Waldkappel and Harmutsachsen

Rolf meets us in Kassel…never stops offering stories…about everyone and every place…

He collects stories the way he collects music from South India…the Grimm Brothers come from Kassel…museum there…Rosenzweig comes from there…600 books from Rabbi Prager in the library…the Prince of Kassel’s Castle…museum…children dressed

Up like princesses and princes…

Drive to Waldkappel…lots of talk..

The scenery is perfect European countryside

Waldkappel and 15 other small villages all add up to less than 5000

Parsonage across from church..built 1521…though tower was finished in late 14^th century

St Georges…then Lutheran..becasue the prince said so.

Iris…takes care of her own 3 small churches

Rolf picked up the Jews of Harmutsachsen when another pastor died.

Only one Jewish family ever in Waldkappel but many in Harmutsachsen and other small towns…Jewish cemeteries seem to be literally everywhere…

Next day in Sorna, high school named after German martyr, Adam Von Trott… diplomat who worked with Bonhoeffer…met with more than 100 students 10-12^th maybe even 13^th. Amazing questions…how do you feel about visiting us? How do you feel about visiting Auschwitz? Students have never met a Jew…a couple thought they may have seen a Jew//Hassid in an airport???

How do you maintain memories of a community that are no longer living…even though there is a Jewish cemetery literally in front of the door to enter the school…just a few graves, the old cemetery up the hill in the forest…some students did not realize it was a Jewish cemetery…others had never thought about it…but school also has not done anything to make those names apart of their identity…why are Jews buried there when there are NO Jews???

Like Breisach and Irhrigen…communities caring for Jewish cemeteries and Jewish homes and Jewish “ruins”…with no Jews…oxymoronic or a significant new and essential hermeneutic…understanding Jews…with no Jews…ideas..theories…no praxis?

How do you help such communities? How do you///what do you teach…provide them

A theme of the two months…teaching about and FOR Jews where there are NO Jews..

Being the first or ONLY Jew ever to meet..talk…teach…represent???

DEAD JEWS or NO JEWS leaves a distinct impression so that teaching about or explaining about requires more than usual…different than SCSU where there are far more than I have ever realized who like the Germans do not know nor imagine Jews..

With less than 5000 Jews in India…and NO Jews in the villages and towns of Waldkappel and Harmutsachsen…Rotenberg…Sorna..etc..how does one teach in a vacuum? The purpose of the teaching…the goal…how do measure results…?

Creating individual museums…mikvehs…synagogues…gedenken buchen??? Are we doing the work of the Leibeskind museum in the villages…or the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe…for Sarah, social work student…Anne student for the ministry in Hamburg???

Seeing the Jewish homes in Harmutsachsen…like in Breisach…history that makes Jews live…listening to Walter Holstein…bringing a broken tea cup to the Jewish store for 5 cents worth of mustard!!! His smile..and animation in telling the stories…Hammershalg’s store…Ilse Hammershag whose legs were destroyed…who talked to Walter from the window…Jews WHOSE LIVES ARE STILL VIVID IN THE MEMORIES OF GERMANS…Walter whose friend wrote him that he saw Heinz Lorge in Riga>?? Or Kassel>?? And as member of the Wehrmacht gave him a loaf of bread…

How does one remember a class mate…photo from 1933…Heinz…whose home you walked past every day…and then they are GONE….what is the burden of that memory??

Is Walter Holstein indifferent…does he want to repent…for what…to whom…do Jews have an obligation…an opportunity to access those memories has healing…DO NOT FORGET…..BUT FORGIVE??? To whom…from whom Rolf??Iris?Gunther???Louise Jakob?

Louisa Jakob…101..blind…but more alive and sees more than ANYBODY!!

RUDE TO HER FELLOW OLD FOLKS????

Reads in brail and pissed off that books are now limited…novels???in German?

Looked out the window on Nov 9 1938 after hearing the thugs who were attacking Max Hammerschalg…go inside..we did not come to hurt you…she HEARD THE VOICES AND KNEW WHO THEY WERE…she is tough…maybe the TOUGHEST EVER!!!

She grew up with the Jews…is her memory of their lives..their living..more important than the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe????

Spielberg testimonies of the survivors…yes, obviously….but of the witnesses???

Should we ask that Spielberg also tape…video…Louise??? Walter??? If only the survivors..then will we be able to hear the witnesses who lived with and among…

How do we help Rolf…how do we leave resources for Sarah and Anne??

We are leaving this wonderful new friend and the many people we never expected to meet and know we will be coming back...to fill the empty and abandoned synagogue of Harmutsachsen.

Reflections on Germany

Germany...we found it very difficult to get seats from India to Europe...finally we got on Air France from Bangalore to Paris>>>Frankfurt>>>Berlin

We went to Bangalore...had a lovely dinner with some of the faculty from UTC...went upstairs to check in for a 2:30 am flight and found out that a terrible storm in Paris had forced cancellation of our flight...hours later in the Bangalore Airport...we were put on Qatar Airlines.

Flying on the Qatar Airlines…was ONE long painful experience of GATE KEEPERS!

Doha…the skyline from afar…real Oil Arabs…Muslims from Indodesia..foreign workers and a Mosque in the Airport with entrances for males and females..

Finally....after arguing and then purchasing a different ticket...we got there

Berlin…a big city with great beer…

The Neue Synagogue…a second visit..climbing all the way to the top

Lots of school children visiting, non-Jews asking questions

Visiting the beautiful Lutheran Cathedral nearby…rebuilt in all its glory..

You can’t get in the small new shul only open for Shabbat..so most people see what WAS!

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe…in the middle of a neighborhood within 100 yards of the completely redone Brandenburg Gate..the street is closed off for the British Embassy…walking to the memorial there are no significant signs…though you see the steelea…we saw several teens playing on them..taking photos..smiling…I was upset..Machelle asked me not to make a scene…a security guard eventually found them and told them to stop…the rows of matte black different heights…”kittywampus”…all angles…NO straight rows…all the rows end at the street…houses, apts…souvinere stores…cafes…then you find the entrance down into the information center…NOT a memorial nor a museum…simple wall INFORMATION of history…then a room with names of the camps on the wall…and in the floor back-lit statements by victims…pictures of handwritten or original statements…translated…different ideas.. very well done…quiet…everyone is tooking down…then several large back-lit boards with families from all over Europe…their stories…large pictures…far right listing of everyone in the photo of who died and where…the diversity of Jewish life that was destroyed..

Shoah and Holocaust are according to Rolf, foreign idioms that do not translate immediately to German…issue of immediate accessibility…MURDERED has total clarity…forever changes KJV translation of Asseret HaDibrot…Nov. Pogrom NOT KRISTALLNACHT which is a REICH idiom…like the use of Maranos or Flashas..

Today Germans who know use, So-Called Kristallnacht

Berlin does really…own its own reality of being the origin of the Unthinkable.. USHMM is not a memorial site like Auschwitz or even Warsaw or Barbi Yar nor is it Yad VaShem where victims and survivors live…whose memory…purpose of the memory…who is asking me NOT TO FORGET??? Berlin understands…this is the place where it began or this is the place where the perpetrators gave the orders…led the attacks.

Train from Berlin to Kassel…beautiful and very quick