Photo by DANIEL PASCHE Photography

Yesterday I woke up and was arrested. Well, maybe it wasn´t that much like Kafka. Let´s be honest. Yesterday I woke up by someone ringing my door bell. I opened and had an old lady in front of me who said that 15 minutes ago a guy who said he was me borrowed 70 Euros from her. She said she found him suspicious but still gave the money to him. I´m like who, when, what?? Just like when writing an article, only without the proper answers. The first thing I could say was „and how did he look like“.

„Tall, like 20 years old“.

“and he said he was me?“

„Yes, Mendelssohn X“

I needed some time to make sense of all of this. After my first glimpse at the woman I had thought she was from the Mormons or Yehova´s Witnesses. But she seemed to be a very nice old woman, a little bit naive, someone who would give a random guy 70 Euro if he rang her bell and asked. But I was not amused by the story. Berlin´s southwestern suburbia is characterized by the fact that nothing ever happens. That´s why most people live there. Because nothing ever happens when compared to pretty much all other areas. I simply don´t know people who would do that, so I immediately thought one of those high school kids who pass the area from the school to the bus stop probably needed money for dope or something, and looked at all the name tags, and chose with a probability of 10% mine and went over there. Or someone from the house? But he could have been easily identified. I immediately had to think about Pulp Fiction and this corrupt policeman Zed who banged that black mafia dude and/or Bruce Willis up the ass. I thought „Zed,s dead, Baby, Zed´s dead“. The woman was still standing there. I asked her whether she would like to call the police. She was unsure, but I thought if someone is walking around the hood doing shit in my name it´s better to inform the police, you never know. So I called them. I like calling the police but I don´t enjoy the talk. I always feel this immense pressure not to talk about weed. Not that I usually like to talk about weed, but the fact that usually it would be possible but now a no-go creates a scenario of pressure. The police guy asked whether he should come to my place. I told him he should rather go to the woman´s place, because she got robbed, I only want to let them know that if a Mendellsohn X is causing trouble, it is not me. Then I made a mistake. Because I´m currently writing my academic thesis and have a certain time pressure and actualy had planned to start the day at five in the morning, I told him that I actually would like to give the case over to him, because I don´t have any more time for it. I knew that he got suspicious. He was making a strange sound like he dropped a pen in the head, something like this. I told the woman that the police would come to her place and she should tell them what happened and offered her a chocolate easter bunny, a gift I had received but never ate, not because I´m Jewish, but because the moment simply never happened that I said „Mendelssohn, time to eat the easter bunny“. 30 minutes later the police comes TO MY PLACE. I welcomed them asking them if they had already been to the woman´s place. They declined. So I told them the story. But because I´m a passionate writer I have the ability to switch pretty well in other roles. And the more I had thought about that Zed guy who said he was me and took the money, the more I became him. And the policemen were in a monday morning 9am mood, the most revolutionary thing they had ever done was probably to attend a Phil Collins concert. To make it short, I think I left a strange impression. But I had waited so much time before starting the thesis, so I was really under pressure now. They left and went to the woman. I thought that was it. But again 30 minutes later the door rang again. This time it was a woman around 40, no wait, I´m almost 40, let´s say a woman around 50 who introduced herself as the daughter of the old woman. She excused herself and said her mother suffers from dementia. Someone had come to her mothers and said he was a neighbor and „borrowed“ the money, but the guy never said he was Mendelssohn X. She, the daughter, had told her mother that her description would fit to Mendelssohn X. That´s why her mother came to my place believing I was the one and mixing up the wording. I thanked her for clearing things up and thought: God has a nice way of teaching me why it is important to keep the Scientific Standards, when writing a thesis.

Wenn a Hind gebt a Gebell fuhrt man noch zusammen, extra in der Nacht, as ma liegt in a Scheune oder eppes unter a Brick.

