My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past (17 page)

In Israel, 1992

I wanted to explore every corner of this country and get to know its people. I was particularly looking forward to seeing Jerusalem: the golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock, the gleaming silver one of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So far, all I knew about the city I had learned from books and stories; now I was going to see it with my own eyes. At Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station I boarded a
sherut
—a shared taxi—and headed for Jerusalem.

Through the dirty minibus windows I was barely able to make out the blurred landscape: bare hills interspersed with little villages, and every so often soldiers and military roadblocks. Tel Aviv is only 45 miles north of the Gaza Strip, and 35 miles west of the West Bank. I realized how small Israel is—much smaller than I had expected.

An hour later, we reached Jerusalem.

The bus let us off just a few meters outside the Damascus Gate at the northern side of the old city wall. I stopped in front of the massive archway. Armed soldiers with machine guns, helmets, and bulletproof vests were patrolling the battlements. When the soldiers noticed me looking at them, they fixed their gaze on me. I quickly turned away and hurried through the gate into the Old City’s Arab quarter: tight little alleyways, narrow townhouses, arcade shops. The air was scented with tea and herbs. Shopkeepers approached me, trying to entice me in. Children in blue school uniforms capered between the shops, and small traders pushing handcarts laden with fresh fruit and vegetables had to constantly stop and brake wherever the narrow alleyways became too steep.

I didn’t see any Orthodox Jews in the Arab quarter of the Old City. Here, the Muslims generally lived among themselves. In the vicinity of the Wailing Wall, further east, it was a completely different picture: Devout Jews were rushing through the streets. They were wearing black trousers and long overcoats, their prayer tassels trailing below.

At the Wailing Wall, I was surprised to see people walking backward. Later I learned that they consider it disrespectful to turn their backs on the Temple and only turn around after they’ve backed away a few meters.

Men and women pray separately at the Wall. The men had donned their black-and-white prayer shawls and were reciting their prayers while swaying forward and back. Next to them were the women, at a smaller area of the Wall reserved for them. Their lips were moving silently in prayer.

I joined the women and touched the smooth, worn limestone with my hands. It is a Jewish tradition to insert messages and prayers into the cracks between the stones. Without thinking, I wrote a quick wish and squeezed it in with all the others between two stones of the Wall. Slowly I backed away. I had written that I wished for a boyfriend.

■ ■ ■

Jerusalem, the Holy City. A city sacred to three world religions and therefore fiercely contested like no other.

Here, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish pilgrimage destinations lie side by side: After Mecca and Medina, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are the Muslims’ most important shrines; Christians pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where according to tradition Jesus was crucified and buried; and the Wailing Wall, the last remaining wall of the Second Temple, is the most sacred site recognized by the Jewish faith.

To whom does Jerusalem belong? The question has been one of the key issues since the beginning of the Middle East conflict. Jerusalem’s legal status is unclear. From a practical point of view, the city is divided into a predominantly Arab eastern part and a Jewish western part.

But it is also divided between the deeply religious and the secular. Almost half of all strictly Orthodox Israelis—known as
Haredim
—live in Jerusalem. Their quarter, Mea Shearim, is reminiscent of a nineteenth century shtetl. The residents converse in Yiddish, a dialect based on medieval Middle High German. German speakers can understand it to an extent.

Haredi Jews believe in the strict separation of men and women in public. On buses, for example, women have to travel at the back. Many also oppose the secular state of Israel; they study the Torah and don’t work. Around sixty percent of Haredi families in Israel are living in poverty.

Strictly Orthodox Jews often have very large families. Secular Israelis worry about the fact that in many Jerusalem schools, Orthodox Jewish children are in the majority. The influence Orthodox Jews have on Israeli politics is steadily growing.

■ ■ ■

MEA SHEARIM
MEANS
“City of a Hundred Gates.” Noa and Anat had told me about this quarter of the religious Jews. They said that secular Israelis would avoid the area, and that on Shabbat, the weekly day of rest when observant Jews refrain from work activities, Mea Shearim residents would sometimes throw stones at strange cars approaching the area.

