The writing prompt that confronted me and my son, Lazar, as we were about to leave the Documentation Center at the Berlin Wall Memorial seemed innocuous enough: What about the situation faced by Berliners when the Wall went up in 1961—dividing the city, separating families, and prompting ever more desperate escape attempts from communist East Germany—still seemed relevant today?
Visitors were invited to scrawl their responses on little scraps of paper and clip them to strings hanging from the ceiling for all to see.
But the more I thought about the question itself, the more troubling the answer appeared to be.
Lazar and I had flown from New York City to Berlin for spring break. Lazar loves visiting Europe—he’s a history major with a fondness for trains—and we both thought that a week spent sightseeing and riding the local rails would be a thrilling father-son adventure. Everyone we knew who’d been to Berlin raved about the city.
We weren’t disappointed. Over the course of five days, we crisscrossed Berlin via U- and S-Bahn, took a high-speed train to Dresden, and gorged ourselves on currywurst, pretzels, and beer. But I’d be lying if I said that it all was just a carefree jaunt.
The afternoon we arrived, we strolled from our hotel to the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament. Hitler was appointed Chancellor there in 1933, and an arson attack just four weeks later was used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties and pave the way for the coming Nazi dictatorship.
We continued on to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a collection of metal stelae that resembles a sprawling, slightly claustrophobic cemetery. Along the way, we encountered the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, which describes how the Nazis attempted to exterminate yet another ethnic group. We’d known that the Germans had persecuted the Romani people alongside Jews like ourselves during the war; but not to the extent revealed by the memorial, which presented the lives of various Sinti and Roma who were hunted by the Nazis in ways that seemed all too familiar. If we’d walked just a little further, we’d have passed the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism.
The next day, we visited the Jewish Museum, which includes a series of floor-to-ceiling banners detailing every one of the hundreds of antisemitic proclamations issued from 1933 onwards. These proclamations served to tighten the noose around the necks of German Jews—Jews cannot join the civil service, cannot practice law, cannot receive public-school subsidies, cannot do this, cannot do that—until the only way they could leave the country legally was on a train bound for a ghetto in eastern Europe. We also spent some time at the Topography of Terror, a museum housed in the former Gestapo headquarters that explains how the Nazis developed the political and bureaucratic apparatus required to carry out Hitler’s agenda, from “euthanizing” the disabled (something that had nothing to do with relieving pain and suffering, and everything to do with murdering adults and children deemed unworthy of life) to sending millions to concentration camps.
When people say that contemporary Germans have done an admirable job of confronting their past, they aren’t kidding. Their museums and memorials hold nothing back.
The following day, we worked our way through a series of sites devoted to the German Democratic Republic, a totalitarian dystopia in which absolute conformity to the official state Marxist-Leninist ideology was required, neighbour informed on neighbour, and official propaganda portraying a workers’ paradise stood in stark contrast to the drab, oppressive reality of everyday life.
As was the case with the WWII material we had encountered, Lazar and I were familiar with at least some of this sobering postwar history. But neither of us had seen Germany’s divided past presented in such excruciating detail, much of it through personal histories and eye-witness accounts.
As a result, by the time we made it to the Berlin Wall Memorial, we were both ready for a stein of something sudsy. And that question about what seems relevant today—visitors were invited to write their answers on little slips of paper and suspend them from clips hanging from the ceiling—triggered a flood of disquieting thoughts and feelings.
The prompt was meant to address the situation in Berlin from 1961, when the Wall went up, to 1989, when it came down—a period that covers a lot of ground, from the height of the Cold War to the fall of the Soviet Union. But one display, which featured the videotaped testimony of people who had managed to slip from East to West Berlin despite the Wall, struck an especially resonant chord.
In one segment, a man who’d escaped in 1961 explained why he had chosen that particular moment to flee. After all, East Germany fell behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s, and there had been ample reason to relocate long before the Wall appeared. But as this man said, he only decided to leave when the freedom to do so was taken from him. Until that happened, he hadn’t felt the need.
