Dachau & Stuttgart (updated)

Uh, how do you say Lantzman in Arabic?

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find in Stuttgart, but I was hoping it would be better than my morning’s visit at Dachua. Truth is, I am tired of going to concentration camps. I’ve seen my fair share of barracks, gas chambers and cold dank cement buildings that served as home to an assortment of tortures and beleaguered suffering.

Dachau offered a slightly different perspective – that of the American liberators. I went there specifically to discover the experiences of my own grandfather Robert Zacher, who fought in the 20th* Armored Division and helped to liberate this camp. I wanted to see what he, my namesake, saw and to begin to gain a sense of the impression it left upon him. So, with audio guide in hand, I listened to the testimonies of various U.S. Army liberators as I passed through the gates of “Arbeit Macht Frei”. It’s not as scary or as daunting as Auschwitz I, but make no mistake, it gets the point across.
As impossible as it is to put one’s self in the place of a prisoner or holocaust victim, it is almost equally impossible to see life through the eyes of a liberator. I can begin to fathom what my barely 18-year-old grandfather, who had to fight his way into the army, experienced. Entering the camp and seeing piles of bodies, rooms filled with corpses, and the often-described stench of death. What was it like to be confronted by walking skeletons, or “Müsselman”as described by Frankl and Levi? I am told stories of him speaking Yiddish to such victims and handing over his gun to a prisoner to “do what he needed to do…”, but being there made it all seem real. I never met m grandfather and in fact I was born exactly 8 years after he died, but I feel like visiting Dachau was a chance to connect. I think that Dachau is a very well done exhibit and I appreciated the way that the story was present and I, of course, have lots more to say about it, but will opt to do so at a later point.


From one grandparent to another, I left Munich for Stuttgart in attempt to discover the past of Grandma Eve. I have had the privilege of knowing Grandma Eve well for the past 30 years, but I realized that I know very little about her childhood or about the lives her family led in Germany before the war. I was sort of hoping that a visit to Stuttgart in the South of Germany would enlighten me a bit.

I am not sure what I hoped to expect… Ok, that’s not entirely true. I know what I fantasized about....
That I would find some pristine street aligned with Porsches and Mercedes (as Stuttgart is the Benz headquarters) and knock on the door of a typical mansion. I would be met by a gray-haired Frauline with a big grin and a harsh tone. Standing in her frilly apron and “Sound of Music” uniform, she would usher me inside and offer me some of her freshly baked Plum Kuchen. She would then go onto tell me that she knew Grandma and everyone else that lived on that block, and would ask of her well-being in America. She would reminisce fondly of them being school-girls together and would then apologize for not having kept in touch, “but you know, with that pesky war and such busy lives, who could find the time…” She would show me pictures of summer vacations and how much her father enjoyed reading Grandma’s uncle’s business column in the syndicated edition of the Frankfurter Allemagne Zeitung.
She would tell me that HER family was against the war, and helped to resist. I would then ask her what that meant, and what exactly they did to resist? Maybe they helped collect our family’s possessions and shipped them to America after their departure? Maybe they wrote letters to the Reich protesting the unfairness and harsh reality created by the Nuremberg laws, or maybe they would help pay for a way to escape Nazi Germany.
“No, no, none of that,” she would sigh. “But, we helped the resistance” she reassured me. Thank you, how comforting. Before I began to ask too many questions, and inquire about the familiar looking painting, she would wrap another piece of kuchen in a napkin and usher me on my way.

I found something very different. I think we all know that I would not come across anything close to the previously contrived scenario. However, I did find the experience to be enlightening nonetheless. When traveling in South America, we used to have a rule that stated: Upon arriving in a new city, before making any moves, sit, have a beer, and then go on your way. Upon arriving in Stuttgart there was no lack of potential watering holes. However, I decided to forego this tradition in order to figure out what I was doing.

Armed with nothing but a street name, I approached a taxi drive to ask if maybe he had heard of it.

“Spittler srasse,” he repeated gazing out into the sky. “Nein.” He finally answered. A balding man with dark skin, he began to say something in heavily accented German when I cut him off and asked:

“Where are you from?”

“Here,” he replied in English.

“No, where are you from?” I persisted.

“Palestine.”

“Where?”