I wanted to see how the people there lived. I walked past derelict buildings and labyrinths of courtyards. Laundry strung across balconies was flapping in the wind.

The Old City of Jerusalem had a certain museum-like quality about it, an air of days gone by, but at the same time it was colorful and vibrant. Mea Shearim, however, felt dark and forbidding. The dwellings were built closely together. There were many children here, too, but they averted their eyes when they saw me looking at them.

The men wore hats or fur caps on their heads, their sidelocks curling down underneath.

The women wore ankle-length skirts and sandals with dark stockings. At first I wondered why all the women had the same pageboy haircut; then I remembered what Noa had told me: Orthodox women usually marry very young; subsequently they shave their heads and wear wigs in public.

At every other crossroads in Mea Shearim there were signs in various languages warning tourists not to enter the area with bare arms or legs.

The people in Mea Shearim live without radio, TV, or Internet. Instead, posters are plastered to the walls of the narrow townhouses, announcing the local news to the residents: the opening of new shops, public lectures, weddings. And some unusual messages: The rabbis were inviting the community to pray for rain, next to a warning that boys and girls are not allowed to walk through the district together.

How could they live like that, in a world full of commands and prohibitions, thrown back to the nineteenth century?

Noa had told me about a friend of hers who married an Orthodox man. Noa was very sad about it: “She lives on a different planet now.”

I took a sherut back to Tel Aviv. It was late when I arrived. There were only a few people in the streets. It was Friday night—Shabbat had begun. Candles were burning in the windows of many apartments; families were setting the dinner table together.

Noa and Anat didn’t celebrate Shabbat. We sat talking together for a long time that night. I wanted to know more about their country. Anat suggested I join a kibbutz for a while and work alongside volunteers from all over the world for free board and lodging. During her military service, she had lived on Kibbutz Eilot in the south of Israel, where she met her boyfriend, Alon. The next morning, Anat called the kibbutz and arranged a place for me.

■ ■ ■

Anat’s partner, Alon, grew up on Eilot. A few weeks after his birth in 1965, his parents took him to the children’s house at the kibbutz. There, he lived with the other children, cared for by nurses and teachers. He saw his mother every afternoon before returning to the children’s house for bedtime. He still remembers how much he missed his mother at night.

In the early years of many kibbutzim, the patriarchal nuclear family—father, mother, children—seemed like an outdated model. Instead, the task of raising the children was delegated to nurses and teachers. Women were expected to work, just like the men. Housework was centralized, too: The kibbutzim had communal laundries, tailor shops, kitchens, and dining halls where everyone ate together.

The central idea behind the kibbutzim is collective living. The founders of the first kibbutzim were inspired by socialist and Zionist ideas. They wanted to create a socialist Jewish state on their own soil.

The first kibbutz was founded on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, over a hundred years ago. In 2014, there were around 270 of these villages all over Israel.

Kibbutz Eilot was founded in 1962. It lies at the southern tip of Israel, on the edge of the Negev desert, surrounded by rugged mountain ranges, between Jordan and Egypt.

Israeli writer Amos Oz spent 25 years living on a kibbutz. In sum, he says: “The founders hoped to change more than just the social system, the class society. They wanted to revolutionize human nature. They believed that if they created a society where everyone ate the same, dressed the same, worked the same, and shared the same living standard, all selfishness would disappear and a new human being would arise. That turned out not to be the case.”

When Alon finished school, he did not receive any vocational training or academic education. He took it for granted that he would work in the workshops on the kibbutz.

■ ■ ■

I CAUGHT A BUS THAT SET
off for the south. After three hours’ journey the driver stopped, in the middle of the desert. All around me there was nothing but red dust and rocks. I marched up the road and found the kibbutz on a hill. At first glance it looked like a holiday complex: identical, two-story buildings separated by green lawns, flagstone paths, and rampant oleander bushes.

