‘The paradox: here, at Lieberman’s villa, at the lake associated with genocide, I feel at home’

ARNOLD ZABLE arrives in Berlin, a city consumed with memory, and grapples with a contradiction that may never be resolved.

This article is the third in a three part series. Read Part One here and Part Two here.

Berlin. The first night. It is unseasonably cold. I walk the near-deserted streets. My umbrella bends to the wind. A makeshift shrine to the Ukrainian resistance lies on a median strip. The flowers are crumbling, the soaked placards are held down by stones, the circle of red candles has been extinguished. I make my way to the Friedrichstrasse Station, and step into a felafel store run by Turkish immigrants. The manager’s eyes blaze with purpose. He is firmly in charge. He directs the show and engages in banter. He reminds me of the vision of Kilian: he possesses the fierce energy of the exiled. I return to Unter den Linden. A saxophonist plays by the Brandenburg Gate, as he does every night. Tonight, he has it all to himself. 

BERLIN IS NOW a city that remembers. There are ten-centimetre square brass plates imbedded in the pavements; Stolpersteine, “stumbling stones”, they are called. Produced by hand, each records the victim’s date of birth and place of death, and is located at the last home, or workplace, in which the person freely lived before being rounded up and deported by the Nazis. 

The idea was conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig who laid the first plates in the city of Cologne in 1992. The idea spread. As of 2019, over 75,000 stones had been laid in cites throughout Europe. The names are of Jews, and other victims of the Nazi terror: Sinti and Romani people, homosexuals, the disabled, social democrats, trade unionists, and other resistors who were driven to suicide or murdered.

To read the inscriptions one must bow down to the names. As our Berlin guide, Ronan Altman-Kadar, points out, the most beautiful thing is this: because the plates are made of brass, each step that passes over the plates, whether conscious or unwitting, adds to the glow, the polish.            

RONAN DIRECTS US under an archway into a courtyard on Rosenthaler Strasse, in the Mitte district, to Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind. During the war the factory manufactured brooms and brushes. Now a museum, the rooms and floorboards are well-preserved, the machines and workbenches in place. The museum recounts a tale I hunger for — the tale of a good man.

Otto Weidt was born in 1883 into a working-class family. He established his workshop in 1936. He married Else Nast the same year; she shared his humanism, and his abhorrence of the Nazi regime. Many of Weidt’s employees were Jews and he protected them by whatever means possible. He kept the factory going by entering contracts with the Wehrmacht. He printed forged identity cards. He bribed officials. When deportation loomed, he hid workers in the apartments of trusted friends, and in a concealed backroom in the workshop building.

When a group of his workers were betrayed in 1943, and sent to Theresienstadt ghetto, Weidt sent them food parcels. When his employee, Alice Licht, was deported to Auschwitz, Weidt travelled there under the pretext of selling his brushes to camp authorities. He traced her movements to Grosse Rosen Concentration Camp and devised a way to leave her medicines, clothes, and money. Alice escaped the camp and survived the final months of the war in Weidt’s Berlin apartment.

After the war Weidt established a home for Jewish orphans and aged survivors. He died in December 1947. The beauty of his endeavours is reflected in the photos of the people he sheltered. They grace the walls. There is a photo of Weidt and his workers; there are about thirty in all. Weidt sits on the floor in the front row as one among equals. In this moment they are an extended family. Protected. United in their common humanity.

THE BERLIN JEWISH MUSEUM was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. We are of the same generation, children of the Jewish Labour Bund. Libeskind was born in Lodz in 1946. Post-war, a group of Bund survivors regrouped in Lodz. For a brief period, they tried to rebuild Jewish life in Poland. After the Kielce pogrom in 1946, and the occupation by the Soviets two years later, the dream was extinguished. Many Bund members left, some taking the escape route via the Tatra mountains.  Libeskind studied architecture in the US and England. He conceived the museum building itself as a means of conveying a sense of displacement and absence. 

