Celle and BerlinMy last two tour stops couldn't have been more different. I stayed for two nights in Celle near Hannover, a small town with a core of 500 half-timbered houses that rolls up the streets early in the evening. I did a five-hour interview at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial archives talking about my father's experiences in Bergen-Belsen, growing up as the son of Holocaust survivors, and being a pioneer in American-Jewish Literature. It was moving and exhausting and sometimes exhilarating to survey so much time through such skillful questions. I was very pleased that they recognized the importance of my having published fiction and nonfiction about the Second Generation since 1978, before many other authors. I did a reading in German at the Celle Synagogue, the only one in northern Germany not damaged or destroyed in Kristallnacht. And wouldn't you know it? Looking for a bar afterward, my hosts tried two places which were closed and the third was #36 on that street. I also spoke to students in a bilingual high school who quickly got over their shyness about speaking English to an American author. It was a wonderful morning, topped off by a very German hot lunch at the Alte Ratskeller with my ebullient host Monika Goedecke, who also gave me a tour of the amazing new documents center/exhibit at Bergen-Belsen, which was filled with neighboring NATO troops who are required to make a visit. They looked shaken by the photo displays, which included a good deal of information about the inhuman treatment of Soviet POWs.
Berlin was a whirlwind. I got there late, had dinner with Michael Scott Moore of Der Spiegel at the Nikolaiviertel restaurant I write about in My Germany, and once again, it gave me the distinct feeling I had been in that very spot before. I had less time for sight-seeing than expected, but did make it to the Historiches Museum for "Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime," Germany's first exhibit to focus on Hitler specifically, and on the complicity between the German populace and the Nazis that was spread throughout the culture. I thought an audio guide would distract me, and sometimes followed a docent leading students, but most of the time could make out enough of the texts. What was most striking were the objects displayed that showed how thoroughly Hitler and Nazism permeated the country, things like birthday letters from children to Der Fuehrer, church hangings with swastikas on them, and other ordinary objects turned malignant. In a strange coincidence, I passed a monitor running footage about the concentration camps just as it showed the destruction of the last hut at Bergen-Belsen by British flame throwers. It rained in Berlin on and off, but the Westin Grand made for a terrific shelter and I found a terrific Kneipe nearby, the Treffpunkt Cafe where I ate Berliner specialties like Pfeffertopf and completelly relaxed. My reading at the Jewish Museum was one of the best I'd done in years. Authors, teachers, actors will know the feeling: everything flows, you're totally on, and it's as if you're flying. It didn't hurt that this was the last of nine events on the tour and that the room was packed. It was an honor to speak there, and everywhere else across Germany, where my hosts were uniformly delightful and kept giving me gifts of books and chocolate and wine. Thanks once more to Annemarie Schubert, Diana Gring, Monika Goedecke, Stefan van Zwoll, Andrew Gross, and most especially Christiane Laehnemann and Gerard Warnecke.
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