I Sleep in Hitler's Room Read online

  Only now, still on earth, I have to deal with an old lady here who has just stepped on my foot. Small price to pay for witnessing a big miracle in the making.

  As I write this, and I’m getting used to it already, people stop next to me to look at my iPad, a device not yet available in Germany. They are friendly. They ask if they could watch me writing on it, and they would like to know some more details, if I don’t mind their asking. None of these people, I am impressed, is thinking of this iPad in terms of “Let me play Games on it.” No. They wonder, and truly admire, the technology they think is in it. I look at them, and the thought comes to my mind: I admire their admiration. I don’t know of any other culture where its people are so excited about technology.

  I remember the Apple Store in New York just a few weeks ago, when the iPad was first released. There were tremendously long lines outside the store. Inside, it felt like a sardine can. Everybody wanted to touch the iPad. And the moment the people-sardines got it into their hands, they played different games on it. The excitement was about the games. But this is not the attitude of the people here, these Germans. They want to know the technical stuff. No one asks me what games could I play on it. Here they ask questions like: Were you really typing on it? Is it easy? You can create files, not just . . . Can I see the keyboard? Can you write long documents as well? And then send them via email? Is it better than a computer?

  Funny, but this is the thing that most impresses me at this Kirchentag. No, they are not like this only here. Same in Hamburg, same in Autostadt. Only that here I have groups of people stopping to watch this wonder in my hands. Amazing, these Germans. I am impressed. They yearn to learn, and I love my new teaching position.

  Every human excitement has a limit, as you probably know, and, after a day full of spirituality for my soul, my stomach begs for a little attention as well.

  I leave the Messe and go to the city. Right next to a very nice-looking church by the name of Frauenkirche, the Andechser am Dom restaurant smiles at me. I’m going to eat here.

  Reiner, a Catholic man who sits across from me at the same table, shares his thoughts about the Kirchentag. He thinks it’s good that the Catholics and the Protestants talk to each other, but nothing will change on the ground as long as the Catholic Church believes itself to be the only true church. No, he doesn’t recommend that the Catholic Church change its view. If it did, the Church would dissolve. And then he says this long German word: Alleinvertretungsanspruch, which means in English: the “Only True Church.” You wouldn’t know what it means unless you’re Catholic, or about to be. But it sounds nice in German in any case, doesn’t it? I like it.

  A very friendly blond comes over. She’s the waitress. What would I like to eat? Well, what does she think is good? I’m in the mood to eat good food. We settle on a schnitzel. She smiles, I smile, she cracks a joke, I crack a joke, and Reiner is busy talking. Reiner thinks that Obama is the best American president ever since Roosevelt.

  Why does he think that Obama is so good?

  Well, Reiner is personally very impressed by Obama. For a black man, Reiner says, Obama is outstandingly smart. Obama, says Reiner, can talk for an hour and make no mistakes! That’s an amazing thing for Reiner to digest, a black man who can perform like this! Obama fired the executives of Goldman Sachs, Reiner adds, and that was good. Reiner is against capitalists worldwide, and against wars as well. Obama wants to get out of Afghanistan, and that’s good. Obama’s Middle East policy is not good yet, because he can’t do much due to “strong pressure from the American press, which is Jewish, and also because of the pressures from American financial institutions and American economists who are also Jewish.” Can he name one American financial institution that pressures Obama on behalf of the Jews? Yes, Goldman Sachs. Lehman Brothers, by the way, was founded by American Jews from Germany.

  It’s interesting for me to hear because, frankly, I wasn’t aware that I was so rich. I didn’t know I owned so many financial institutions. When I’m back in New York I’m going to attend all the board meetings at Goldman Sachs. I’ll also have to hire a financial advisor to handle all my media holdings.

  Reiner is much smarter than me. He knows everything he owns: five hundred acres of land in a place called Ammersee.

  Reiner is a true scholar. He knows not only about Jews but about women as well. Austrian women are preferable to Germans. The German women, he advises me, are emancipated—which is a minus. But don’t misunderstand him: Those Austrian beauties are no dumb babes. They seem obedient but they know how to wrap their naïve husbands around their little obeying Austrian fingers!

