Summer Research and the Life Story of Tante Lieschen

Morbidly, perhaps, I've taken to doing family history research journeys during university holidays, taking the Holocaust and Nazi era as my focus.

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Last summer holidays I started by looking at my great-great-grandmother's sister. My father's paternal family wasn't religiously Jewish any more in the 1930s, due to converting to the Protestant faith before the 20th century. Largely they had assimilated — a practice which I gather became controversial amongst 20th century Zionist-leaning thinkers like Gershom Scholem. But, as my grandfather's Ahnenpass reflected, in the 1930s he was considered part-Jewish, and some of his living relatives were considered even more Jewish and thus were in great danger. (In the early 2000s, as he was tidying up and we also went through his sister's papers to see what to keep, I remember that we found both of their Ahnenpässe.)

My grandfather wrote in his memoirs, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, that his 'Tante Lieschen' had died due to the Holocaust. So last summer I was interested in learning more about her life story. It felt especially urgent because of world events: if the Holocaust is only remembered when it is used as a cudgel to justify killing civilians in the Middle East today, or suppressing pro-Palestinian activism in Germany, I am certain that it does the victims of the Holocaust a disservice. Regardless of what my Jewish ancestors and relatives would have thought and felt about the political situation — it is, of course, impossible to know that, although I can say with certainty that in the early 2000s my grandfather sympathized with my father's opinions that Israel's Likud governments went too far — I felt it was important to shed post-World War political interpretations and go back to what we do know about the real people who were affected by the Holocaust.

As others have already researched my family's history in great depth, I found an online biography of Tante Lieschen: her real first name was Elisabeth. She was born into a family of medical researchers at the Charité in Berlin. One of them wrote about transgender identity at a time where I gather it was not often discussed, let alone accepted. After taking care of her sick mother for years, Tante Lieschen ended up (if I remember correctly) in a care home in Potsdam or southwestern Berlin, in her seventies. I don't know if she herself was in the crosshairs of the Nazis early on. But her brother, a politician in Potsdam, incurred the Nazis' ire when he wanted their flag taken off a public building. Eventually a relative of ours found out that she was about to be arrested and transported to a concentration camp. He passed on this information to Tante Lieschen, who took her own life.

My great-great-grandmother, meanwhile, was whisked away to Sweden until it was safe to return to Germany. I felt weird about the situation while reading the biography, and since I've done my research there's been anecdotal evidence to support my doubts. Recently one of my relatives was talking about Tante Lieschen and my great-great-grandmother in a different context. It sounds like the family paid millions of Mark to the Nazis to buy my great-great-grandmother's freedom, but that there wasn't money left over for Tante Lieschen. Perhaps 'Sophie's Choice' is not the right term here, but it is a horrible situation to decide which of two sisters lives and which dies.

To round out the story, at any rate, I found out to my surprise that Elisabeth is buried in Kreuzberg, in a cemetery on the Mehringdamm that I've visited before. It surprised me even more because I thought that the Nazi government buried Jewish Germans in separate cemeteries on the outskirts of the city, or that Tante Lieschen was buried elsewhere in Germany; but it turns out that her remains were transferred to that graveyard years after World War II ended. Visiting the cemetery, I found her resting place: tucked in a black-fenced plot, alongside her siblings and parents, as sunshine and evergreen branches and ivy framed the rather formal monuments. It felt even more personal because my grandfather's cousin, whom I have met, is buried opposite.

Tante Lieschen's story also, however, made me realize the complexity of trying to de-politicize the Holocaust: her brother Ernst's children emigrated to Israel, and one descendant died fighting in a mid-to-late 20th-century war. I can't in good conscience give an interpretation of what her life means for the present day, because it may clash with the interpretations of her closer relatives.

Step-Stones for the Summer Semester

University is inching closer and closer: the summer semester formally resumes on Monday. In preparation, I've signed up for my classes online. So far I've received no response to my application for helping with the student parliament elections. But I've been reviewing elementary Greek grammar exercises, hoping to build a stronger foundation for the next semester. In that sense, my preparations are complete, although a few castles-in-the-air that I had last semester — e.g. reading Spanish literature, reviewing Greek history, finishing the essay about a Spanish playwright in comparison with Molière, and/or reading Isaac Babel about Odessa — would have been a good idea to round out the curriculum...

