And on a walk past a small kosher restaurant, I saw two German policemen who told me that they guard it and all other Jewish sites at all hours, every day. For some reason, that necessity did not strike them as odd. In a city that is 0.3% Jewish, can Jews still evoke such hatred?
Of course there is a disconnect between how institutional Germany behaves and what the volk believe. Are many Germans sick of the burden of memory and guilt? Do many Germans secretly root for an Israeli atrocity to cleanse their soul? “See, look, you are no different from us.”
More worrisome is the state of the rest of Europe. Yael, a young German Jew, told me, “There is perhaps no safer place for a Jew in the world today than in Germany.” What about the rest of Europe? Have other countries educated their citizens of the role they played in the Holocaust? Eichmann rode into Vienna with 130 SS troops. Did they alone deport 150,000 Austrian Jews?
“Germany is a friend of Israel and an anchor in Europe. It is in our interest to engage them and cultivate a strong Jewish community,” said the unflappable Ms. Burger.
It is. But I harbor guarded caution.
As dawn broke on my last morning in Berlin, I unfurled my tefillin, a bar mitzvah gift from my father. I wrapped the warm leather straps deliberately, tightly, around my left forearm. I looked out over the sunlit, shadowy city, Hitler’s bunker not far, and I murmured the morning prayers.
I do not know why my lips moved so quietly that morning. I thought of my father’s two uncles whom I never met; of my grandmother’s brother, a young father, chief rabbi of Biaylistock. I thought of my grandfather, never a man for words, but never quieter than he was after the Shoah. And I wept.