  Beware!

  The schnitzel arrives. I taste it. It’s excellent. Between you and me, I don’t really care what Germans think about Jews. As long as I can enjoy their schnitzels, may they be blessed.

  In due course the schnitzel plate is depleted, as the Kirchentag is slowly winding down in the other part of town. Where should a rich Jew like me go from here?

  A thought comes to this Goldman Sachs stocks owner: Now that you have visited the Christians, why not go and visit your Jewish media-owning partners in the land?

  I decide: Yes. We own so much together, we should know each other.

  Where do you find Jews in Germany?

  Maybe Berlin. That’s the capital; rich Jews should be there.

  •••

  Coincidentally, the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is coming up. In the religious Jewish world it is believed that on this day the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews at Mt. Sinai. The tradition is to “receive” the Torah by staying up on Shavuot and studying all night long. Will be interesting to see how German Jews do this. Rich people like them, they must have fabulous ways of celebrating.

  I decide to stay up all night and visit Jewish temples wherever I find them.

  I get a local Jewish paper and check what’s going on where. First, I go to the synagogue in Pestalozzi Street. The rabbi here is from Israel. Cantor as well. People speak Hebrew to each other. Am I in Israel? Not exactly. Forty Israeli tourists are in attendance, the security man, also an Israeli, tells me. Without them, there would be very few people here. An Israeli journalist who lives in Berlin tells me that he once thought of writing a book about German Jews but that there’s not much to write. Whatever you might have read, he adds, bears no resemblance to reality.

  I look at the writing on the wall, a memorial to the six million dead, as I listen to the cantor’s prayer, praising God for protecting the Jews.

  I start doubting my sanity. Again.

  The temple is on the hidden side of a courtyard. This, a man bothers to tell me, dates back to Jewish history in Germany before the war. Jews hiding their faith.

  I’m done here. Enough.

  There’s another Jewish temple in Berlin, the one with a golden dome on top, police barriers below, and German police patrolling around. I go there.

  The rabbi here is a female rabbi, who goes by the name of Rabba Gesa S. Ederberg. She’s wearing a skullcap and she teaches obscure texts about cheese made by non-Jews. Here goes:

  “Bithynischer Käse von Nichtjuden ist verboten, und zwar erstreckt sich das Verbot auch auf die Nutznießung—so Rabbi Meir; die Weisen sagen, das Verbot erstrecke sich nicht auf die Nutznießung. . . . Weil sie ihn durch das Lab von Aastieren gerinnen lassen.” (Basically: All kinds of different forbidden cheeses . . .)

  There are so many texts in the Talmud that make much more sense and are much more enlightening. Why has this rabba, which is supposedly the feminine form of rabbi, chosen this nonsensical text? Don’t ask me.

  I grew up in Judaism, and something here smells foreign to me. I can’t put my finger on it. What could it be? Maybe they are converts, I say to myself. But I don’t really know. So I ask the rabba: How many converts have you here? She says she doesn’t know the number, only that “we have some.” How much is “some”? Is it 20 percent, 50 percent? “I don’t know,” she utters sharply, clearly upset wit
h me.

  Well, when the Rabba doesn’t know, who does! Her assistant. Sixty percent, she tells me, when I catch up with her. Sixty percent, Jewishly speaking, is around 96 percent.

  Another class follows, this time by a visiting rabba, also with a skullcap. She teaches about the making of cheese. She puts up a big paper on the wall with all kinds of info on it like: Milk, 3.8 fat.

  She proceeds to give a sermon about cottage cheese, milk, sour cream, and cheeses of all kinds.

  And all I can think is: Obviously, these people are not my partners at Goldman Sachs!

  There’s a Chabad temple in Berlin as well. I go to visit them.

  Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement that considers itself to be “the most dynamic force in Jewish life today,” is dedicating itself to the work of introducing their brand of Judaism to Jews the world over, including those living in Germany. The movement, missionary in style and deed, achieves this by sending “emissaries,” usually from the United States, to different countries. These emissaries, once assuming their position, have to establish on their own the financial resources for their newly created communities.