I descend to the lower levels. The floors rise and fall; the corridors zigzag, the towering concrete walls enclose voids, bare spaces.  I wander the museum for hours. Again, I am in search of just one story. It is an object that leads me to it, a flamenco dress. Dated, Hamburg, circa 1980s. The waist flares into a flamboyant skirt; white polka dot frills alternate with mauve and white stripes edged by pink ruffles. The dress belonged to Sylvan Rubinstein.

Sylvan and Maria Rubinstein were twins, born in Russia in 1917. When their aristocratic father was executed by the Bolsheviks, their mother fled with them to Poland and settled in the town of Brody. To earn a living the twins danced in marketplaces. They honed their skills as flamenco dancers and performed in music halls throughout Europe, and in New York and Melbourne, billed as Imperio and Dolores.

The twins were performing in the Adria theatre in Warsaw when the Germans invaded. They were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto, escaped, and went underground. They vowed to stick together but for a moment they separated, and Maria vanished.

After the war, Sylvan settled in Hamburg. He performed in the St Pauli district, and throughout West Germany as Delores. When he died in 2011, at the age of almost 97, he left behind numerous dresses he had designed. “His sister’s fate remains unknown,” concludes the tale as recorded on the museum panels.   

There is a photo of Sylvan performing as Dolores in a flamenco dress in the 1950s. The silky black bodice hugs a slim upper body. Sylvan’s high kick fans out the dress in an inverted parabola. And a photo of Sylvan as a matador: dressed in a black fedora, a white blouse, high-heeled boots, an embroidered vest, and black trousers. His fingers clasp castanets, his shoulders are erect, his bearing regal. And a quote from Sylvan emblazoned above the dress: “Flamenco was in my sister’s and my nature. It is Sephardic. It is Moorish. When I danced, my dear sister was always with me.”

That night I search online for more details. Indeed, a biography has been written, and a documentary filmed of Sylvan. He returned to the stage in his nineties dressed as Delores to perform for the film, and entertained audiences with his tales of the duo’s exploits. Maria vanished, he says, when she boarded a train headed to Brody in search of her mother.

After she disappeared, Sylvan joined the resistance and carried out attacks disguised as a woman. His sister and mother perished in Treblinka. Says Sylvan: "Becoming Dolores was my way of coping with my twin sister’s death ... only a twin can understand how horrific that was. It was like being torn in half. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her." 

I HAVE SEVERAL HOURS to wander the streets of Berlin. Where to go? I phone singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn, who lived for over a decade in Berlin.  Now based in Hamburg, Kahn is a co-founder of the Mordechai Gebirtig Project, launched in 2017 by a collective of musicians to mark the 75^th anniversary of his death. Kahn’s most recent album, Word Beggar, begins with a song by Gebirtig, Der zinger fun noyt. "The singer of need." The impoverished singer must perform for the rich to survive; the poet is incensed by the perverse disparities between the poor and the wealthy.

We canvas the possibilities. Given our mutual obsessions we arrive at the obvious: Bertolt-Brecht-Platz. I make my way to the Friedrichstrasse Station, cross the bridge over the Spree River, and turn left. The embankment, in the former ship-builders district, is lined by a strip of restaurants and cafes, and just beyond them: my destination. 

Brecht fled Germany in 1933. After returning from exile to his homeland, he founded the Berliner Ensemble with his wife, actress Helene Wagner. Since 1954 the ensemble has been based in the riverfront theatre. There is a statue of Brecht in the square. He is seated on a bench, cap in hand, a wry smile on his face. Etched in stone on the circular dais is his 1935 poem: Questions from a Worker who Reads. Lying on the pavement, outside the theatre entrance, is a piece of black cardboard, and printed in white, the words of Charlie Chaplin: "Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul." Beside it lies a fallen leaf.

In this moment, beneath a mild sun on its descent over Berlin, and in the same clear skies, a half-moon rising, I feel a great love for Brecht, and for artists whose work is compelled by an urge to shed light on injustice. In this moment, I can believe all is possible. Despite it all. Because of it all.

