An Invitation to Berlin
Horowitz, Frances D.
an invitation to Berlin Francis Degen Horowitz I had never been to Germany. In fact, I had said glibly and often that I would never set foot in that country. I would inwardly and even, in...
...For I was, to my own enduring puzzlement, ashamed of my decision—as I knew I would be...
...He said maybe I could find some other way to express my obligation and that I really ought to go—it was an honor to have been invited...
...Chill gives the biblical source of each of the 613 mitzvot along with interpretation of meaning and a digest of the major commentary on each...
...After all, time had passed...
...And, "2...
...I thought of Yad Vashem and the eyes that looked out from those pictures and I knew, finally, that I could not go...
...Here I was being asked to do something that would help children and I was refusing...
...Under "memory," "obligation," mitzvot...
...Did he ever sit down...
...I have no such convenient rationale so I was not much further along...
...It had not been an easy decision for him, he told me...
...What a coincidence to open this letter on the heels of my own self-lecture...
...He had dreaded going and was uncomfortable there, but he was surprised to find his visits congenial...
...it was the personalization, individual by individual, family by family...
...Can't—it would sound almost silly...
...He was a kindred soul...
...Perhaps now we must resurrect the mitzvah, "You shall henceforth return no more that way" just for one generation...
...In collective instances the analogies were not obvious...
...There are more important things to do...
...Did the Nazis wrong me personally...
...If I accepted the invitation now—in August—with a rationalization I found I could tolerate, would that rationalization still serve me in February...
...As a girl of 10 and 11 in a Bronx tenement, surrounded by a Jewish ghetto of sorts, I remember lying awake at night conjuring up terrors of torture the Germans were committing daily against the Jews...
...The Holocaust portrayals seared deeper into my thoughts and the meaning of Israel correspondingly strengthened...
...Certainly Germany had attempted genocide and imposed unspeakable hardships and oppressions upon the Jews...
...At home that evening at the dinner table, Floyd and I and our sons—15 and 17—discussed the invitation...
...I protested enough that my husband rerouted us so as to avoid Germany...
...Another commentator was of the opinion that the injunction was a temporary one "effective only in biblical days...
...They made it all the more clear how poisoned I had become...
...Come now—that is carrying it too far...
...Finally, toward the end, there was a parallel: "You shall henceforth return no more that way" (Deuteronomy 17:6...
...Those that did were of little help...
...But for whom else...
...A country which was so degenerate as to attempt genocide of the Jews or impose unspeakable hardships and oppressions upon them is no place for a Jew to reside in...
...Jewish identity takes on new dimensions...
...Hardly befitting a professional person...
...Were there real choices...
...Floyd's eyes searched my face...
...And, having been caught by Benjamin's prescient eye I had to explain with some embarrassment that I didn't buy things made in Germany...
...I have an obligation during the date of the conference and as well some other personal obligations...
...One must forgive—doesn't that mean Germany...
...For what purpose...
...The Holocaust literature beFrances D. Horowitz is Associate Dean at the University of Kansas and Editor for the Society for Research in Child Development...
...The whole afternoon I was absorbed in going through the book page by page searching for a mitzvah that was relevant...
...Didn't I have some personal obligation to their memory—to their suffering...
...What kind of contribution is that...
...I showed him the letter and in his usual supportive manner he said, "How nice—sure, say you'll go...
...came more insistent...
...All these people—what did they think when they were dying and suffering...
...However, to be honest—it was something from which I could beg off—could withdraw for an invitation such as this...
...Would it be realistic if no Israeli and no Jew bought a Volkswagen...
...It was becoming more and more discordant with everything else I espoused...
...The obligation to remember is to individuals—to one's parents or neighbor...
...Why didn't the German and the Polish ordinary citizens protest...
...He didn't really understand...
...It was signed by a person known to me—a fellow developmental psychologist—a refugee from Nazi Germany who had lived now many years in the United States...
...In fact, he had thought of refusing...
...Why did this have to happen...
...I am ashamed when I tell someone about the decision, yet I think, still, it was the right one...