  The emissary here, who is also the leader of the community, of course, is Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal. He tells me that “we didn’t go to the German government and say: ‘You burned our temples, now you build them.’ We built this temple on our own.” We is actually he. Raising 6.5 million euros, he built one of the most outstanding new temples in Germany today. This man, I soon realize, has more energy than the fastest ICE train in existence.

  “The Jew has a special soul,” he tells me.

  Special what?

  “Every Jew is born with a love of God.”

  How about converts?

  “Converts are just like every Jew.”

  Would you mind if your son marries a German convert?

  “This is personal already . . . I’d rather my son did not . . .”

  Rabbi Yehuda is not a fool. The moment these words pass through his lips he realizes he should have watched his tongue. You don’t say this to a journalist. He tries to correct himself, shooting his own feet while he goes on. I do him a favor and change the topic. I ask him what’s his motto in life.

  “Remembering the past is good, but we should do for the future.”

  As in the first temple I visited, the rabbi here, Rabbi Yehuda, is not a homegrown German Jew. He and his wife are imports from the United States and Israel.

  Most people of his temple speak either Hebrew or Russian. I stick around and after a while find a man who’s German-born—a hard task here. He talks to me about German Jewish life. He tells me that Rabba Gesa is a convert.

  I feel bad that I asked her about converts.

  But the man tells me not to worry. He’s also a convert.

  Yehuda invites me to have lunch with him later on. I say, OK. Why not? Let me see if Jews make better schnitzels.

  “Jews make news!” one of the worshippers at the temple tells me, trying to explain why, to his mind, German media are anti-Semitic.

  A prominent German Jewish journalist, who refuses to be identified by name, calls me while I’m at the temple. I tell him I’m going to Yehuda’s for lunch. He says: “Didn’t you have enough with the neo-Nazis you met in the north? Why meet more Nazis?” I tell this to Yehuda. He laughs. He feels he must have done something really good to upset the journalist so much.

  One thing becomes imminently very clear to me: Once you have entered Yehuda’s kingdom, you have left Germany. Or, at least, German Judaism.

  His is something else. The root of this Hasidic dynasty is Russia. And it shows. The method used here to get people is American. You enter, you feel good. It’s all for the customer. Rabba Gesa might be brainy, but she’s boring. Rabbi Yehuda might be simplistic, meaning the way he talks to people, but he’s full of life: huge charisma, tons of laughter, and very welcoming. I listen to him give a lesson, a world apart from Gesa’s. He speaks about Mt. Sinai. Using the Biblical version of the story, he says: “One mountain full of smoke changed the nation and the world. Is it hard to believe, as the nonbelievers claim? Look at the smoke coming today from the ash cloud and threatening global travel . . .! Hard to believe, isn’t it?” You can agree with him or not, but you understand what he’s saying. You can call it simplicity, but you can also call it clarity. What’s more, it comes with delicious food attached. Yes, Yehuda feeds his people, at the temple and in his house. The food served at this man’s house will fit any five-star hotel anywhere. Yehuda, you see, is a master philosopher: When the belly of his guest is satisfied, everything told in the room becomes brilliantly logical.

  Not only food. Yehuda supplies entertainment as well. Did you, for example, ever notice that ubiquitous, funny-looking Polizeihäuschen? Usually manned by two or three cops, this little police house can be found next to many Jewish organizations in Germany. You may have wondered why we need them, as I wondered when I was in Hamburg. Well, today I finally discovered why they exist.

  Yehuda wants to show me his temple’s mikveh, or ritual bath, which has “the most modern water technology in the world.” Problem is, the place is closed now and it’s dark inside. He has the keys, but for him to turn the lights on is not permitted on Jewish holidays. That’s the law. Nor is it permitted for him to ask a nonreligious Jew to do this for him. That’s where the cop, the German cop, comes in handy. Yehuda yells to his son to call in the cop. Son immediately gets the point of what emergency has transpired, and the German cop soon shows up. Now, according to Jewish law, as this rabbi observes, you can ask a gentile to do this kind of “work” for you but you can’t be direct

  “It’s dark here,” says the rabbi.