Die Menschen, sunders die Chajalim vun die Amerikaners hobn a Rachmunes und nemmen einem mit, a Schtickale von dem Weg und geben zu essen Broit und Konserves mit Fleisch und affile a Schokolad.

Wie hat man dus scheine Leben vardient?

Far wus lebt men?

Wo sennen die Menschen wus sein geworn geharget?

Far wus hot man sei geharget?

Soll men essen, soll men trinken? Soll men atmen?

Soll men davenen?

Wird er heren wus me sugt ihm?

Man loift und loift mit kaputte Fiß in kaputte Schiech mit Schmattes gebunden. Mit Schmattes angezoigen. Ober man loift vorwärts in die Sun aran, gen Minechen.

Dus Leben is schein ober es is ouchet gur nich asoi schein.

Bis hundert und zwanzig Juhr. Oder bis hundert.

Seid mir gesind und vargesst nich, dus man tu nich vargessen.

Der Mai is gekummen und mit ihm dus Leben.

Benjamin Perach Katan

ARTE >>>

Intro:
Yesterday I posted the Ynet-article about the extremist group „Lehava“ who currently runs „Jewish Girls – Don´t date Non-Jews“-campaigns in Israel.
Interestingly, many decent people told me in private that those issues should be silenced because I would do bad PR for Israel in these harsh times. The thing is just that as most Jews in the post-holocaust era, I have a good nose for Antisemitism, but additionally, as a German Jew I smell Nazism like a police dog smells particles of drugs.
And Nazism doesn´t start in the entrance door of Auschwitz, Nazism starts when someone like Hitler writes in 1923 about his anger of seeing blong German girls date Jewish men. It may be news to some people, but yes, „getting drunk“ and „being drunk“ are interrelated.
In the comments beneath the article some readers defended it by saying: Yes, this is important, because intermarriage is a silent holocaust. I am serious, that is what they said.
I once wrote a text about this, which I took back later due to bad timing, but I think here is the right place to publish it. But before I wanna put out one thing, to make clear that I am not like those people who made the „ad“:

Everyone is free to choose his/her partner according to preferred criteria, and if observant religion is your top priority, you might wanna look for a similar partner, that´s fine, or as we say: Find out what interests you and be as good as you can. But this is a highly confidential and personal decision. But if people make anti-Arab campaigns compareable to “Kauft nicht bei Juden”, it is a declaration of war against everything which is good about the Judaism I grew up with.

