. This includes a test, during which loud explosions are heard and following each of them the audience erupts in applause.

You walk around, look up and down and sideways in this fantastic museum and you cannot not love the Germans. Not only because it suddenly dawns on you all the contributions that Germans have made in technology over the years, but also the very way everything is arranged here. It’s a marvel to watch. No science museum I have ever visited comes even close.

Here you also get a chance to see Germany’s future, the little kids. Whenever I open my iPad, which has been available in Germany only since the end of last month, the kids come. Totally fascinated by it. They obviously don’t have it yet, these kids, but they desire it tremendously. They want to know how it works! Where is the modem? The tech genes, so to speak, since we are in a science environment, don’t disappoint.

Standing outside and seeing the people just going in and out is an amazing thing to behold: Children as young as two or three years old are here, and they love the place! This, to me, is the best and most powerful exhibition of all! I feel much better. I love these kids!

This is a cause for celebration. A
Leberkäse
(a delicious German meatloaf made with minced liver, eggs, and spices) is in order.

Admira of Bosnia, of the chain store Vintzenzmurr, is the one who prepares the
Leberkäse
for me. She has worked here for ten years, and she teaches me what she’s learned about the German people:

“Men order Cola Zero; women, Cola Light; children, Mezzo Mix or Cola; older people, water without gas or Sprite.”

That’s a philosopher! I love it!

I’m in such a good mood that I go to see a play. It is is called
Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel)
(Rechnitz [The exterminating angel]), by the Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek. It’s playing at the Schauspielhaus at the Münchner Kammerspiele. Performance starts at 20:00, intro at 19:15. Yes. Intro. You get an introduction beforehand, so you can understand the play. Can’t a piece of art speak for itself?

Well, maybe not.

The introduction is given by Julia Lochte, chief dramaturge.

The play takes place in Rechnitz, Austria. It is about 180 Budapest Jews who were taken as forced labor and ordered to build the Südostwall. They were too weak to work and were executed in the last days of the war, in 1945, just before the Russians came.

Elfriede, whose father was Jewish, never uses the word
Jews
in the play. Instead she calls them “hollow men.”

Helmut Schmidt is not the only Jew in the German-speaking world. Elfriede Jelinek is another one.

Watching the play, one notices that the theme is sex and death. A man masturbates, or rubs his crotch, with a woman’s foot. Over and over. While characters talk of murder, mass graves, and other fun stuff, they also engage sexually. What’s the point of it? I’m not sure. On the good side, this play has interesting undercurrents of humor. “I am proud to be German!” says one of the characters, “even tough I am not German.” On the other side, it’s too banal. If it intends to portray the banality of evil, well, Hannah Arendt does a much better job of it in
Eichmann in Jerusalem
.

I meet Julia after the show, just to have a little chat. Over a glass of ice-cold Cola Light, I ask Julia why the characters are making out while they talk about death and murder.

“Obscenity of evil,” says Julia.

I say nothing.

An interesting note:

The text of the play reads: “Schon die Kreuzritter wollten nach Palestina und sind im Gazastreifen angekommen.” (The Crusaders wanted to go to Palestine and arrived in Gaza Strip). But today the actor added, “Sie sind wenigstens angekommen!” (But they at least arrived!) This in reference to today’s news from the Middle East, that Israeli troops stormed ships intended to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

(The “Free Gaza Flotilla,” organized by pro-Palestinian organizations and supported by a Turkish Islamic group, İHH, and by the Turkish government, consisted of six ships, all bound for Gaza. Israeli forces ordered them to change course and sail into the Israeli port city of Ashdod. The activists refused, and the Israelis raided the largest of them, a Turkish passenger ship named
Mavi Marmara
. Nine people, all associated with İHH, were killed. The raid took place in international waters, and the account of the events is disputed. The activists say that they were carrying food and medicine, not weapons, to the blockaded Gazans and that as they were “performing the morning prayers, Israeli soldiers started shooting.” But the Israeli side claims that the “demonstrators” onboard attacked its naval personnel “with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs.”)

Meeting the actor in the restaurant, I ask him to explain his action. He does.

“I find what happened today a scandal, a catastrophe, a horror,” says Andre Jung, who played the Exceptional Messenger. “What the Israeli army did. Entered a ship and murdered people who wanted to give food and medication to closed people.”

When asked if he considered all the facts and that maybe there are two sides to the story, he says, “I don’t have the time to read everything.”

What am I going to say? Should I say, You have to know the facts before you come to judgment, especially before you make a public statement onstage? That would be a waste of my time, I guess.

Jossi Wieler is the director of this piece. He is Jewish, he has family in Israel, and he travels there occasionally. Does he support the improvisation that Mr. Jung interjected into his performance today?

Wieler wonders if he should answer this question, muses that he hopes his answer would not cause him trouble next time he comes to Israel, and then says that “on such a day, with such news, I support it. Artistically and politically.”

Well, that’s brave of him, no doubt.

If you hear or read about a German Jewish director shot to death in the dark of night in a Tel Aviv bar, now you know why.

Funny. No German worth his name who criticizes the Israeli handling of the Gaza flotilla is afraid that the Israelis will exact revenge. This thought is too low even for your average anti-Semite. But Jossi, the Jew, is Holier than Thou.

I look at Julia and ask her: Are you proud to be German?

“I am proud to be born in Hamburg,” she says.

I ask Jossi: Are you proud to be Jewish? Give me a yes or a no.

Wow. The man wants to kill me. How dare I force him to give a yes or a no! How can one be so simplistic? If I go on like this, he tells me, “I will leave.” Period. What am I, the
Bild-Zeitung
? My question was complex question and requires a very complex and long answer!

It’s a rainy day in Munich. I go to the university of Munich, the law department, trying to find me Germany’s next generation. I’m interested to know if the future judges and legal brains of Germany agree with the Gaza actor . . . I approach the students.

What do you think of the Israeli response to the Gaza Flotilla?

David: “It’s illegal.”

Christof: “Against international law.”

Christian: “It’s an aggression by the Israelis.”

A group of students, mostly female, walk by. I ask them as well, but they walk away, refusing to talk. One of them says, “I am not going to answer this!”

Peter Landau, professor of law, also walks by. He has no problem answering. “I was very angry,” he says. “It was a big mistake. The Israelis were motivated by nationalism. They do damage to themselves. I hope Israel can be preserved as a state, but they have not behaved properly since the Yom Kippur War.”

Since he uses the Hebrew name for the war, I ask him if he’s Jewish.

“I have Jewish ancestors. But my father was baptized.”

God, everybody is a Jew in Germany!

Why did the girls refuse to talk? I ask him.

“Because of the Holocaust, some are afraid to get into trouble if they speak their mind. But I am not.”

Are you proud to be German?

“I accept being German, but I would be reluctant to be proud.”

Two students walk by, one German and one Turkish. When prompted, they say they did not hear anything about anything. Busy studying.