...There were Israelis who touristed there...
...Was I not, myself, contemporary with the Holocaust...
...No, I can't go...
...Time had passed...
...A temporary stay in the country was, however, ruled to be permissible...
...But what reason could I, would I, give...
...I am sorry that I cannot come...
...I began to doubt my own sincerity even though I had made the family go to lengths to avoid having to enter any of Germany when we traveled through Europe...
...Under what entry heading does one look for an answer, a perspective...
...I turned to the Encyclopedia Judaica for guidance...
...Dear Dr...
...Though not religious, I had been taking Shabbat as a day of rest and reading...
...One cannot live with such discrepancies very well...
...The paper may be published in a book of conference proceedings...
...How then, after the Exodus, did a Jewish community flourish in Egypt until relatively recent times...
...Only in a generalized philosophical sense...
...an invitation to Berlin Francis Degen Horowitz I had never been to Germany...
...I tried to think of myself saying to my colleagues, "I am going to Berlin for a conference," and I could feel, at this remove, my words choking my throat even as I knew they would answer, "How nice...
...Still, the prohibition was against residence, not visitation...
...What kind of nonsense does one carry on about Germany...
...It was a philosophical argument not without merit and I wanted to make a decision that would earn their respect...
...To remember...
...Was he back in Germany...
...After all, an all expense paid trip to the Continent is not an opportunity to be missed...
...What was I doing...
...Until the 1950's they were not really welcome at the University...
...But, isn't there a difference between a nation and individuals...
...And did I have a personal obligation to live my life in some way differently because it had happened...
...Again, in personal instances the prescriptions are clear...
...Collective ritual is not enough...
...How could you go to Germany...
...One cannot forgive someone for a wrong done to someone else—only for a wrong done personally to you...
...I was invited to lunch with a visiting Israeli scientist—my age—who mentioned some work he was doing in Germany...
...Would you come—please do—it is an important topic and we would very much like to have your contribution...
...Would I be tortured...
...Very distasteful...
...I couldn't do it...
...Is this sensible behavior for a professional person...
...And then there were the news-reels in the darkened movie theaters telling of war and triumphs...
...I entered Haworth Hall heading for the Department and my day's mail...
...Does one never forgive...
...We entered into a discussion of morality and prejudice...
...How would I feel when it came time to go...
...We are forbidden by the Torah to take up permanent residence in Egypt lest we be corrupted by the example of immoral living which prevailed there...
...No answer ever came...
...My husband...
...Strange, in Lawrence, Kansas, that there are Jews...
...I asked him...
...My inclination, I said, was to say no...
...Does one remember and care by never going to Germany or is such a resolution amateur justice, a bit of self-serving over-dramatization...
...Wondering what it must have been like for each of the millions of individuals...
...There was Jewish education to be planned and a Jewish community to be part of...
...Dear_," I wrote...
...As February approached I could sense a continuing feeling of relief that I was not having to say, "I am going to Berlin," and listening to the well-meant wishes of good journey and have fun...
...But he went on request of the Israeli government and had decided that the only reason he could go to Germany was in the interests of Israel...
...Oddly, a gray envelope was there from Germany...
...business exchanges were common...
...How close had I come to "Some of my best friends are Germans...
...Such an invitation flatters the ego...
...Benjamin and Jason thought that was the wrong response...
...Or, if not for my generation—then for me...
...I was startled by their vehemence...
...Israel, in my Zionist household, took center stage...
...If the Germans came to the Bronx, would I be sent to a concentration camp...
...Some did not exist...
...I am sure the conference organizers expressed their regrets and quickly found my replacement...
...Many people care...
...It would speak to no one...
...I was refusing to make a contribution that would help people...
...My readings were increasingly in the Holocaust literature...
...I thought of Jacob Wasserman committing suicide, of Wiesel's nightmare, of Anne Frank in her mass grave at Bergen-Belsen, of the named and the nameless, hugging the last moment of their children's lives, suffocating in gas-filled sewers, and jumping from flaming buildings...
