I Sleep in Hitler's Room Page 9

  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 i
nterested 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.

  Then Johanna passes by. She says, “I feel disgust about what the Israelis did. I am stunned by the behavior of the Israelis. When I first heard it—I’d just come back from vacation—I felt, oh God, how could this happen?! How could the Israelis have done that?!”

  Are you proud to be German?

  “Most of the time.”

  What does it mean to be German?

  “Always be on time, conscious of your duties, boring at times, not as open, utilizing the head more than the heart.”

  What’s the best thing about being German?

  “Being in the center of Europe, so that you can travel around.”

  We’re outside, and students show up. It’s smoking time! What’s on their minds? What do they think of the sea story?

  Alex: “Bad. Very bad. You can’t shoot people like this!”

  Sarah: “I can’t understand how they shot them. What kind of iPad do you have? Is it with 3G or just wi-fi?”

  Florian: “It’s a shame.”

  Sarah: “I don’t know why you need an iPad. What’s wrong with a netbook?”

  Are they proud to be German? I ask them.

  All say they are. Interesting!

  But, oops, not all of them got to express their thoughts about the sea story. Mark wants to have his say.

  Mark: “It’s very, very bad.”

  As more students gather near me, I ask if any of them has a different opinion.

  No, says Alex. Not one of them.

  Why is it, I ask them, that in a democratic society everybody has the same opinion? What happened to multiplicity of ideas? And what happened to law, which requires facts first. Do they have the facts? Did any of them take into account the Israelis’ version, that they were attacked first?

  No. None of them.

  Why do they dismiss the Israeli side? Do they have proof that the Israelis lie? None has.

  As future lawyers, and judges as well, how did they arrive at a conclusion before examining the facts? This is the law school, right? Could it be, I push on, that you came to the conclusion that Israel is guilty because, how to put it mildly, you don’t like Israel, because they are Jews—?

  Quiet. Silence. Time passes and no one talks. The cheerful young faces are now fallen. Should I take a picture of this sad image?

  I repeat the question, push more aggressively for an answer.

  Finally Alex gives in. “It is against international law, that’s why we are against it.”

  Do you actually study international law?

  “No.”

  So how do you know?

  Silence.

  No one volunteers to say anything anymore. It is Sarah who breaks the silence.

  Sarah: “I went to the Apple store, I wanted to buy the iPad with the 3G, but they didn’t have it anymore. Sold out. I would buy it if they had it, but they didn’t.”

  Is it good to be German?

  Yes, all say.

  Will they raise the German flag?

  Only at soccer games.

  Why only then?

  Sarah: “They will call us Nazis if we did it any other time.”

  And then there is Lenard, another student.

  Lenard: “I saw on TV that there were some kind of weapons on board. And unless I have all the facts I cannot decide. That’s what being a lawyer is, you need the facts first.”

  Are you proud to be German?

  He laughs loudly. “Oh, no!”

  •••

  Michael Krüger, publisher for the German firm Carl Hanser Verlag, and André Schiffrin, publisher and founder of the American firm New Press, don’t laugh. They are serious people. And both are heavy guns in the publishing industry.

  André, formerly with Pantheon Books, and the man who helped introduce Foucault and Chomsky to the American reader, is giving a speech tonight at Seidlvilla, Schwabing, where I am at this very moment. André is to speak in English, and Michael is going to be the translator. Besides these two, many other heavyweights presently grace my company. “Top of the top,” a man tells me, “of German culture is here tonight.”

  The program for this highly intellectual evening is about to start. We all sit down, and André is all ready to enlighten us with his wisdom and knowledge. He tells his esteemed audience that Condoleezza Rice, former US secretary of state, met the heads of major American TV networks before the invasion of Iraq and asked them not to show images of wounded soldiers on screen. They agreed. It is why, André explains, former US president George W. Bush was reelected to his second term, and this is why 75 percent of Americans at the time thought that Iraq had nuclear weapons. Returning the favor, continues André, the Bush Administration tried to repeal the law prohibiting owners of print media from also owning TV networks.

  This story about major American TV networks is a major claim. In essence, it means that there is no real democracy in the United States and that even the “free media” are controlled by the US government. According to this telling, the United States is actually a dictatorial regime. Michael seems to enjoy every word of this, nodding his head as André speaks. The rest of the esteemed company here seems to be utterly excited as well. They hang on every syllable that comes out of André’s mouth. They look as if they’re licking his words.

  I have heard this story before and tried to substantiate it, but all I could find were propaganda films that offered no proof. Maybe André will finally solve the puzzle for me. And so I catch up with him after the talk and ask him for the source of his claims.

  André: “Nobody has ever asked me this before. I have mentioned it many times and was never asked to supply a source. You can check on Google.”

  A more specific source?

  “Did you try Google?”

  I did, long ago, but couldn’t find anything substantive. Do you have a more specific source than just Google?

  “No, I don’t have a specific source.”

  Can you substantiate it in any other way?

  “Why are you asking me this?!”

  I happen to be a journalist and I need a source to—

  “If you want me to quote a source, I can’t.”

  There is not much of a difference between the intellectuals here and the simple people I met at the church in the suburbs of Hamburg. Both have an American Prophet whom they blindly follow. Why are both groups so drawn to American liars? I don’t know. What I do know is that I need a break. Too many brainy people around me and I need something lighter. Any “lighter” Germans in the neighborhood? Can yo
u recommend?

  There is a place, or so I hear, a two-hour train ride from here, where in 1633 the townspeople vowed to put on a Passion play, depicting the Passion of Christ, once every ten years. They believed that if they did that they would be saved from a plague that struck the area at the time. They were saved indeed, according to the story, and the town has kept the vow ever since. It’s playing this year. I can see it tomorrow. Hundreds of thousands from all over the world come to see it. Why not me? Besides, I love train rides, and this is a good excuse.

  A note here: Many Germans tell me that the DB is almost never on time. Let me tell you: Wrong! The DB is one of the most efficient train systems in the world. It’s highly sophisticated, fast, and on time. You can set your clock by it.

  I am going to Oberammergau, to see the world-famous Passion play, the Passionsfestspiele.

  •••

  The ride reveals unbelievably gorgeous landscapes. Here’s Starnberg, a beauty to behold. You can’t take your eyes off it. The train keeps moving, and the beautiful landscapes just keep coming. For miles on end. Valleys lie naked between the mountains, as slivers of clouds dance between them in rising songs. Angels in the image of ponds and rivers mix with cows and deer that constantly reveal themselves to you in their full glory. So much greenery, in all shapes of the imagination, lie in front of your eager eyes, that they shame the beauty of the Quranic Paradise. I can’t take my eyes off the endless seduction rising so abundantly all around my being. Captivatingly gorgeous churches, testimony to long history, slowly join in this chorus of magic majesty right in front of my eyes and whole body.

  And I wonder: Beauty like this my eyes have never seen, riches like these my heart never has felt, images like these my mind has never experienced. Is this earth or heaven?