BONN — Most of the other children in the film stand up straight, almost militarily erect, and look right into the camera. They state their names and hometowns in clear voices. The announcer explains how they became lost from their families.
One thin boy of about 12, though, stands hunched. He is darker complexioned than the others and glances away, as if the camera crew frightens him. In a muted voice he murmurs, “Karl Weisswein,” then adds his hometown: “Auschwitz.”
The announcer says: “Separated from his parents in concentration camp.”
Karl disappears from the screen, replaced by a blond orphan. The parade of homeless children goes on and on. Some are too young to know their names. They were found in bombed-out buildings, train stations, and cardboard boxes. The camera lingers on them, hoping someone in the audience will recognize them and give them a home.
The film was made right after World War II and shown all over Germany to try to reunite families. Now it plays continuously in Haus der Geschichte, the museum of contemporary German history in Bonn. It is part of the opening section dealing with Nazism, the Holocaust, and the war.
Thinking about what kind of hometown Auschwitz must have been for Karl, I watch the other exhibits through blurred eyes. They chronicle the growth of democracy, the “Economic Miracle,” the collapse of communism, and unification. Several displays feature Germany’s ongoing attempts to deal with its past, including the Nuremberg Trials, the reparations treaty with Israel, and the Auschwitz Trials. Concentration camp survivors are interviewed about their experiences, their lives today, and their efforts to win compensation.
Willy Brandt is shown life-sized kneeling in national contrition at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto. I pull out a little drawer underneath him and read that seven percent more Germans in 1970 opposed this gesture as “overdone” than approved of it as “appropriate.”
These exhibits make all the others — the jukeboxes, refrigerators, and Volkswagens — look hollow and superficial. Something is always missing, haunting the edges of the displays of consumer bounty.
I leave the museum and walk through Bonn and realize that something is also missing here. An important element has disappeared: the Jews. As a Gentile who grew up among Jews in the US, I can tell how much better Germany would be if they were still here.
Fortunately a remnant survived and kept their culture alive, and now, bolstered by recent immigration, the Jewish community is rebuilding itself from the ashes. If this continues, they could make Germany add a new section to Haus der Geschichte: the rebirth of Jewish culture.
This new beginning is one of the most encouraging developments here, but its smallness and tentativeness point up the dimensions of what was destroyed. The never-to-be-forgotten fact is that from France to Russia, from Norway to North Africa, Germans killed every Jew they could find. The loss is beyond repair, beyond comprehension, leaving only grief and a bitter determination to protect those who remain.
This carnage also crippled German society. By murdering so many of its own citizens, Germany lost the dynamic of two counterpoised cultures, different, sometimes conflicting, but basically complementary. These two elements had enriched each other for centuries, producing some of Europe’s greatest achievements.
Now, out of annihilation, a community begins again. The two groups greet each other cautiously: “Germany is a very different country today. Welcome.”
“We shall see. Shalom.”