This made me think of all those German Jews who stayed until escape was no longer possible. Before that happened, many must have asked themselves the same question over and over again: Should we get out now, or wait to see if it gets even worse? Leave too soon, and you risk uprooting yourself and your family before it’s absolutely necessary—when things could still return to normal, or at least get better. Wait too long, and you might not be able to get out at all.
It’s a question that I think many people in many parts of the world, including the United States, are probably asking themselves right now. My wife, my two sons, and I, all hold a couple of passports, and we have all wondered if we might need to use them if the political situation in the United States becomes intolerable.
The most logical place to go would be Canada—I was born and raised in Montreal, and the boys and I are dual citizens—and we’ve talked about doing just that more than once over the past decade.
But we’ve also all wondered what exactly “intolerable” would look like. As our younger son, Django, put it recently, the United States has already passed the point on the road to autocracy that Ingrid and I once thought would have justified moving north. What would it actually take for us to hit the eject button? More political violence? More attempts to cow the media and cozy up to white supremacists? More assaults on democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law?
What is happening in America today is not the same as what happened in Germany during the run-up to World War II, nor is it the same as what happened during the establishment of Soviet-controlled East Germany. But the parallels are undeniable, and it makes me queasy. How did people back then determine whether—and when—to leave? And how many paid a terrible price for getting it wrong?
These are not rhetorical questions. I honestly don’t know how we are supposed to figure all this out; and for the remainder of our trip —in restaurants, on trains, wandering the city on foot—Lazar and I attempted to articulate what our personal thresholds might be without reaching any definitive conclusions. What would it take to persuade us to jump ship, leaving behind our lives as we know them?
Drinking a beer by the Spree River and talking about these imponderables, a tour boat gliding lazily by, the sun dropping behind the neoclassical buildings surrounding us, I felt an acute sense of empathy for anyone who has ever faced a similar dilemma–and a profound sense of gratitude that I was able to freely discuss such questions with my son, even if neither of us had yet to find any clear answers.
The writing prompt that confronted me and my son, Lazar, as we were about to leave the Documentation Center at the Berlin Wall Memorial seemed innocuous enough: What about the situation faced by Berliners when the Wall went up in 1961—dividing the city, separating families, and prompting ever more desperate escape attempts from communist East Germany—still seemed relevant today?
Visitors were invited to scrawl their responses on little scraps of paper and clip them to strings hanging from the ceiling for all to see.
But the more I thought about the question itself, the more troubling the answer appeared to be.
Lazar and I had flown from New York City to Berlin for spring break. Lazar loves visiting Europe—he’s a history major with a fondness for trains—and we both thought that a week spent sightseeing and riding the local rails would be a thrilling father-son adventure. Everyone we knew who’d been to Berlin raved about the city.
We weren’t disappointed. Over the course of five days, we crisscrossed Berlin via U- and S-Bahn, took a high-speed train to Dresden, and gorged ourselves on currywurst, pretzels, and beer. But I’d be lying if I said that it all was just a carefree jaunt.
The afternoon we arrived, we strolled from our hotel to the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament. Hitler was appointed Chancellor there in 1933, and an arson attack just four weeks later was used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties and pave the way for the coming Nazi dictatorship.
We continued on to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a collection of metal stelae that resembles a sprawling, slightly claustrophobic cemetery. Along the way, we encountered the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, which describes how the Nazis attempted to exterminate yet another ethnic group. We’d known that the Germans had persecuted the Romani people alongside Jews like ourselves during the war; but not to the extent revealed by the memorial, which presented the lives of various Sinti and Roma who were hunted by the Nazis in ways that seemed all too familiar. If we’d walked just a little further, we’d have passed the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism.