I RECEIVE AN UPDATE from Dale Umetsu, accompanied by two photos. The school basketball court floor is crowded with mattresses, covered in bedding. Clothes dry on indoor washing lines. The windows are partly covered by makeshift curtains. Possessions are piled against the walls in suitcases, backpacks, overnight bags, and cardboard boxes. A pregnant woman lies on a mattress; an elderly woman bends over to make her bed. A girl in a green tracksuit walks an aisle with a heavy rucksack.

“Just sending you some pictures of the sites that we visit. These are in schools in Ukraine housing refugees. Lots of chronic problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, likely worse from stress, joint problems, infections, and so on.  We also work at the border, seeing patients who have been on long bus trips and have similar problems along with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Travel through the border though seems to be declining right now.”

THE FINAL LEG of the tour, the tempo quickens. The days are outrunning me, the stories outpacing me. The welter of information overwhelms me. But there is a lake where I find respite. It is a breezeless day, the final afternoon of a whirlwind journey. Yachts are becalmed mid-lake, weeping willows and clusters of reeds rim the foreshore. White-billed black coots cruise over wisps of reflected cloud and the glistening leaves of the waterlily. The stillness releases images of what we have seen, and heard, over these past few days:

POTSDAM ON A RAINY AFTERNOON, the Cecilienhof Palace, built in the style of an English manor house; the carpeted conference room, and the round table, where Stalin, Truman, and Churchill, and his successor Atlee, sat over a two-week period in the summer of 1945, and carved up Europe. Where they moved populations about, and defined the new post-war borders, setting the stage for future conflict and division. In a frightening moment Truman informs Stalin that the US has tested a bomb that can wipe out an entire city in one go. Stalin appears unphased; his intelligence already knew. Days after the conference ends the bombs are released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

THE GRUNEWALD RAILWAY station, in a wealthy suburb of Berlin, the assembly point for the deportation of 55,000 Berliner Jews. The roundups took place in the dead of night over a period of years, for "relocation to the East", a euphemism for murder and slave labour. The victims were driven to the station in trucks in groups of up to one thousand. There is a memorial on an unused platform, installed in 1998. The dates and destinations of each transport are recorded underfoot, on a network of iron plaques. The first is dated 18/10/1941. The final transport: 27/3/1945. By then, the war was all but ended, but the Nazi mania to exterminate the “virus”, was not yet over.

ANDRAS VARGA STANDS in the nave of the Rykestrasse Synagogue, in Berlin’s Pankow borough. He wears a worn suit, a straw hat, a white shirt, and a striped red tie. He looks at the floor as he talks and clenches his fists to accentuate his barely audible pronouncements. His voice is frail, and we strain to hear him. 

“I was born in the Budapest ghetto on 17^th of July 1944,” he says. “I lost 54 relatives. As a survivor of the Shoah, I must go to schools and give talks. It is my mitzvah, my deed, so it will never be repeated. The synagogue survived the fire on Kristallnacht; the head of the Berlin police protected the property. The synagogue opened in 1904; it is the largest in Germany.” Andras can recite the names of a succession of rabbis, cantors and renowned members of the congregation, dating back to the synagogue’s inauguration.

Children from an Orthodox Jewish school are at play in the walled courtyard. A group of boys play table tennis. Three boys sit on the steps engaged in conversation. Girls run with yellow and black balloons; they hold them aloft as if about to take flight. Andras steps out of the foyer and surveys the children like a proud father. He is the protector of the synagogue, and the synagogue protects him. He wears it like an outer garment.

THIS MORNING, JUST AN HOUR AGO: the “House of the Wannsee Conference”. An opulent Italianate mansion. Lake vistas are framed by arched windows and portholes. Manicured lawns slope down to the waterfront. Tree-lined avenues cast shadows over elegant garden benches.  Here is where senior representatives of Nazi state agencies gathered on January 20, 1942, over breakfast, at the behest of Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Security Head Office, to prepare, in his words, for the “total solution of the Jewish question in Europe”.