The creation of Israel, the Jewish State is a true miracle. So many utopias of the 19th and 20th centuries have failed, even the Soviet Union ceased to exist – only Israel, only Zionism managed to maintain this tiny state based on an idea. And world Jewry needed it. Us, who were born after all the big wars, what do we know about being Jewish after the holocaust but before the Six-Day-War? After all, the viciousness of the Nazis was so beyond anything imaginable, so it is understandable that people have fears when being in countries with non-Jewish majorities. To me it is obvious that the lesson from history is that we need both, a strong Jewish state and a strong cosmopolitan Judaism worldwide. Ministers from Netanyahu´s coalition have described intermarriage in the diaspora as a „silent holocaust“. This is a very vicious way of holocaust denial. As if there is no difference between non-Jews trying to kill Jews, and non-Jews who are marrying Jews. So in official ads you hear slogans like „Intermarriage is Hitler´s victory“. Anyone who didn´t learn history from Groupthink motivations, but is willing to understand what actually happend between 1933 and 1945, knows that it is exactly the other way around. If Jews had remained in the Shtetl, orthodox and only among themselves, Hitler would have probably given them minor importance. He didn´t hate the Jew for keeping Jewish tradtitions. Don´t mix him up with the Greeks you know from Hanukkah. He hated them for entering and destroying his illusion of a racially pure Germanic tradition. He didn´t hate the Rebbe, he hated the cosmopolitan Jewish artists and activists, who gave young readers dreams about a better world, an international world, against the narrow-mindedness which Hitler thought to be the ideal. Hitler didn´t hate Jewish prayers as much as he hated articles like the one you are reading right now. And some Jewish leaders as Jabotinsky would have supported him in this, as also revisionist Zionism thought that the biggest problem of the Jewish nation is their prophetic dream of having the lamb sleep next to the wolf. Moral restraints were viewed as a sickness of the diaspora, that rooted from political weakness. Hitler said the same with a different wording: The Jews have invented the conscience and moral guilt. Having the Likud Party, that comes from this revisionist Zionism, ruling in Israel, and me existing in Berlin, I guess you can tell what my answer would be to the question of who defeats Hitler more and who keeps his spirit alive not knowing the facts on the ground.
We need to free ourselves from the burden of defining our identity in a negative way. It cannot be that the only thing that keeps us together is that we were persecuted together. This seems like a strong answer, but it is a weakness as it is a self-impression based on the reactions of other people. Freedom, Jewish freedom, is what we gain when we make our agenda, because it comes from the innermost part of our hearts. And this needs to be defended against all threats from the outside as well as the inside. A people of 13 million with such a history and an amount of attention as if it were 500 million can only sustain if it has a special mission. If Hitler thinks that we invented morality we shouldn´t act like Jabotinsky who responds „Yes, you are right, sorry about that“ but be proud of it that we know what the next steps of human kind ought to be, even if this is too much for some Austrian dumbfuck to understand. For this mission we need our supreme ability to remember. Therefore we have to remember much darkness, such as the holocaust. But the question remains, what we do with the memories. Do we instrumentalize them or do we truly mourn? Every culture has something to offer to the world. The Hebrew prophets with their holy sermons against the oppressor and for the widow and the orphan is a gift to the world of such beauty, that it should be a source of a self-conscious and humble pride. After seeing pogroms and mass murder it is understandable that some of us thought the solution is that we have to try everything in order to become a normal nation just like other people or as Ben Gurion said: There should also be Jewish prostitutes. But the only problem in this equation is that other people don´t want to be LIKE other people. They simply are other people. So let our lesson from the holocaust not be that we have to construct ourselves as separate from the world as Hitler and the Halachah wants us to be. Let´s defeat Hitler by being proud of the fact that we stand for everything that he hated, and that we are still around, flourishing, with so many good people from NY to Berlin and Haifa to Eilat.

Da stapfte ich mit ein paar Kindern aus unserer Siedlung, (Schchunah), auch durch den Sand der Dünen zwischen Chulon und Bat Yam (Sanden genannt von den deutschen Müttern), um für Lag Ba Omer einen Scheiterhaufen aufzutürmen, auf dem man leicht alle Hexen und Gotteslästerer plus der unwilligen jüdischen Konvertiten früherer inquisitionsgequälter Jahrhunderte hätte verbrennen können.

Wir aber wollten niemanden verbrennen. Wir wollten nur Feuer, ein riesiges, prasselndes Feuer, dass die Nacht erleuchten sollte bis zum Berge Sinai und bis zum Suezkanal, auf dass unsere Väter nach Hause finden sollten und die Schiffe ihren Weg nach Nord und Süd.

Brennmaterial, also Holz gab`s nicht viel. Wir haben alles angeschleppt was wir finden konnten. Äste, Bäume, Stühle, Sofas, Tische, Obstkisten, Bretter von Baustellen -deshalb ist die Omerzeit ja auch eine Zeit der Trauer, weil die jüdische Bauindustrie in Israel jedes mal durch akuten Brettermangel in den Seilen hängt.

Und dann noch eine riesige Standuhr, die Generationen durch die Diaspora geschleppt hatten, von Polen über Österreich-Ungarn, über die rumänischen Karpaten,-daher noch die Bissspuren im Holz-, nach Wien, Paris, Marsaille und über Zypern nach Haifa und von dort, das war der schwierigste Abschnitt, nach Chulon in unser Wohnzimmer wo ich sie gefunden hatte.

