I Sleep in Hitler's Room (17 page)

“Old Jewish ladies,” Werner informs this Jewish traveler, “paint their faces and look like little dolls.”

Really?

“Yes.” And “they all work in diamonds.”

It’s good to leave New York and come here, where I get to know more about where I come from. You need perspective in life.

Why is it, I’m really curious to know, that so many German people talk to me about Jews? Is it written somewhere on my forehead, Speak about Jews Unto Me?

True: It is not only Germans who have “Jews” on their minds. There are others. Only a few hours ago, thousands of miles away, the US veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas resigned after controversial comments she’d made earlier went public. Jews “should get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to their real homelands, such as Poland and Germany.

I am in Germany. Maybe I should get a passport.

Look there, across the street in this my homeland, on the left side of the venerated church, somebody painted the Star of David. Graffiti, you can call it. I’ve seen many of them in Lodz, Poland, my other homeland. There, the Star of David means, “You are a Jew!” As in, “You are a thief, You are an animal.” And sometimes, next to the stars, you can find an “explanation”: “Send the Jews to crematoriums,” or “Juden Raus!” (Jews Out!)

What does the Star mean here? Werner’s painted faces?

As the sun finally rises in the skies of Munich, I am in the English Garden. I sip my fresh coffee and listen to the trees. The wind is blowing softly. Vote nein says a poster not far from me. Vote No to a total ban on smoking!

Rauchen verboten
(Smoking prohibited), said the order in Dachau.

Many children and many teenagers soon fill the Garden. More youngsters than trees. And bicyclists are all over. But they are nice, they are not like the ones in Hamburg. Here they are not militants, here they are nice humans. They live and let live.

I light up a cigarette, sip my coffee, stare at the beautiful youngsters showing off their young skins, until one of them approaches me.

“May I ask you a few questions?” he asks.

Yes, why not.

He tells me that he is a film student at the University of Munich, and since I struck him as a native Bavarian he would like to interview me for his documentary.

Me? Native Bavarian? How did he find out?

“The way you look, the way you sit, the way you sip your morning coffee.”

I started my journey as a Jordanian and now I am a Bavarian.

Not bad. Not bad. I am German! I’m so happy, I feel like getting up and screaming: Ich bin Deutschland!

His name is Jonas. He already made a film, and this is going to be his second one.

What was the first film about?

“Dachau.”

Oh God, not that again!

Why Dachau?

“I worked at the KZ for four years.”

You did. Why?

“It’s important.”

Is it?

“Yes.”

Why? Did your family have any connection to it, to Dachau?

He looks at me, as if I’ve spoken Chinese.

I guess there’s a reason why the Pinakothek museum instructs people in how to wash their hands. Munich people are a little, you know, slow, and they need some basic explanations! Yeah. I rephrase my question:

Do you know what your grandparents, for instance, did during the war? I mean, since you made a movie about the period and spent a few years at a concentration camp—?

Are you Jewish?

Now I’m offended. How can he call this native Bavarian “Jew”?!

Why would you think so?

“Because of the way you ask me the question.”

Damn that Pinakothek Museum! Munich folks aren’t that stupid after all!

Well, did you ask your grandparents?

“One time.”

One time?

“Yes, one time I asked my grandmother.”

One time you asked your grandma . . . what?

“I asked her who she voted for in 1933.”

And what did she say?

“She said—she didn’t answer, she asked a question. She said, ‘Who should I have voted for, the Communists?!’ ”

And?

“That was it.”

That was it?

“Yes.”

You didn’t ask any other questions?

“No. I was shocked. I couldn’t ask anything. I couldn’t.”

Yes, here’s how my morning goes. I prayed to have a Jew-free day. But no.

Deeper inside the Garden a man sits drinking soda. His name is Dr. S. von Liebe, a surgeon. He is done with beer.

“Germany is rich,” he says, “but the politics here are bad. You can never tell who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s the truth teller and who’s the liar. Look at the ash cloud. Someone told us that we couldn’t have planes flying, no way. Then others said this is stupid, of course we can fly. How would I know who is honest and who lies? German political parties fight with each other and you don’t have the tools to decide who’s right and who’s wrong.” That’s the problem with Germany. Other than that it’s good. America, on the other hand, is bad. “Big country, huge country, and it’s busy with ‘terror’ and ‘terrorists’ all the time. Like Hitler with his Jews. He blamed the Jews, America blames the ‘terrorists.’ They want to control their people.” He raises his voice, he’s pissed off. He takes a pretzel, bites into it hard, to get more energy. “Why is America doing this?”

I really have no idea what he wants from my life.

Why are you so pissed off at the Americans?

“The Americans refuse to force the Israelis into conceding land to the Palestinians.”

Did somebody put something in the doctor’s soda? What’s going on with him? Or better yet: What’s going on with this country? They’re more obsessed with Palestinians than Al Jazeera TV.

Why do you care about the Palestinians?

“Because I want peace in the world.”

Do you care about Chechnya?

“What?”

Chechnya.

“What?”

Chechnya. You know, Russia and stuff.

“Oh, yes! Chechnya.”

Do you care?

“Yes, I do. Certainly.”

But you don’t get emotional about Chechnya, obviously. Why not?

“Because, because the Middle East is more important!”

Why?

“Because that’s where the religion is. Because of the religion! That’s the basis of our—”

Are you religious?

“Me?”

Yes. You. Are you religious?

“Me? No!”

Dr. S. was born in 1945. What did his father do in the war? He doesn’t know. But one thing he knows for sure: He was not involved with the Nazis. How does he know? His father, he says, “was a womanizer and the only thing he cared about was women.”