The killings had already begun, but more efficient methods of extermination were needed than mass shootings by paramilitary death squads. The villa is now a place of remembrance. The exhibits document the proceedings of the conference, and their terrifying consequences. Towards the end of the ninety-minute meeting, cognac was served. Tongues were loosened. Euphemisms for genocide were replaced by explicit talk of extermination.

Again, a sense of unreality: the details of slaughter conceived in such beautiful surroundings. We leave by the driveway and walk through a tree-shaded neighbourhood. The streets are lined with summer retreats and mansions, tradesmen are at work on building sites.

This is a tale of two lakeside villas, half a kilometre apart, the first where genocide was planned, and the second, the pre-war summer retreat of German-Jewish impressionist artist Max Liebermann and his family. The grounds house the artist’s studio and a homely villa, its walls softened by coats of ivy and windows framed by green shutters. Liebermann built the residence in 1909 and spent his summers here until his death in 1935. He was spared the final solution and bequeathed all who come here the beauty of his work, and the radiant gardens he co-designed and nurtured.

I walk the gravel path from the villa flanked by beds of roses, manicured hedges, and a meadow of orchards, to the waterfront. Later today, we will return to central Berlin, and Ronan will guide us through the former cabaret district. He will hold up his folder of photos depicted what once stood here. He will recreate the romance.

This is where Marlene Dietrich went to school. And there lived the Russian émigré writers, Ilya Ehrenberg, Nabokov, and Gorky, and the Yiddish poets Kulbak and Bergelson. Here stood the Monopol Café, its tables cordoned off in three sections, for Yiddish, German and Hebrew speakers, and over there, the Romanisches Café, the meeting place of artists, writers, journalists, and directors: Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz, Billy Wilder, Eric Maria Remarque, Ernst Toller. And there, across the road, in that actual building, Josephine Baker danced with choreographed abandon: the antithesis in spirit of the horrors that were about to engulf the city.

At Alexander Platz, Ronan will pause on the pavement, and hold up a photo of Mascha Kaléko. This is the story he will dwell on at greatest length. Born in 1907, in Chrzanow, Galicia, Kaléko rose to fame in Weimar Berlin for her satirical poems on big city life. Her works were, inevitably, banned by the Nazis. Then followed a life of exile, sojourns in New York, California, and Jerusalem. Kaléko died in Zurich, en route for a final return to her beloved Berlin, the city of her longing. The title poem, in a collection of her work, published in 2010, is aptly called: No matter where I travel, I come to Nowhereland.

THIS IS THE PARADOX: in this moment, at Lieberman’s villa, standing on the shores of a lake whose name is associated with genocide, I feel at home. This is the scene I am compelled to end with: the serenity, the reflected clouds, the still waters, and the gliding coots. I last saw coots just two weeks ago, in Melbourne, in my local parklands, swimming on a series of ponds I call Zen Lake for the solace they have provided during the time of the pandemic. In this moment, this too is a Zen-lake. It allows what I have seen on this whirlwind journey to settle. This is how it can be: Absence replaced by presence, longing by a sense of belonging.

THAT NIGHT I RECEIVE a message from V. She has booked a flight for Australia. Her mother is flying with her. Coincidentally, she is scheduled to fly tomorrow, 12 July, the day that I too am to begin my flight home. Again, a paradox, and an irony: the experience of the invasion has intensified V’s love of her homeland. It has brought her closer to her past, and to her people. She cannot bear the thought of being so far distant from her family, and her beloved village. She is overcome by a profound sense of guilt at abandoning her people, a guilt that mirrors the guilt that all but destroyed my mother. Of her impending return to Australia, V writes: “Having such a heavy heart. It’s so far from home. Going to nowhere …”

Arnold Zable’s attendance on the YIVO study tour was made possible by the generosity of a member of the YIVO board of directors. V is an assumed name for reasons of privacy. For more information on YIVO study tours for 2023, contact info@yivo.org

Main photo: Building where the 'Final Solution' conference was held at Wansee near Berlin

All photos by Arnold Zable