The next day, we visited the Jewish Museum, which includes a series of floor-to-ceiling banners detailing every one of the hundreds of antisemitic proclamations issued from 1933 onwards. These proclamations served to tighten the noose around the necks of German Jews—Jews cannot join the civil service, cannot practice law, cannot receive public-school subsidies, cannot do this, cannot do that—until the only way they could leave the country legally was on a train bound for a ghetto in eastern Europe. We also spent some time at the Topography of Terror, a museum housed in the former Gestapo headquarters that explains how the Nazis developed the political and bureaucratic apparatus required to carry out Hitler’s agenda, from “euthanizing” the disabled (something that had nothing to do with relieving pain and suffering, and everything to do with murdering adults and children deemed unworthy of life) to sending millions to concentration camps.
When people say that contemporary Germans have done an admirable job of confronting their past, they aren’t kidding. Their museums and memorials hold nothing back.
The following day, we worked our way through a series of sites devoted to the German Democratic Republic, a totalitarian dystopia in which absolute conformity to the official state Marxist-Leninist ideology was required, neighbour informed on neighbour, and official propaganda portraying a workers’ paradise stood in stark contrast to the drab, oppressive reality of everyday life.
As was the case with the WWII material we had encountered, Lazar and I were familiar with at least some of this sobering postwar history. But neither of us had seen Germany’s divided past presented in such excruciating detail, much of it through personal histories and eye-witness accounts.
As a result, by the time we made it to the Berlin Wall Memorial, we were both ready for a stein of something sudsy. And that question about what seems relevant today—visitors were invited to write their answers on little slips of paper and suspend them from clips hanging from the ceiling—triggered a flood of disquieting thoughts and feelings.
The prompt was meant to address the situation in Berlin from 1961, when the Wall went up, to 1989, when it came down—a period that covers a lot of ground, from the height of the Cold War to the fall of the Soviet Union. But one display, which featured the videotaped testimony of people who had managed to slip from East to West Berlin despite the Wall, struck an especially resonant chord.
In one segment, a man who’d escaped in 1961 explained why he had chosen that particular moment to flee. After all, East Germany fell behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s, and there had been ample reason to relocate long before the Wall appeared. But as this man said, he only decided to leave when the freedom to do so was taken from him. Until that happened, he hadn’t felt the need.
This made me think of all those German Jews who stayed until escape was no longer possible. Before that happened, many must have asked themselves the same question over and over again: Should we get out now, or wait to see if it gets even worse? Leave too soon, and you risk uprooting yourself and your family before it’s absolutely necessary—when things could still return to normal, or at least get better. Wait too long, and you might not be able to get out at all.
It’s a question that I think many people in many parts of the world, including the United States, are probably asking themselves right now. My wife, my two sons, and I, all hold a couple of passports, and we have all wondered if we might need to use them if the political situation in the United States becomes intolerable.
The most logical place to go would be Canada—I was born and raised in Montreal, and the boys and I are dual citizens—and we’ve talked about doing just that more than once over the past decade.
But we’ve also all wondered what exactly “intolerable” would look like. As our younger son, Django, put it recently, the United States has already passed the point on the road to autocracy that Ingrid and I once thought would have justified moving north. What would it actually take for us to hit the eject button? More political violence? More attempts to cow the media and cozy up to white supremacists? More assaults on democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law?
What is happening in America today is not the same as what happened in Germany during the run-up to World War II, nor is it the same as what happened during the establishment of Soviet-controlled East Germany. But the parallels are undeniable, and it makes me queasy. How did people back then determine whether—and when—to leave? And how many paid a terrible price for getting it wrong?
These are not rhetorical questions. I honestly don’t know how we are supposed to figure all this out; and for the remainder of our trip —in restaurants, on trains, wandering the city on foot—Lazar and I attempted to articulate what our personal thresholds might be without reaching any definitive conclusions. What would it take to persuade us to jump ship, leaving behind our lives as we know them?
Drinking a beer by the Spree River and talking about these imponderables, a tour boat gliding lazily by, the sun dropping behind the neoclassical buildings surrounding us, I felt an acute sense of empathy for anyone who has ever faced a similar dilemma–and a profound sense of gratitude that I was able to freely discuss such questions with my son, even if neither of us had yet to find any clear answers.