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| Gestapo Prison Cell -- Koln |
Among my must-see destinations on the road to dotage are some I've spent my life avoiding -- places in the world that frighten me. And the scariest has always been Germany.
Born in 1942, my first idea of Germans was just "the enemy," the ones who started this all-consuming war. Then in 1946, right after the war, we moved to London and I learned what was meant by blitzkrieg. Bricks and half-bricks were scattered everywhere, cranes were excavating craters where buildings had been. An army manual showed how an incendiary bomb pierces the floors of a home, then blows the place up. I drew picture after picture of planes dropping bombs, blowing homes and people to bits.
Back in America at age twelve, I read the diary of Ann Frank and felt her terror of the Gestapo. It seemed incomprehensible that anyone would want to kill such a peaceful, brilliant child. Germans struck me as uniquely ruthless and sadistic people. And as I grew up, my fears were intensified by my affection and admiration for Jews, who were my best friends, teachers and mentors.
Still, it was clear that Germany did not equal Nazism. History showed it was the very center of western civilization, the seat of philosophy and the arts. How it turned monstrous was a conundrum without a clear answer. Some of my fellow students had no qualms about visiting Germany, but many, like me, were afraid.
Still, I was amazed to learn that some Jews actually went back after the war, to live in the nation that had tried to exterminate them. And recently I read about Jewish writers, artists and intellectuals thriving in Germany, despite continued incidents of anti-Semitism.
If they could go, I should. So this summer, on vacation in the Netherlands, we planned a short side trip -- a weekend in Koln (Cologne) on the Rhine. The prospect filled me with violently mixed emotions. What would we see?
My guide and interpreter was my Presbyterian pastor wife Debra, who spent a semester in Germany in the 1970's. When our train stopped at the border, she rascally whispered, "This is where they bring out the dogs."
Koln, just an hour past the border, was celebrating the end of the university year, and roaring with excitement over World Cup soccer. Nobody paid much attention to us, but after an hour of looking at faces in the crowd, I was freaking out. Everywhere I saw Hitler Youth, middle-aged SS officers ready to follow orders, and complacent hausfraus looking the other way. I searched for someone who looked like a Jew -- there are 5,000 in Koln today, down from 20,000 in 1933 -- and could find only one candidate, a man sitting miserably alone in a café.
"Are you still afraid of Germans?" asked Debra as we walked among crowds by the riverfront. More than ever, I said. And I felt ashamed: Just by being here, I was betraying my Jewish friends.
I knew I couldn't spend three days in this state -- so the choice was either to flee the country, or find another way of looking at it. In the morning we prayed, and I asked for eyes to see Koln not by my light, but God's.
At that point fate, or chance, or providence intervened. We went to see the city's historical museum, but were told its main collection was closed because of water damage. The young lady at the desk told us nearby was another historical site -- the El De building, headquarters of the Koln Gestapo during the war, now a museum of the National Socialist era.
The museum fills four floors of a nondescript office building, and shows in documentary detail Koln's participation in Nazi war crimes. Until the 1980s, Koln had comforted itself with the notion that it was a center of resistance to Hitler, but this was more comforting than true. The Nazis got 39 percent of the city's vote in the 1933 elections. But once they seized power, demanding total loyalty from each citizen on pain of persecution and death, Koln fell into line. Hitler came to visit, and nearly the whole town came out to hail him. Dissent was only possible through organizations with international connections: the communist party, and a few conscientious churchmen who resisted the Nazi program to "harmonize" church and state.
Gestapo headquarters was a prison and interrogation center where citizens were tortured, deported and killed because they were Jews, Roma, homosexual, mentally deficient, or just unenthusiastic about the Nazi cause. "Anti-social" was a catchall category that could be used to arrest anyone, often on the basis of vague suspicions written up by neighbors. We see neatly typed letters: So-and-so wasn't at home one night. Where might he have been? Graffiti on the basement cell walls makes it clear some inmates had no idea why they were there. "You are mad," scrawled one prisoner to his keepers. Another tried philosophy: "Everything is transitory, even a life sentence."
400 prisoners were hanged or shot in the central courtyard, without trial. Thousands more were deported or sent to concentration camps. The courtyard was clearly visible from surrounding apartment buildings, but no one seemed to remember what went on there, until a lone protester bore witness in the late 1970s, and the city took note. Today the walls of the courtyard are lined with mirrors. I saw myself, as each visitor does, and wondered what I would have done in wartime Koln, where every morally acceptable course of action carried the risk of death.
After three days we retreated to the Netherlands, but my sense of Germany was changed. Today it feels much like America, with a hard core of conservative xenophobes balanced by a liberal intelligentsia and a horde of non-German types -- Turks and Arabs, Africans, Indians and Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. The mix seems lively and resistant to the conformity that enabled Nazism. Unlike us, the Germans have owned up to their crimes against humanity, and are vigilant against repeating them.
The scariest aspect of Germans is their fabled efficiency. Supermarket cashiers make change with no wasted motion or breath, fingers flying and faces frozen. They work like machine-gunners, and a customer's imagination can take him straight to the camps. But this isn't fair to the cashier, who is harming no one, and who keeps the line moving much faster than in America.
Next came the choir -- the madchenchor, 100 girls aged seven to seventeen, all in white robes. Their marching was casual by German standards, but when they sang, every grace note was in place. Their teacher conducted with military economy and precision, yet was able to lift every voice with a sweep of one arm.
Koln's Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki made it clear in his sermon that all this organization was in the spirit of charity -- that serving the poor, the sick, and the oppressed is the essence of Christian faith. It dawned on me that efficiency can be frightening, but need not threaten anyone. It even helps if put to proper use. And so ended my Germanophobia.
Next (and final?) stop on my Tour of Fear: Texas.
-- Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips
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Glad you were able to make a dent in your Germanphobia! :)
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