In the meantime, this evening I went to a volunteer get-together for an organization that supplies refugee housing centres with locals willing to lead sports, sewing or art activities, help with homework, and organize outings.

The get-together was near Tempelhofer Feld. I was a little antsy riding my bicycle toward this area because my stereotype of Neukölln is that nobody obeys the laws of traffic and everyone (being in a great hurry) has a lead foot on the gas/bicycle pedal. The streets, often being older, are also often narrower. Needless to say, all my stereotypes were confirmed. Due to my blundering I also managed to take two wrong turns before realizing and correcting my mistakes. Anyway, at the event we gathered at will at different tables of five to six people, sipping lemonades, water, beer, and wine that the organizers had made available. Then we cooked Mediterranean-style dips, salads, a vegetable and rice stir-fry, garlic flatbread, rice with lentils, and muffins together, which took about three hours. At the end we sat down and ate.

It was, predictably, a friendly and diverse group of volunteers and organizers: others mentioned that they were, for instance, from Argentina, Hungary, Italy, India, Paraguay, Syria, and Ukraine. One or two children and a dog (it was as large as a collie, and I thought moderately but not bumptiously sociable) roamed around amongst us young adults/adults. There were a few glitches in food safety that both horrified and amused me, but while I've already told my family the details I don't think I'll go into them here.

In 2-4 weeks my police certificate of good conduct should (hopefully) have been printed and sent back by the authorities, proving that I'm safe company. Then I'll be tutoring, accompanying refugees to bureaucratic appointments, or both. Likely on Mondays, when it looks like I won't have any classes this semester, and/or on Saturdays. I've been soul-searching about my past volunteering and have come to the conclusion that it's more helpful for organizers if I really treat volunteering like a job, carefully arriving on time etc. (instead of being late, as I've been many a time for clothes-sorting or food sorting...).

A volunteer coordinator gave me advice about being a volunteer, when I asked her:

1. Do communicate to the coordinator, letting them know of problems. It's better than worrying about being a bother or assuming that things are supposed to be dysfunctional ... and letting problems escalate. But being independent is good at the same time.

2. Don't expect adult refugees to be full of energy and enthusiasm for new activities; they're often exhausted and struggling to adjust to living a life that they never expected.

3. If you start dreading going to volunteering appointments or start being unhappy in general, recognize your limits and stop what you're doing.

It seems like good advice, so I've noted it for later.

Fish and Chips, and More Spring

Last night we passed into Daylight Savings Time (I'd prefer to keep winter time, especially as I am not an early bird), but I still woke up early.

T. rang the doorbell for the weekly weekend journey to a bouldering gym with the siblings. The last weeks I hadn't gone because I felt too sleepy.

We went to a gym in the bowels of a post-war building, past a glass door and an Edeka. It was fairly empty. So we didn't need to wait for other boulderers before we could begin. Soon Gi. — who had been delayed by road closures due to the Berlin Half Marathon — joined us, too. My siblings can do difficulty level 4 and 5 courses, but after doing two difficulty level 1 course and one level 3, I ran out of steam. My hands felt too painful to keep going; because since I haven't bouldered lately the skin isn't hardened enough, even if I apply a lot of chalk. That said, regularly cooking and washing dishes by hand for at least 2 months has serendipitously strengthened my arm muscles.

In the meantime, our mother has impulsively ridden the train off to her hometown to meet for coffee with some of our uncles and aunts. She'll be back tomorrow, and so far the journey seems to have been a nice slice of family and early spring flowers in the German countryside.

The past week has been a change from routine in more ways, too.

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Yesterday, I took photographs and notes on a protest about American politics, and saw part of the Berlin Half Marathon festivities as well as a pro-Palestinian protest on the way.

The weather was too cold and windy for (probably) any of us to enjoy standing for over an hour, although I was pleased that my hands weren't too chilly to operate my pen or smartphone.

To go on a tangent: I'm a bit surprised that more American expatriates aren't protesting. It's true that having worked for a US company I understand the concern that political activity can kill a career if one nosy person complains. Yet I don't see the efficacy of sitting at home on one's rear end, if one wants a change. Admittedly I think this skepticism is stronger because I have the chance to see that action is effective firsthand in my amateur journalism: it's not possible to raise awareness of points of view or of how strongly they're held if I have no people and no signs to photograph in public, whereas from the moment people and signs appear in public, the nucleus of a blog post or social media post exists. Passersby respond in real time, too.

