I don't get it,” says 11-year-old Sam. We're experiencing a bit of a
post-school agenda clash. His aim, as he dashes off a school project about
the Holocaust, is to pick up the minimum of facts to complete it in record
time before spending an hour or so on his PlayStation. I, on the other hand,
see it as a valuable opportunity to reacquaint him with my family's history.
“Don't you remember what I told you about my father?” I say, trying hard to
keep the disappointment out of my voice. Sam and his sister, 13-year-old
Alex, sigh heavily and exchange eye-rolling grimaces.
“Yeah, Mum, we know,” says Alex. “Your father grew up in Berlin when the
Second World War was on and he was sent to England, and his parents were
sent to a concentration camp because they were Jewish.”
This would be impressive, were it not for the way she rattles out the words at
speed in a singsong tone like a lesson often repeated and reluctantly
committed to memory.
My children may be partly Jewish, but their family history seems to have no
more meaning to them than tales of Alfred the Great. And as somebody who
grew up in the shadow of its grim legacy - relatives killed or missing, a
father scarred by his early experiences - I'm finding this hard to accept,
especially as I've been talking about the past ever since they were little.
While I've gone easy on bedtime tales of everyday family trauma, I have tried
to explain honestly what made my father so sad. I've read books such as When
Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Judith Kerr's moving account of her family's
flight from Germany, and even considered converting to Judaism, something
that's on hold as it's a one-in-all-in thing, requiring the approval of my
children and a reasonably solid belief in God, neither of which would be
that easy to acquire.
The final straw recently has been watching them grapple with words and terms
that have such resonance for me - the Final Solution, Jews, concentration
camps - but apparently indifferent to any connection with their past. For
Alex and Sam, they are facts to be welded into projects or stuffed into
their brains for tests and put aside, along with irregular French verbs and
the periodic table, as soon as possible. Yet having just one Jewish
grandparent - as they do - would have been enough to send them to a
concentration camp.
We're told that the Holocaust is one of the events that must never be
forgotten. The problem is that it began nearly 70 years ago. As my
children's generation regards technology over a year old as pre-Stone Age,
I'm not holding my breath.
Unless I take matters into my own hands, it seems more than likely that, as
far as my children are concerned, the Holocaust, and with it a chunk of
their own history, will be relegated to a few, half-remembered stories.
A few weeks later, we're at Luton airport, waiting to catch an early-morning
flight to Berlin for my version of Show and Tell; a last-ditch attempt to
frogmarch my children back to the past and persuade them that it's more than
just another chunk of compulsory school history.
We advance, inch by painful inch, along the security queue. Sam and Alex,
buoyed by a 6am infusion of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, are as high as kites and
I'm wondering whether their giggling flippancy is a taste of things to come
and, if so, whether we might as well turn back.
In my backpack is what I hope will prove to be a secret weapon: a copy of my
father's account of his childhood, recently discovered among his papers. I
attempt to set the scene by reading extracts in the departure lounge, but
the ambience isn't exactly conducive; his words are outflanked by the bright
lights of the shops, deafening sloosh of a giant espresso machine and
surging waves of passengers.
On arrival we make our way to Christinenstraße, a quiet, residential street in
the east of Berlin. No 33 is a fading 19th-century mansion block, under
attack by graffiti from the front and a large, determined bush from one
side. It's where my father grew up, sharing an apartment with his parents,
brother and the tailor's workshop that provided an often precarious income.
My grandparents could have got out - they had relatives in America who would
have helped - but, like so many other Jews, misread the signals. My
grandfather even joked about Hitler, convinced that he'd be out of power “by
Christmas”.
They almost made it. When the building was attacked on Krystallnacht [in
1938], they were saved when neighbours told the mob that it was “Judenrein”
- cleansed of Jews. They were finally taken, within a few months of each
other, in 1944 and sent to Riga - a camp in Latvia.
My father left in summer 1939, on one of the last Kindertransports out. When
he revisited his old home in 1953 - the first time since he'd left - he
fainted. Now it's our turn, and I'm not quite sure what I'm expecting:
history by osmosis, perhaps.
The children pose on either side of the massive central door, looking politely
bored as I take photographs and then read an extract from my father's
memoirs.
“My mother could have had almost no money. Imagine a vagrant Jewish woman in a
totally hostile environment trying to evade the most efficient hounding
apparatus ever known,” I read out. “She must have been picked up within a
day or two.”
One of the creepier stories by the Brothers Grimm unexpectedly comes to mind.
It's about a boy who can't feel fear and the efforts of the adults around
him to scare him witless, by whatever means possible. I can't help wondering
if I'm subjecting them to a similar ordeal by rooting round in the past to
find an emotion, any emotion, that will stick.
“It's difficult to imagine that it happened here, but it's just so sad,” says
Alex, looking at the building.
“It's sad because you told us it was,” says Sam, matter of factly.
We walk the streets. Try though I might, it keeps turning into an exercise in
compare and contrast: my father's childhood versus their own, comfortable
existence; just another way of making them count their blessings, like
urging a reluctant eater to think of starving children. There's a sort of
arrogance to it. Is it really that I want my children to learn about their
history, or merely compel them to see things the way I do?
I point out my father's route to school, the communal baths the family went to
every week - there were none at home - and the police station that was
responsible for rounding up many of the local Jewish community. I tell them
about the daily diet - herring, and lots of it, with chicken once a year.
“We're hungry,” say both children. Over food, I tell them about the rest of
the itinerary. What with the Jewish Museum, assorted monuments and Berlin's
largest synagogue, which is on the point of being reopened, we've barely
started.
“Must we?” asks Sam, looking yearningly at the trams. I can take a hint. We
travel, by tram, to Checkpoint Charlie instead. There are many tourists and
street vendors with stalls full of desirable Cold War memorabilia. It may be
the past, but it's a recently minted one, more exciting than the version I
can offer, which is beginning to feel tarnished and dull. As the children's
faces brighten, I have a pang of what feels uncomfortably like envy. It's
not a competition, I tell myself, but I'm not convinced. Despite playing the
human-interest card for all it's worth, I feel as if I'm being outbid for my
children's attention.
Somehow, we never get to the Jewish Museum. Instead, we become ordinary
tourists for the rest of our short visit, putting our past to one side. I
think we're all relieved.
“How do you feel about Berlin now?” I ask the children when we leave the next
day. “I'd like to come back again,” says Sam. “Me, too,” says Alex. “Because
in a way I'm still linked to it all.” I feel the heady rush of success.
Perhaps something, after all, got through.
But then I start to wonder whether I've done the right thing in trying to get
my children to understand my family's history.
If they see it as something as far removed from their existence as a Grimm
fairytale is from Postman Pat, isn't that a benefit? After all,
understanding my father's story means realising what it is to live in a
community turned bad, where terrible things can be done to you because of an
accident of birth, neighbours turn against you and benign-looking policemen
become figures of terror, and where you can be punished for something as
innocuous as going to a swimming pool or reading a newspaper.
Giving my children the ultimate luxury of not needing to know about life's
horrors is, perhaps, the only birthright worth having. This is reinforced
when, home again, I open a letter from my sister. She has sent me the two
last letters that my father received from his mother, together with an
extract from the list of names of all the Jews killed in the Holocaust.
There's something so stark about my grandparents' names, two out of six
million, with their home town, date of birth, concentration camp and the
stark word verschollen - presumed dead - that, for the first time, I cry.
We get back on the night of a big football match, Germany v England at the
recently reopened Wembley stadium, and Sam is desperate to watch. He's
supporting England, of course. Though, as he's quick to remind me, it is,
after all, only a friendly game.