...That night, at dinner, Jason and Ben having read The Sunflower, we talked again...
...Can one do a meaningless thing and do a right thing...
...Couldn't one remember and still forgive...
...The truth...
...I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the questions...
...The next day was Shabbat...
...However, he understood...
...One ought to at least salvage one's honor in not being insincere...
...I pulled other books from our shelves...
...When the war ended, Germany seemed to fade...
...The war was being fought far away—no bombs on Eastburn Avenue though at P.S...
...I challenged my sons to read the first part of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower and see if that rendition of the cruelty of the Holocaust would not make them understand...
...Wasn't this thing getting out of hand now...
...Someday, I said to myself, someone you like is going to invite you to Germany and you are going to want to go...
...For collective obligation we have rituals...
...One commentator suggested visiting Egypt was only permitted for business purposes...
...I knew the facts well enough—they did not change drastically from one account to the other...
...How horrible—how could he...
...When must one forgive—how do you know you should forgive...
...Then, even Israel receded as one turned to making it in America—education, marriage, career...
...having life's plans and aspirations aborted...
...My invitation to Berlin was for professional purposes, was it not...
...I just couldn't...
...When Sara watched them shoot her infant for target practice did she wonder who would ever care...
...Did they wonder how many people would care what happened to them when enough time had passed...
...They saw what I meant about the depth of the individualized cruelty but still it seemed to them that I was wrong to refuse the invitation...
...Could it happen here...
...I shared the dilemma with only one non-Jew...
...But I couldn't give my money to a country that had spilled the blood of so many Jews...
...I would inwardly and even, in unguarded moments, outwardly cringe at the mention of it...
...he raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in understanding...
...But I am steeped in the Holocaust literature, I told him...
...Yes, I remember hearing he was to spend the summer there...
...In the postwar era of high school and college the terror visions too faded...
...They could be bought at a relatively good price...
...Overt anti-Semitism was practiced easily in its offices...
...Especially in the abstract...
...I was wrong...
...But, Floyd, it's in Germany— Berlin—how can I go...
...The rest of the afternoon I could think of nothing else...
...Did such cruelty need the years of deep European anti-Semitism for cultivation—or are new seeds of only 200 years capable of such flowering...
...At first it looked like a bill with its windowed address form...
...Horowitz," it began...
...My son...
...I walked back up the hill to my other office, encountering my husband at the entrance to the building...
...I would never not talk to a German—and I would demand that my children relate to someone who was German courteously and sincerely...
...I thought about the concept of obligation to remember that so heavily laces through Judaism and Jewish history...
...The Commentaries suggested it was a temporary injunction...
...But again, remembrance and forgiveness are in terms of individual to individual...
...One is aware, periodically, of Germany and Germans...
...On the edge of awareness, the Nazi era—the movies providing vivid portrayals, steady stream of books and articles rendering the very human dimensions of the Holocaust, reports of the trials gory in their details...
...But it was the new evocation of the sensations—of the horrors—of the sense of helplessness and doom...
...I was being irresponsible and prejudiced...
...I could never go to Germany—and Poland followed closely...
...Was I just being stubborn—a minor intellectual attention-getting device...
...Children bring on new senses of purpose—a generation to be reared and delivered into the hands of our People...
...When pressed it was obviously irrational...
...Couldn't I combine it with something else worthwhile to salve the feelings...
...I was thankful I had a true excuse to write as the reason for not accepting the invitation...
...But, with the boom of academia the Jews appeared and in the 1960's a modest Jewish Center was dedicated to serve Jews seeking community together...
...Perhaps it was an exercise against insensitivity...
...Have a good trip...
...Weren't there many who cared and many ways to remember...
...But, Germany...
...I didn't find anything to help me...
...Well, in February during the dates of the conference I was already committed to doing something at a meeting in Denver...
...Hitler, always uniformed, in black and white, mustached and ever erect...
...Chill, page 430...
...My best friend understood immediately but thought perhaps I could come to some rationalization that would permit me to go...
...It was true that my internal debate was becoming untenable...