Besides I think there's a basic logic to political activity. The more people stay quiet, the easier it remains to retaliate against employees for holding political opinions in their personal lives. It may get worse and worse indefinitely. But if everyone were to firmly state their (reasoned) opinions, employers would have no replacements left to hire.

                                                                                    

Regardless, on Saturday the American protest's organizers struck a cautious note about demonstrating being effective. 'This isn't activism,' a speaker in her fifties told the audience, 'this is just for community. We need to go out and do more after this.' Voting, writing letters to Congresspeople, donating, and repeating all of the above, was what she and others advised. But the speakers' outlook on the efficacy of voting was also pessimistic, because the SAVE Act could undo any hope of voting from abroad. Privately I'm wondering if even a general strike would make any difference to improving civic life in the United States; I suspect that workers' rights in general and labour unions in particular are a lot weaker now than they were during the 1960s, for example, so employers could easily throw people out of work. Do I think, on a personal level, that it's sad and angering that US citizens seem to be reduced to begging for democratic rights, which we've been told for decades were practically copyrighted by the States? — Yes.

The speaker did strike a note of optimism when she recounted the story of Mary Manning, the Irish store clerk whose refusal to handle produce from apartheid South Africa ended up playing a large role in the economic boycotts of the 1980s.

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Returning to personal life, the other departures from routine were, for example, our trip to an Irish pub last weekend. The pub: exposed brick walls in a pre-war residential building with peeling plaster, English Premier League games on the 'telly' and loud whoops from the audience, and bubbling table surfaces that seemed to be made from orange laminate that doesn't take well to acidic cleaning liquids. One of the waitstaff was Irish, judging by the stereotypical lilt, and she called something 'grand' when she was pleased. The restaurant outing was a reward after a bicycle outing to the Drachenberg, a hill in the southwest of the city that was also teeming with other Berliners out for exercise and a panoramic view of the city. We all ordered fish and chips, except for T., who had a chicken burger.

The weather was and is still kind of grim, the trees largely still ashen as they were in winter. But in addition to all the other flowers I've mentioned in past weeks, the intense blue hyacinth blossoms are also out, as well as sparkling golden maple tree blossoms. The green hazel foliage and lilac leaf buds, too, are more intense.

An Ordinary Day in Springtime

Pursuant to the freewheeling university holidays, I woke up well after 11 a.m. today to find the sun shining. The daffodil and tulip leaves on my windowsill are flourishing, and only one set of arugula sprouts has wilted in my egg carton seedling garden.

In the early afternoon (after a dutiful, if uncharacteristic, round of housework) I went shopping at the zero-waste store, and came back with potatoes, flour, an apple, two clementine oranges, and — for Easter — gummy worms. Over the past year or so I've grown sick and tired of cramming plastic packages into the recycling during Christmas and Easter. So this year I've assembled fruit gummies and chocolates in jars and English tea tins to serve as a base for our Easter brunch. Returning to the regular groceries, it's apparently still too early for rhubarb and asparagus in Germany. (Although you can get 500 grams of asparagus for over 9€, from Greece.) But lamb's lettuce and miner's lettuce (Postelein) are abundant.

On the way home I admired the plum blossoms that are appearing in the neighbourhood, and the blazing yellow forsythia bushes. The earliest wrinkly green leaves are brightening the hazel bushes, and more daffodil blossoms emerge every day. Even the first early red-and-yellow tulip has budded. Meanwhile the squills, snowdrops, winter aconites, and crocuses are hanging on despite the warmer temperatures.

Yesterday I'd checked the street water pump: sadly it is not yet functional. But rain is forecast again for tomorrow.

When I arrived back home, for dinner I made potato scones with flecks of fresh parsley. For 'dessert' there was a mid-20th-century granola recipe: it ended up very crumbly and tasted incongruously like popcorn, but everyone liked it.

And, as a treat after my last grocery shopping trip of the day, I bought myself the latest paper issue of the Tagesspiegel and read a few pages. I've already read the free neighbourhood magazines for February and March, which are obligingly laid out at the local grocery stores, so I figured that this extra reading would not be too overwhelming.