“Palestine,” he repeated as if I had never heard of it.

“No, I mean where in Palestine?” I beckoned.

With a laugh and smile, he slapped my shoulder and said:

“ah, you’ve never heard of it...”

“Try me.”

“Tul Karm.” He stated with a snicker of having bested me.

“Ana ‘aref” (of course I’ve heard of Tul Karm)I reply in Arabic,

“Ana min al-Quds,” I continue in his language now to the bemusing of the other Kurdish drivers.”We’re lantzman!” I exclaim in English hoping he would get it, and then also find it amusing.

“Mah ata oseh po?!?” he retorted in Hebrew ignoring my lantzman comment.

I just looked back and shrugged my shoulders. He wasn’t asking out of curiosity. All was now clear. He knew who I was, and I knew who he was. Without any serious attempt to continue the conversation he gave me a nod and pointed to the tourist info center where I could find help in locating the street. I think that he was appreciative of the fact that some random traveler knew of his home town. There was so much more to ask him. How long had he been here? Why did he leave? Does he have any plans to return? To visit? What about his family? What are his feelings towards Germany? After all Heinrich Heine’s oft quoted maxim that, “where books are burning, people are soon to follow” - was uttered shortly after hundreds of Qurans and Musilm books went up in flames…

I stood there for a moment to wonder. How was it that by some weird twist of historical and political fate, I came from the U.S. via Israel, to explore the place from where my grandmother was exiled, only to get there and meet a man in exile from the place that I live? This was just too rich. Someone should write a story about it.

I made my way to the tourist bureau and asked directions to Spittler Strasse. We chatted a bit and in response to a perplexed look I explained my motive. “Ah, I see,” he said. I asked him if he gets a lot of people making similar request. “Ya, every now and then… mostly Americans,” he explained. And so be it.

Stuttgart was originally an agricultural of Southern Germany, and became known for their potatoes. (Hence the name Stuttgart = stud garden) Today it is a bustling city climbing high on either side of the river with quite a nice park at its center. Making the steep hike up to Spittler, I decided that I would search out for anything remotely resembling our family roots. So, I peered into shops looking for those funky tools that Greta used to have. Anything really, artwork maybe or food. “Excuse me, do you carry plum kuchen?” I asked a local bakery. “Really you do? Oh that’s fantastic! Can you also sing Maoz Tzur in German because Mama and Greta could (that’s Gertrude Sichel to you). Ah you also live frugally and save every penny for later? I knew that had to come from somewhere.

So, all I found were Turkish (Turkische) shops selling weird tools, definitely not made in Germany. I finally reached the top and found Spittler Strasse! Full on with a panoramic view of the city. Nice one, Grandma!

I began following addresses from apt complex to huge single family home. The addresses went from 23 right to 26. No #25. Just an empty space in between – I found it strangely appropriate. This would have saddened me deeply if [my uncle] Rob hadn’t prepared me for it. I stopped two Lithuanian women passing by, and as pleasant as they were, they weren’t terribly acquainted with the architectural or real estate development of the post-war period on this particular strasse. No one was around to tell me what had been built since 1945 or really 1989 for that matter. Oh well.

With some time left before my next train, I went to check out the Synagogue. Nice enough building, but as it was already nearing six o’clock, no one was to be found. So, I ended my pilgrimage to Stuttgart by toasting all of my family in one of the city’s renowned biergartens, and thanked them profusely for having the good sense to have left when they did.

I made it back to Berlin, just in time to stay up all night, drink more beer and watch the United States of American elect Barack Obama. It was a massive story, and I appreciated sitting in an old East Berlin factory-turned-bar/part-time art gallery, to watch CNN on a projector with the left-wing intellectual expat crowd. (Of course I spent most of the evening with a German student on leave from a university in London who had just written her thesis on the 2^nd generation of Germans after the war, and their new anti-Semitism. Obviously).

~~~

I was more than thrilled to watch Obama’s acceptance speech and it was for me a nice ending to having spent the past few days listening to both of his books.

I spent the next day and a half with Gideon in Berlin, and am now at the conference in Spandau (on the outskirts of metro Berlin). I’ll write more about that later.

Auf Weidersehn.

*Correction - thanks Uncle Phil!