...No—a personal letter...
...Surely there must be one...
...Didn't I know that the Volkswagen was the most popular car in Israel...
...And for how long...
...Hardly any guilt...
...A paid trip—a chance to stop elsewhere in Europe...
...It was as they said— Volkswagens were among the most popular cars in Israel...
...When David watched the Nazis kick his daughter to death did he despair at the thought that the memory of such evil acts would fade...
...Obligation...
...Finally, I took our copy of Abraham Chill's book The Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale...
...I did not conclude the letter with a "please think of me another time...
...My earliest concepts of Germany were formed in nighttime terror fantasies during the Second World War...
...How many days would I actually have to be in Germany...
...I kept coming back to the personalization of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis and Germany...
...You're not so special...
...And then the counterforces marshaled...
...All expenses paid...
...This Shabbat was not very restful...
...In essence it said—next February we are holding a conference and we would like you to come and give a paper...
...The most convenient airplane schedule would have involved a touchdown in Frankfort...
...It would be the "I am more moral than you game...
...What kind of morality was that...
...The mitzvah didn't really seem to apply...
...From Berlin...
...That feeling of history, of continuity, and of obligations came to stand in sharper and sharper relief against American identity and American values...
...70 we practiced air-raid drills, sitting along the walls of the hallway, our heads down between our knees...
...I wouldn't buy a Volkswagen...
...But why...
...Was it a kind of self-flagellation...
...In 1967 contemporary consciousness and the sense of the past were fused...
...Remembrance...
...I made up possible rubrics...
...Passing on prejudice to my son—me, bastion of liberalism and worker against discrimination...
...Yes, of course I'd like to go...
...Still, it was peripheral— there was a life to be lived in America—there was the coming to terms with how much Judaism was to be a part of one's life— certainly not Orthodoxy—not even kashrut—but you do not give up heritage or the holidays or the values or the sense of being a part of a people with a common destiny...
...Ironically, Germany made the better stand for the Jews...
...Enjoy yourself...
...The world deserted the Jews again—country after country demurring lest their lights be dimmed—never mind the shame that their moral lights went out even if their electric ones didn't...
...I walked away from the luncheon silently lecturing myself...
...hunger and hopelessness taking the place of vitality and the will to endure...
...Be fully honest with yourself now...
...He didn't see the problem...
...Six million is such an enormous number...
...But, in deference to my sons, "If you would like, I would be willing to write the paper for the conference though I cannot attend...
...Not now—not this year...
...Was it any balm to think that if Sara G. had wondered as she died if anyone would care 30 years later the answer would be "yes...
...Time had, indeed, passed...
...I tried to explain to him—thinking that perhaps with a non-Jew I would be forced to be more rational...
...Ought not one to rethink this abhorrence of Germany...
...I was surprised to find myself close to tears and beat a hasty retreat from the discussion...
...What about forgiveness...
...A sabbatical year in Israel, caught in the Yom Kippur War...
...Would I really have to meet many Germans...
...How much ought I to stretch an explanation...
...Such behavior was unnecessary and gratuitous...
...Anyone could point out the inconsistencies—and, after all, consistency is a virtue and a value in our culture...
...What did I want—how long must one pay for one's sins...
...It concerned not returning to Egypt and was explicated thus: "1...
...When my younger son was about six I remember going into a local store and picking up an item and noticing it was "Made in West Germany"—dropping it instinctively as if it were tainted...
...Only when it is dissected, one by one, is the terribly individual nature of the tragedy real: watching one's children die...
...Was it so impossible...
...One day, at a lunch with some of my faculty colleagues—all gentiles—some discussion of current political problems in Germany arose and I bit my lip after making what I clearly realized was a sarcastic comment, though my companions did not perceive it as such...
...If you keep this up you will back yourself into such a corner that you will be unable to accept the invitation and ashamed to refuse...
...That was dangerous...
...I thought some more, persuaded that a refusal was, in the long run, an act of no consequence...
...Don't be sophomoric...
Vol. 2 • May 1977 • No. 7
