On Being in Berlin

I felt fear.

My wife and I were attending the 45th International Psychoanalytical Association Congress, the first in Berlin since 1922 and the second ever in Germany after World War II. This was my first time in Germany—unless one counts a trip courtesy of EL AL, which was then on strike and rescheduled me on Lufthansa for my flight to Paris via Frankfurt. Close to 3000 psychoanalysts, from far reaches of the globe, were present. The meetings were lively, papers very intelligent, attuned to theoretical and clinical issues but also to significant resonances of literature, philosophy, and history—above all to German and Jewish history in their fatal interaction in the last century, dreadful beyond words.

Berlin has been rebuilt since the war and thrives, now that the Soviet and western parts of the city have been reunited, as Germany's capital. It's an engaging city, amiable and gracious, clear-eyed about its history and what was done in its name. Germany has tried hard to address the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich. It has stressed that past in its education system and public life. The psychoanalytic conference, for example, was centered in a hotel on Stauffenbergstrasse, named for the officer who with other plotters tried to kill Hitler and who were executed across the street from the present hotel in what was then the enclosed courtyard of the Wermacht command center. I noticed David Ben Gurion's name on a street sign during a bus tour, the same tour that brought us to the understated and stunning Holocaust Memorial and to the courtyard outside Humboldt University where the infamous burning of books by Jewish authors and other enemies of the Reich took place. Not far from there was the statuary memorial to the brave Aryan women who, married to Jewish men, refused at Rosenstrasse to be cowed by Gestapo threats and guns in the single successful opposition to Hitler's ruthless regime during the war.

The city has a pleasant feel to it: lots of bicycles—the paths alongside pedestrians on wide streets—art galleries and museums, concert halls, libraries, the beautiful and central Tiergarten, the lovely Unter den Linden boulevard. The citizenry was unfailingly polite, welcoming, clearly pleased that we were there. Most spoke English easily and pleasantly. It was enormously gratifying to realize a culture had been reborn, had rebuilt itself from its shards and shame, found itself again in a civilized moral world.

It's an engaging city, amiable and gracious, clear-eyed about its history and what was done in its name.

All of that I felt, appreciated, registered. And yet I felt fear—bottled up, struggled against, but undoubted. I'm a veteran of life by now, have had my share of trials and disillusionments, feel comfortable enough with who I am to hold my own, hold grudges, not dodge difficulties or confrontations. But at night in Berlin, unable to sleep, I found myself reliving the phases of my life, thinking of people long past and wondering why; finally I was aware of fantasizing myself a little child, terrified, and aware that my loving parents were powerless to protect me. It was a massively regressive fantasy, shaped by history, and emerging in the dark in terrifying consciousness. I could handle it then, realize that what would once have been true did not apply now—that as an American citizen and a devotee of Israel, a nation with an excellent army (Jews with guns), and as a stubborn old codger in my own right I could reassure myself. But the power and precision of that fear with its inevitable sense of timelessness startled me, and deeply saddened me, again.

My experience was hardly special to me. Each morning two Israeli analysts, Shmuel Erlich and Mira Erlich-Ginor, and a German one, Hermann Beland, held a meeting for attendees called “Being in Berlin,” a chance to talk about one's feelings. Each morning large numbers attended, listening, talking earnestly. Most were Jews, many descendants of forebears who had managed to flee from Nazi Germany, Europe, or Russia to Palestine, Turkey, Singapore, Shanghai, Argentina, Mexico, Australia, England, and the U.S. Many, too, were Germans, Austrians, or Poles, also haunted by history—and by the burden of parents or grandparents who, having survived, would not talk of what they did or what happened. The parallel to the experience of children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors could not have been more striking. So in the midst of so many, we had what amounted to a Quaker meeting. People rising to speak, briefly but movingly, followed by thoughtful silences until someone else chose to speak. It was a comfort not to feel alone with those thoughts. One of the young Germans spoke of feeling trapped, inhibited, by history. I thought: That's right. We're all trapped by history. We may choose and act freely. But history doesn't get shed.

August 2007