Past and present antisemitism

Monday, May 11, 2009
Wannsee

On last night's news program, the weather lady said that it would be mostly sunny on Monday and Tuesday and partly cloudy on Wednesday. It rained all day today. I went out this morning without a jacket and not carrying an umbrella. I got a half a kilometer away when I felt my first drop of rain and noticed that it was really too cold to be going without a jacket. I turned around and picked up my backpack with jacket and umbrella.

I used the regional Bahn (instead of the S-Bahn) to get to Wannsee this morning. The area is a picturesque community on the edge of a large lake (“See,” pronounced “zay,” means “lake.”) It has been a leisure destination for Berliners for at least a century.

Max Lieberman, perhaps the most important modern artist in Germany, built a villa on lake shore at the beginning of the 20th century. It was here that he painted and sketched a large proportion of his life's output.

After spending a while at the house, I walked 5 minutes to quite a different site. Just down the same street is the house where the infamous Wannsee Conference took place during the holocaust. The house presents a thorough history of the Nazis' treatment of Jews and highlights the meeting, at which the Endlösung (final solution) was planned, organized, and documented.

The meeting resulted in a huge manual describing the responsibilities of every department of government and how they were to carry them out. The idyllic setting belies the barbarity of the result of the meeting.

Gathering my wits about me, I started back to Berlin.

When I got back to the city, I went to the Apothecary. I had gotten just about to the end of my store of medicines that I take regularly. The pharmacist said that he could get them for me by today. I calculated how much money I would need in Euros; I exchanged just enough; and I went over to buy the medications. It's much less expensive here than in the US.

As it turns out, I exchanged too much money. I had counted the number of dollars I would need, and accidentally exchanged enough money to have that number of Euros.

I can't think of anything that Berlin would have that would do for a souvenir. Could I suggest a plastic Brandenburg Gate? A bag with Berlin written all over it? A chocolate bear? I wasn't going to get anything for anybody; usually, when people bring me a remembrance from a far-off place, it's something that's pretty meaningless.

But I was browsing through a “dollar” store and found the perfect recollection of Berlin. I've mentioned to everyone at one time or another, when eating nuts mixed with raisins that, among the university students I lived with 42 years ago, this mixture is called Studentenfutter (student feed, as in chicken feed or horse feed). There, staring at me from one of the bins were bags of Studentenfutter. I had to buy this as my souvenir from Berlin.

This evening I decided to patronize one of the kosher restaurants, The restaurant has a relatively limited menu as it serves no meat. I ended up having a veggie burger with a nice glass of beer on tap. As I was sitting there nursing the remaining beer, one of the young fellows I see at synagogue walked in, so I invited him to sit with me. We had a nice conversation during which I learned that he is a convert. We talked about being Jewish, about finding a Jewish girl to marry, about keeping kosher, and about his job as an IT professional.

We rushed to minyan and everyone was pleased to see us, since 5 minutes late they still had not gotten a minyan. After quickly davening, I chatted with a couple of the friends that I had made, and we took some pictures. I looked for the shammas and gave him a donation for the synagogue.

I went back to the hotel to update my blog, but I also wanted to see a TV program on antisemitism that had been promoted yesterday during the news. The program was not bad and started by talking about European episodes of antisemitism and the background for them. Most of the rest of the program was abouut current Muslim antisemitism, about how most Muslims are taught and believe the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” how the libels are promulgated in theater, films, and on TV, and how perfectly normal, intelligent-looking people justify it.