I once interviewed a young German national who applied for a job.  I wanted to see how he would handle a difficult question.  I pointed out to him that I was Jewish and that most of my mother’s family had perished in the Holocaust.  He was German, not yet a U.S. national, and I wondered what his reaction would be.  His response was measured and perfect for the occasion.  He explained to me that as a German who went to school, until college, in Germany, he knew more about the Holocaust than any American young person he had met.  He indicated that he had been taken to concentration camps while growing up, and he had a thoroughgoing Holocaust education. I was impressed. He was hired.

Recently, my wife and I were flown by Israel El Al Airlines to Munich.  Flights had ceased due to the war between Israel and Iran.  The only way to return home was to take El Al to Munich, Germany and from Munich, via Lufthansa Airlines, to the U.S.

A woman at Lufthansa told me that only Germany would permit itself to be a transfer point for Jews leaving Israel and seeking to return to the United States. When we landed in Munich, the experience was noteworthy. The El Al plane was escorted to a terminal facility away from the main terminal. Police vehicles surrounded the plane, and men with assault rifles guarded us.

From the landing apron, we were taken by bus to a separate baggage claim, also guarded by men with assault rifles. The German authorities were at all times professional and thoughtful.

After we picked up our bags, we walked by ourselves to the Hilton Hotel where reservations had been made for us to stay overnight. One could not help but notice the modern all glass façade of the hotel. The lobby was glass. The entrance way to the restaurant was glass. Most impressive, the elevators were glass with fluorescent lighting in the floor.  The vault in which the elevators slowly moved up and down, were themselves glass.

After entering the room, one had to activate the lighting and other facilities by use of the customer card. The shower was glass enclosed. Glass everywhere.

It seemed like the walls and just about everything in what otherwise would be a fairly boring Hilton Hotel, was glass. Everything was transparent, literally and philosophically.

The next day, with some layover time, I decided to read up on Munich before we went out to see the sights.

Munich is special in German history. It is at the base of the Alps and was capital of Bavaria.  It may still be the capital for all I know.

Munich is where Nazism first arose. Adolph Hitler, may his name be erased, attempted the “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich. It was the monster’s first attempt to rule Germany. It was unsuccessful and Hitler wound up in jail, where he wrote his epic, revolting, and poorly written Mein Kampf. In the book, the future murderer of the Jews and millions of other people clearly set forth his plan, a plan ignored by the Western democracies.

Munich was the springboard for Hitler and the Nazis. But it was worse than that. Munich was also the location of the first and longest running death camp; Dachau. The Dachau concentration camp is still a memorial site frequently visited by tourists, historians, and the idle curious.

One could go to Dachau today and not only learn about the history of efficient factory-like death, but one can also see the crematoria where Jews were incinerated.

Munich and Germany were not the first Holocaust in Europe. Jews were first murdered and driven out of England, Central Europe, and parts of Germany as early as the First Crusade.  By 1492, the Jews had been murdered, burned at the stake, and driven out of Spain, France, and Portugal.

By the time Hitler came to power, the only Jews left in Europe were in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and the like. Most of them, at least 6 million, were murdered and incinerated in Germany concentration camps.

Munich, towards the end of the war, was bombed to near oblivion by the British and the Americans. After the war, Munich was rebuilt, largely with American money, into a modern steel and glass city.

One cannot help but be impressed by the irony of modern Germany not only being a friend to Israel but assisting American Jews in leaving the war zone of the Middle East so that they could make their way back to the United States. While there is plenty of antisemitism in Germany and Europe in general, one should not turn a blind eye to the efforts made by German leadership and the German population to recognize the past and to educate the young about 1,000 years of European genocide directed against the Jewish people.

I felt as though I was in a cemetery, while in Munich. While the times have changed and the German people deserve great credit for rebuilding and remaking not only their society but also their attitudes, I was haunted by the memory of family who perished in the old Europe.

My mother’s family was from Poland. My grandparents, on my mother’s side, were born in Poland. My father’s family were from Rieden, Germany, or Switzerland, depending upon where the border was when Moritz Rieders left in 1838. Moritz had the choice of becoming a Lutheran so that he could continue in his wine profession or leaving that part of Europe. He chose to leave. Those of the Rieders who stayed became Lutheran and immigrated to the United States in later years.

My grandmother, a Schneps, was a member of a large farming family.  They were one of the few farmers who had a mill powered by the water of a nearby creek. This made the Schneps family special and perhaps even more well to do than the other poor farmers. It did not matter: When death came to the Jews, it came to all the Jews. A few people like Albert Einstein, Mark Chagall, and Sigmund Freud escaped.  They were necessary to the West.  They were useful Jews.

However, people like the Schneps family died in the gas chambers of Germany and her willing executioners. I was told by one of my relatives who today lives in Rishon LeZion that there were 10 brothers and sisters, all of whom were murdered. Sara Schneps herself was born in some unknown internment camp, the product of her father’s second marriage.  I was named after Sara’s grandfather.

The ghosts of my family and the other innocents who died in the European Holocaust haunt Munich and probably all of Europe. Their souls, now in Gan Edan, float over this land and simply ask “why?” In this life and on this earth, we cannot answer them. As Elie Wiesel pointed out in one of his books, only the dead have the power to forgive.

While I recognize the achievements, good will, and friendship of modern Germans and Germany towards the Jews and Israel, one could not escape the feeling of being in a haunted land.

Someone once pointed out to me that in any country in Europe, even those totally controlled by the Nazis, those who stood against murder of the Jews were at least partially successful.  In Bulgaria, a priest who became Pope in later years, stood up against the Germans, even though Bulgaria was an occupied country.  In Italy, which after the hanging of Mussolini, was occupied by the Germans, the Italian people would not cooperate in the transport of Jews to the death camps.  In Denmark, King Christian famously would not cooperate it the Holocaust even though his nation was right on the border with Germany and was virtually occupied by the Nazis.  It bears repeating that anyone who stood up to the Nazis, even though they had absolutely no power whatsoever, was able to save lives.  The tragedy of humankind is that so few people followed in the path of Bulgaria, Italy, or Denmark.

The French Vichy pro-Nazi government, cooperated in the transport of Jews to the death camps.  The United States and England would take no action to discourage the death factories built by the Nazi, even though clearly opportunities existed for them to help to prevent the unfolding tragedy.

The million or so Jews in North Africa escaped the Holocaust thanks to the early invasion of the British and Americans.  The Arabs were not only willing to help the Nazis but formed an alliance with Hitler, assuring the devil himself of their anticipated cooperation in the promised Middle Eastern and North African Holocaust.  Fortunately, the Jews survived North Africa and the Middle East only to be expelled from those lands after World War II.  Thanks to Israel, most of those Jews survived and today they live happy prosperous lives in Israel.

I left Munich behind with a bittersweet but more realistic and honest understanding of past grievances and modern changes.

Thank goodness that today America and Israel stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against terrorism, death and destruction which still inhabit the minds of terrorists and would-be terrorist nations.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)