Meine Mutter war arbeiten und es war für die Chewreh Ehrensache und eine Freude mir zu helfen das Monstrum mit seinem widerlichen Bim Bam Bim Bam abzutransportieren und auf den Haufen zu schaffen, wo es nun endlich seinen letzten Frieden gefunden zu haben schien.

Ach wir waren ja Kinder, allerdings jüdische Kinder aus Chulon.

Am Nachmittag kam meine Mutter in die Dünen, um unsere schöne Arbeit zu bewundern, die Uhr zu retten und um mich ordentlich durchzubläuen, vor allen Freunden, denen sie in ihrer mir so vertrauten und gliebten Großzügigkeit ähnliches, wenn nicht noch besseres anbot. Meine Kumpel verzichteten fortrennend und mich im Stich lassend. Die Schneidebretter aus unserer Küche und das kleine Tischchen vom Balkon hatte sie nicht bemerkt, so dass ich für die folgende Zeit noch genug Grund zum trauern hatte, denn es war ja Omer.

Dann war der Abend gekommen und einige trockene Grasbüschel und viel Papier ließen das riesige Kunstwerk auflodern, dass es nur so eine Lagba war, ein Omer, eine Ssimcheh und ein Jubel und alle staubigen Kindergesichter erstrahlten im Glanze dieser Medurah, dieses Superlagerfeuers, und auch die Erwachsenen staunten nicht schlecht was wir Kinder so auf die Beine stellen konnten – und dann abbrennen. Wo hatten wir nur die Streichhölzer her, wo doch unsere Eltern alle srarke Raucher waren. Das ist bis heute ein großes Wunder und zwar ein so großes Wunder, dass man zu Chanukkah daran acht mal gedenkt. Mit Kerzen und Liedern, oder so ähnlich.

Als alles runtergebrannt war und nur die Glut leuchtete warfen wir Kartoffeln hinein um sie später verkohlt mit Stecken herauszubugsieren und, uns dabei völlig eindreckend, mit Salz aus der Hosentasche zu verspeisen. Das war was. Das liebten wir. Das war wichtig.

Ach ja, und bis heute isst man ja auch zu Chanukkah Kartoffelpuffer, Lattkes, und zwar zum Gedenken an dieses schöne Fest in Chulon im Jahre 1956 und weil es nicht so einen Dreck macht.  Aber gut riechen tut´s trotzdem.

Nun denn, liebe Kinder, legt euch schön ins Bettchen, deckt euch zu und träumt von einem riesigen Lagerfeuer zu Lag Ba Omer, aber lasst die Standuhren stehen wo sie stehen und haltet in der Nacht das Pendel an damit ihr schön schlafen könnt. Bim Bam, Bim Bam, Bumm.

Euer leicht verrußter Benjamin Perach Katan.             Törrööhh! Die Feuerwehr.

I visited Poland recently, the country my parents had to leave in 1968, because they were Jewish. Working on a radio documentary on our parents Polish-Jewish history, in search of our roots, me and my cousin went to Warsaw and Wroclaw, interviewing both scientists/historians and others about the antisemitic campaign during 1968, launched by the Communist Party. I discovered these dolls, depicting Jews, holding gold coins in their hands. It seems like the echo of antisemitism is still alive Poland… With a sad, creepy feeling in my body, I thought, what would these men selling “greedy Jews” on the streets of Poland think if they went to Israel and found that one of the most common souvenirs was “Polish greedy men” with golden coins in their hands? Aren’t people thinking at all? It’s 2012. Over 60 years since the Holocaust and over 30 years since around 20-30 000 Jews were forced to leave their homeland in Europe. In my heart, I feel Jewish… And also want to feel Polish. But some part of me is still waiting for that country to erase that last echo of antisemitism, for me to feel that Polish as I wish. When will Poland make me proud and throw away these horrible dolls? Hope we don’t have to wait 30 more years.