  “Here?” asks the German cop.

  “Yes, here.”

  “OK.” The cop turns on the light and is ready to go.

  Rabbi says, “It’s dark here too,” pointing to next door.

  Cop says, “Here?”

  Yehuda says, “Yes, here.”

  Cop is ready to go. But rabbi says, “It’s dark there.”

  “There?” asks the policeman.

  “Yes, there.” The policeman turns on the light there and is ready to go.

  But Yehuda is not finished: “Can you come with me more, it’s dark inside too . . .” This goes on until all lights are up.

  And Yehuda says to me: “You see these Roman baths?”

  But I just can’t stop laughing. It’s really, really funny what transpired here. Go to Yehuda’s on Sabbath and ask him to show you his mikveh. You have to witness this at least once in your life. It will make you healthy!

  And then do as I did and accept his invitation for lunch at his house. You won’t regret it. Many people show up. You’ll think you’ve been invited by a king. There is more food here than the eye can take in. And drinks of every sort and kind you can imagine. All kosher, of course. And yes, the food here is superb.

  Don’t listen to him when he says to you: “On the Sabbath you can eat as much as you want and you will not gain an ounce!”

  You’ll gain a few pounds here, my dear, but it’s worth it. You’ll leave happy.

  Sorry, you got to be a Jew to be invited here. This missionary group is working only within the Jewish community. If you’re a gentile, go to Rabba Gesa.

  For the record: Yehuda denies owning Goldman Sachs.

  Belly full, I feel I need to go somewhere to relax. A nice place with a view. Where should I go?

  •••

  Chapter 8

  Vows: Honey, Let’s Get Married Next to Where They Decided to Gas the Jews

  Haus Sanssouci, which in French means “without worry,” is a hotel of three rooms. It is also a restaurant, with capacity for 259 people. With its beautiful surroundings, it is no wonder that this place functions as a wedding hall, mostly from March to September. “Every Friday and Saturday there’s a minimum of at least one marriage ceremony. Sometimes I have five marriages in one day,” sa
ys Michael, the headwaiter, who has worked here for eight years. “People come here because it’s quiet and we serve typical and original German food. We specialize in liver from veal, German-style, with onion rings and apples and mash potatoes.”

  Haus Sanssouci, if you didn’t already know, is in Wannsee. The villa next door to this wedding hall was selected by Nazi officials on January 20, 1942, for the infamous Wannsee Conference, where the final nail in the coffin of European Jewry was tightly secured into place. Today the place is a museum. How does it feel to have a Liver from Veal next to the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem?

  “In Berlin you are reminded of this history every five meters. So, you know what it is, you understand it, but it’s history. You just live here, and that’s that. Every member of the German parliament has the right to bring members of his party to any of the places that are important to him. Many of them choose this location. And then they come to eat here.”

  Günter Bolle is the owner of Haus Sanssouci.

  “My father bought this house in 1954 from a Jew who left for America.”

  How did a Jew get to own this place?

  “I don’t know.”

  Why establish a restaurant and a wedding hall next to a place where gassing of the Jews was fine-tuned?

  “When my father bought the house he didn’t know what this place was. No one knew. I didn’t know. Nothing.”

  I’m not sure I get it. So I say to him:

  I’m trying to understand the young couple who gets married here. How does it work? I mean, I’m trying to picture it. The bride says to her beloved: “Sweetie, I got a great idea! Let’s get married right next to the Wannsee Conference. You know, the place with the Jews and the gas.” Is that, more or less, how it works? Probably, right? How do you explain it?

  “No one ever, up to this day, posed this question to me. Never happened!”

  His gardener sits next to us. He feels he must come to Günter’s defense. “And you killed the Indians!” he shouts at me. Well, what can I say in my defense? I try this: “I don’t get married next to where I kill them.”