There you go. Bullets were flying, people were dying, and the man was fucking. “Never in my life,” adds the doctor, “did I meet an anti-Semite in Germany. They are not here.”

Where are they?

“In Austria.”

Bavaria, my love, you drive me nuts!

I leave the Garden and go to BMW. When you’ve had “enough” of people, cars can function as a great replacement. Two ladies are at the info desk, welcoming me at the entrance of the BMW building in Munich. One is white, one is black. Very white and very black. Like on a piano. Very PC.

Excuse me, ladies. Do you have a BMW?

Silence.

I mean, you know, outside of the job. Do you drive a BMW?

“My husband,” says the first, “has a BMW, but I have a VW.” The second one musters the courage to answer as well. She, too, has two cars, one of each.

Well. We are all equal; cars too.

Once I cross the “piano,” I find the motto of the company displayed on video screens at the entrance:

To bring a design to life you need to believe in it.

BMW design embodies what BMW stands for.

We create . . . emotional pieces.

Emotion drives perfection.

Emotional pieces?? Come on!

In an adjacent building there is this hall, it has only one car in it, with screens all around and one huge screen in the back.

And this line: “Who knew perfection could be that beautiful!”

It looks like a temple, where the car is the God. We, the visitors, are the worshippers.

I knew that Germany was never capitalistic. It’s an extremely religious society, very devout.

All said, the BMW museum is less ambitious than Autostadt, but also less glaring and at many points more pleasing to the eye. In both cases, however, you must admire the genius of German design. Its beauty is captivating. And it’s something I find in this country more and more: Amazing design and superb visuals. Everywhere. If it’s set designs in theaters, sculptures and architecture in the main squares, or museums such as this one, German design screams to the sky in utter beauty. In a single word: Genius.

I move on to the Plant, where they also teach me a few things. Car manufactured here: Series 3. It takes 52 hours to manufacture a car, from start to finish, not including employee breaks. Cars completed per day in this plant: 900. Most Americans want their BMWs in white. Most Germans would rather have theirs in dark colors, such as deep blue. Of the 1,100 employees work here, 10 percent are female. But this last detail: I’m not sure why they need that many. If you happened to come by today and see them, you would agree with me. Here’s one employee playing with his iPhone, checking emails. Here’s one walking around with coffee. And there’s another one having coffee. Hard life.

The robots here, on the other hand, don’t take coffee breaks. These robots work like a team, and they are. It’s science fiction minus the fiction. How a robot waits for another robot to finish a task before assuming its own task is amazing and amusing at the same time. And the more you look at them the more you get a liking to them, as if they were human, or pets.

Oh, doggie.

Soon these robots will form a union, demand robot rights, and declare their loyalty to the Palestinian people. I know.

A word about the cleanliness in this plant: You can lick the floor. Every millimeter of it. Seriously. How do they keep a place like this so clean? Who created these Germans? Couldn’t be God, He’s not that perfect.

I move on. Come along with me. Take a look at this section, where they paint the cars. I make more mess when I fill my fountain pen. And here we have cars. I’m talking
cars
. Not one, not two—hundreds of them. And the place is spic and span. How do these people achieve this? How do these Germans, excuse my French, accomplish their mission with such cleanliness?

Don’t ask me why, but the image of Rote Flora has just infiltrated my head. Many faces has this Fatherland, not all of them the same. Or is it just the other side of the same coin?

I feel so clean, I’m about to vomit. I go outside, take a train, and ten minutes later I get off. A “demo” welcomes me. Where am I, in Hamburg? No, no. It’s Munich still. University students are having a demonstration. What about? Tony, a student of politics, explains to me, in a long-winded speech, that this is a demo about fair politics, just financial practices, just law, socialism, equal opportunity, equal rights, and some other goodies.

What do you want, Tony? Talk to me! I like it short and simple.

“Not to pay tuition fees.”

I like Tony and his bunch of drinking friends. Tomorrow, they say to me, they will have a big demo and they predict that five thousand will join at midday. Traffic will stop, and the government will learn a lesson.

And if not?

“We will take over the buildings of the university.”

At midday the next day I come to witness the miracle, me and the Munich police. This demonstration, what in New York you’d call a party, is fun. Everybody is drinking, gallons of beer are poured. The most these students pay in tuition fees is 500 euro per semester. They way it looks to me, they spend this amount in a couple of days on beer. They should demonstrate against the beer companies, demand free beer. They desperately need a prayer, I think. And, as I’m in the neighborhood, I try to help. That yellow church, Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan, only a few minutes’ walk from here, seems the perfect place. I volunteer to pray for them at the church.

Lovely place. Here’s a Black Madonna, I think. Mother of God was black. Yeah.

The folks at Oberammergau made a huge mistake.

It happens.

Two old German ladies sit next to God’s Mom. “Is this a Catholic church?” asks one of the other. The other lady shrugs, confused like her friend. They leave the church.

The old ladies gone, I’m left alone with some naked little angels. Quite a number of them, actually.

If I were a Catholic priest, a man denied marriage and sex, how would I react to all these little naked boys with little flowers on their penises? I’d probably become a pedophile. In the US of A, if you trade with images like these outside the Church, that’s twenty-five hundred years in prison, minimum.

I try to converse with the Black Mama about the students and my Free Beer Program, but she doesn’t speak Yiddish.

I try another church, Der Alter Peter. Maybe the Mother of God speaks Yiddish there. What a magnificent church! Unbelievable! Whatever the German government spent on the Jewish Center in Munich is peanuts compared with what the Christians got here. If I become a billionaire one day I’d like to buy this place.