Lastly, in the evening, some of us watched the news together: the classic line-up of Berlin news from 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., and then the Tagesschau from 8 to 8:15 p.m.

Saturday Brunch and a Few Minutes with Antifa

This morning I met up with one of my aunts, who's visiting Berlin, in the northeast of the city. Going there on my bicycle, it wasn't exactly fun to ride streets seemingly designed for narrow 18th-century carriage traffic, with cobblestones and dangerous tram tracks, large delivery vans and car drivers with a need for speed, from a road safety perspective. But on the whole I enjoyed the journey, since I don't otherwise get out to that neighbourhood much anymore and of course I was looking forward to the meet-up.

The two of us had tea, quiche and cake together and talked. And then we strolled out for an ice cream. The streets were peaceful considering that the area is a hipster mecca; we did not have to wait in line with fifty (I exaggerate slightly) families for our gelato, which is often enough the case in Berlin. The cloudy weather likely explained it!

It is a relief that rain is forecast again, because the winter has not been as wet as it should have been. I use an app that tracks Berlin's city trees. Since it's geared up again at the beginning of March (when the trees awake from hibernation) it shows that the past month's rainfall has been ~15.5% of what it should be. That said, the street water pump in the neighbourhood was not yet spouting out any water when I checked it earlier this week, so I haven't been able to start supplying 'my' trees with groundwater again. I could use water left over from rinsing vegetables at home, but since tree roots apparently grow deeper and better if given at least 40 litres at once, I think it would take a week (and a lot of forbearance on my mother's side) to gather the right amount.

I was caught up in an anti-fascist protest on my way home. A huge contingent of police vans had been dispersed in flotillas around the general area. Riot police officers had even been shipped in from Bavaria (their black uniforms had the telltale abbreviation "BY" on the backs) to help the Berlin authorities deal with a plethora of demonstrations. The counter-protest I was caught up in was inspired by a march of a neo-Nazi party. Judging by the speaker whose message was being amplified from a vehicle at the rear of the neo-Nazis, the marchers felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon and that the mainstream political parties were no good. I wasn't sure if this allegation of censorship was a reference to the government recently shutting down a publishing house that reprinted the 'greatest hits' of the Nazi era without context or comment.

Riot police on foot and the police vans didn't just surround the march. Eventually one group of officers put on their helmets (generally an indication that things are getting heated) while others performed an uncomfortable trot to keep up with the moving crowd of counter-protestors.

These counter-protestors were mostly, I judged, at least a decade younger than me, so not unlike my classmates at university. One held out a black Antifa flag with logo where the neo-Nazis would see it at the front of the crowd, but most carried neither signs nor flags. Many others clapped their hands, raised their arms, and chanted 'Siamo tutti antifascisti!' To vary the programme, they sometimes chanted "Nazis raus!", and two or three at the front of the crowd silently held up both middle fingers, while another tooted a horn to try to drown out the rightwing protest's messages. A few had muffled their mouths with scarves, a few wore black FFP2 face masks, and one young person wore a keffiyeh around their neck. As a protestor came to stand on the bollard right beside me, I presumed that nobody minded my incongruous presence in a business-casual wool skirt, tights, baby-blue knit sweater, and flowered pink silk scarf.

Eventually the police blocked the counter-protest's progress entirely, perhaps because the street narrowed past this point? The fun was essentially over. I went up to the front of the crowd, explained that I lived in street X, and asked if there'd be any way of getting through within the next 10 minutes. An officer answered, through her face shield, 'Vorerst geht nichts mehr.'

So I took a detour home, feeling a little guilty that I'd enjoyed myself so much when the subject matter of the protests had been serious.

Fortunately the rest of the journey was uneventful. The evening news mentioned that, like other protests in Berlin today, these protests' turnout had been lower than projected. There were no gruesome tales to be told.

Daffodils, Databases and Dates

It's beginning to be spring: the daffodil, leek, and arugula leaves on my windowsill have begun to sprout, and not only the hazel and alder catkins but also the earliest yellow Oregon grape blossoms, crocuses in yellow but also purple and blue, chionodoxa and faded-looking late white snowdrops are out. In front of City Hall, a cluster of daffodil flowers looked ready to burst out of its buds this afternoon.