The workday began at six a.m. I had hoped to help milk the cows; I thought that might be more exciting than, say, sorting tomatoes on a conveyor belt. It was not to be. On the first morning, I was sent to the kitchen. My job for the day was to dispose of leftovers and to pre-rinse the dirty dishes. On day two, I was moved to the dishwasher. Loading vast numbers of dirty plates into the machine was incredibly tedious, and I wondered if this was really the best way to get a more in-depth picture of Israel.

The next day, I packed my bags and left.

I traveled a few miles further to Israel’s southernmost city, the beach resort of Eilat by the Red Sea. Looking to boost my travel funds, I headed to the port, an alleged insider’s tip amongst penniless backpackers. A large sailing yacht was just putting out to sea. I ran along the pier and shouted to one of the crew: “Are you looking for some help?” “Sorry, we are full!” he shouted back.

Then I saw a wide, red boat enter the harbor, with a tall, dark, and lean man at the helm. When the last passenger had disembarked, I approached the captain: “Hi, do you need some help?” He smiled: “Yes, someone left this morning.”

His name was Shimon, and I fell in love instantly. He had a weather-beaten face with bright blue eyes under heavy eyebrows. Shimon was a
Sabra
—the term for native Israeli Jews, after the Hebrew name for the prickly pear: hard and spiky on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside.

Shimon was forty-eight and married with a young daughter. He had spent half his life serving in the Israeli Defense Force, including in Shayetet 13, the elite unit of the Israeli Navy. He had moved to Eilat a few years earlier, and now made his living by operating a glass-bottomed boat between Eilat and the Egyptian border.

I became a member of the crew, together with two other backpackers, a Dutch girl and a South African man. During the day, I would sell tickets to tourists; in the evenings I’d scrub the deck and the toilets. At night, I would fetch my camping mat, unroll my sleeping bag, and find a place to sleep on the boat, under the open sky.

Shimon and I came from different worlds, but we had things in common: We both enjoyed our own company, and we loved tranquility. Shimon took me on a trip to the Negev desert. I had never been to the desert before, but I loved it straight away. It may appear bleak at first—a vast, barren emptiness. But there is so much to discover in the barrenness. We walked through narrow gorges. Shimon showed me unusual rock formations and pointed out how the color of the rock changes over the course of the day. We discovered plants in the desert, and saw snakes and scorpions.

At first it didn’t bother me that Shimon didn’t talk much. I could have walked through the desert with him in silence for days.

For the first time, someone loved me for who I was.

After a few weeks, however, my usual restlessness kicked in. Did our relationship have a future, or was I wasting my time in Eilat? Shimon didn’t understand what I was worried about. True, he was still living with his wife, he said, but the marriage was long finished. He asked: “Why don’t you just stay here?” He suggested we move in together in Eilat.

I asked for some time to consider and flew back to Germany. My tourist visa was only valid for three months and about to expire. Back home in Munich, my adoptive parents didn’t push me or ask when I might start college. They must have known that I didn’t feel like talking. My friends, on the other hand, spoke quite bluntly: They asked me what I, at twenty-one, wanted with such an old man, and suggested I was looking for a father figure.

I did some temp work with Siemens to earn some money. Then I flew back to Eilat.

Shimon’s wife had moved out of the apartment, leaving their daughter with us. She was four years old, a beautiful little girl with long, dark curls that had a tendency to fall over her eyes. In the mornings, she went to preschool; in the afternoons, she was either with me or with her mother.

Shimon worked on the boat. I wished for more independence; I wanted to earn my own money. I had a job waiting for me at the holiday club Méditerranée in Eilat, but the season had not yet started. In the meantime I was supposed to be learning Hebrew, but after five minutes I would usually put my books to one side and stroll over to the beach or to the nearby shopping mall.

In the evenings, when Shimon came home, his daughter would leap up and fling her arms around his neck. She came first. He would play with her and read her long stories before putting her to bed. Afterward he would collapse, exhausted, on the sofa. I felt abandoned. This was not how I had imagined my life with Shimon.

One evening, after I had been sitting on the sofa waiting for him yet again, it all came bursting out. I assailed him with grievances, complaining that his life revolved around his daughter and adding that I had cheated on him with an old boyfriend during my recent stay in Germany.