I successfully finished my Excel course at university, and my holidays will thenceforth be unalloyed until April 13th! We spent the last week finishing an Excel project, which was a slog because I didn't save back-up copies properly and thus had to redo much of it once my instructor pointed out errors that I'd need to fix in order to pass the class. (It's pass/fail, so in that respect the stakes were lower.) But we also went through databases, queries, reports and data-entry forms in Access. I was quite happy that we didn't use Access for work back in my professional life, even if the reports and data-entry forms might have been useful. Because when the instructor let us take a look at the Structured Query Language (SQL) view, all the nested round brackets etc. made the syntax look pretty hairy.

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As far as the war on Iran goes, the news feels much more bearable if one has a daily routine to immerse one's self in selfishly. Then the moment I hear of the news again, I feel plunged back into a dystopia. For what it's worth, we're hearing in the German news about German travellers who were stranded in the Middle East when airports were being shot at and missiles intercepted over hotel roofs, but also high gas and oil prices. (One Berlin company that uses trucks told the RBB Abendschau frankly that if this situation continues 6 more months, they'll be out of business because there's no way their clients will want to pay for that.) Of course the war itself is also being reported on.

I decided to go by the Iranian embassy in Berlin today to get the lay of the land during this unfortunately historic time. The embassy is on a street of large and fancy villas near the university (Berlin is generally too cramped for buildings of that size, which seem more typical of the rich Babelsberg area between us and Potsdam), not far from the Indian and Jordanian representatives. The Iranian embassy is the only one with a police booth in front. Two male cops were patrolling along the sidewalk, one of them in what looked to me like a formal dress uniform cap that I never see amongst the riot police at protests. They were chatting with each other, seeming relaxed enough, a white-and-red security fence separating them from the street.

In and on the fence of the embassy there were photographs presumably of victims of the latest war, wilted roses, flags of the Islamic Republic, and posters saying 'No War on Iran' and '160 killed on the first day' (referring to the school in Minab). At the same time, across the street, ten or so protestors were playing music and holding the sun-emblazoned flag of the monarchist movement. They have been protesting for weeks, non-stop, under the slogan "Stoppt Hinrichtungen im Iran/Solidarität mit den Bürgerprotesten im Iran."

But I didn't talk with the protestors. I was feeling hungry (no breakfast) and exhausted after my long day, and I didn't want to be a disaster tourist.

To be honest, as a private individual I also think that only one of the Pahlavis who was actually imprisoned for opposing the Shah sounds pretty compelling.

In general, I've been feeling that the war is not an amateur journalism-friendly topic, either. One reason is that the war on Iran seems so inscrutable: if I were working in foreign intelligence, I think I'd have a better grip on things. That said, I suspect that a recent report in the Guardian is the only explanation that makes sense: some American military commanders, certainly also the Ambassador to Israel, and perhaps the Secretary of Defense, are pushing this war, because this military campaign has a Biblical dimension and is linked to their conception of Armageddon.

Either way, the more closely I follow the news, the more contradictions I find. For example, when the tens of thousands of Iranian protestors were killed earlier this year, I read that Israel and Persian Gulf neighbours tried to prevent the U.S. president from attacking Iran's military and police in defense of the protestors, because the Middle Eastern countries were worried about the blowback. But then, right after the war broke out, the Prime Minister of Israel was reported as being the person who had brought up the idea of a military intervention. I've also read that Saudi Arabia's government was pushing for the war.

Another example: Governments like Germany's and Canada's seem to be in favour of the US-Israeli attacks. Yet when they're asked about sending in the military, they rule it out except in a 'defensive role.' But if the war were actually justified, and if the threat to other countries from Iran's military had been so great and time-critical, surely they'd be willing to do their part?

A third example: all of the arguments used by those who want to attack Iran would apply just as well to Russia (threat of nuclear war) or Saudi Arabia (religious extremism and misogyny, besides which I think the Trump administration wants to give them nuclear technology).

Of course it worries me to feel that governments are being so dishonest. I'm also worried that this war will radicalize people.

In the meantime, Ramadan goes on. The current routine in my neighbourhood is: people in a good mood when I go shopping, crescent moon decorations in the restaurant beneath my family's apartment, dates and water bottles and bread baskets set out on tables for the breaking of the fast, the call of the muezzin at dusk, and families eating al fresco at the tables on the sidewalk.