Judenstaat (5 page)

He released her wrist and handed her his card. It was the same card that he gave her every month. She had a stack of them in her room. Somehow, they never made it to the wastebasket. There were times when she wondered if, by keeping those cards, she compromised herself. The fact was, she was used to those visits, and if she was going to be honest, had grown to depend on them. Leaving aside that ghost, the agent had become the only man in her life.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “And don't hesitate to contact me. For any reason. We can help you get a new room. You know, this dormitory is slated for demolition next year.”

 

7

THE
Ministry of State Security knew everything. Judit had grown up hearing stories of heroic Stasi agents who neutralized Nazi bandits in the '50s through a network of informers and helped secure the borders in the years before the Protective Rampart. When Leonora learned the Stasi would look in on Judit, she'd been so relieved, she cried. Still, if the Stasi were so all-knowing and all-powerful, Hans would still be alive.

Judit's dormitory room had a narrow bed and a pressed-wood desk and chair, and she sat at that desk for a while with the note spread out in front of her. The print was faint and growing fainter by the hour. She switched on the desk lamp, but the glare made things worse.

Maybe she wasn't at the trial, but she couldn't help hearing about the spectacle. Arno Durmersheimer was arrested with half a dozen others—all men in their sixties. They were members of some ridiculous Saxon folk-dancing club. Durmersheimer played the accordion. With his overalls and close-cropped red hair, he was the kind of Saxon you see everywhere and never see at all.

Durmersheimer had been one of those Rathen snipers who'd terrorized Judenstaat until he'd been deported to the West. He had been unapologetic. “I have nothing against Jews unless they're Reds or Cosmopolitans. I wish I'd gotten more of them. Now, I guess, Jews hunt me.”

How did he re-cross the border? It was a question that must have been answered at the trial. The bullet had come from Durmersheimer's gun. Hans Klemmer's name was on a list of so-called collaborators found on Durmersheimer's person. Durmersheimer seemed bewildered by the trial itself, never denied the charges. He kept repeating: “What's a Saxon to you? Just shoot him in the head if he gets in the way, or let the Reds do your shooting for you.”

There was more—she was sure—about the other suspects, the folk-dancing, the list of collaborators. There must be a transcript somewhere. She could certainly request files to be transferred to the archive. Yet if she took that step, it would raise questions that felt—against all logic—private. This was not state business. Whoever broke into her archive had risked something to get to her.

No, she couldn't pursue this openly. She had other sources: what Kornfeld called her “regional field trips.” Loschwitz was worth a try.

*   *   *

The Stasi had no jurisdiction in Loschwitz. Those people had their own laws and their own courts. There were no street signs, only Yiddish
pashkevils
in Hebrew script reporting births, deaths, and feuds between rabbis. Sometimes there'd be a
pashkevil
in German to address outsiders: “Women: Be Modest” or more jarringly, in some shop window: “Bundists are not Jews.” Tucked between synagogues were shops that sold black-market goods or exchanged Judenmarks for foreign currency. Rumor had it that a girl who got into trouble could bypass the state clinic for an abortion in a room above a kosher butcher shop.

When Judit went to Loschwitz, she took care to cover her head with a beret and wear a calf-length skirt and stockings. The disguise was worth the trouble because it was in Loschwitz that Judit found a junk shop, never in the same place twice, but always carrying the same inventory: plastic bowls and tarnished flatware, magazines from Judenstaat's deep past, some in yellowed slipcases, and others half-chewed and unreadable.

The owner had a long, thin beard and wore a skull-cap, and he never met Judit's eyes, but he took care to push a certain bin in her direction. The film canisters and photographs in that bin had all been marked
DISCARD
in red, and when she sorted through it, they proved to be from Judenstaat's earliest years.

She asked, “How much?”

He answered in the high-pitched Yiddish of the black-hats. “
Three zloty.
”

She gave the man ten Judenmarks, which he did not reject. The next time she managed to find the shop, he asked for fifteen dollars, and the third and fourth time, twenty Deutsche marks. In every case, he took what Judit offered. In every case, she went straight back to her archive and spent the night viewing and sorting until her eyes gave out and her legs gave way.

She'd never been sure why some footage was discarded. The images of Stephen Weiss were hot stuff, sure, but then there were other reels that seemed harmless enough, though certainly unfiltered: American- or Soviet-made. She kept the Loschwitz footage in a separate drawer and never included it in her formal catalogue; she kept its contents in her head:

A newsreel from 1950: six young Ghetto Fighters waving across an airfield. Leather jackets slung over their shoulders. The propeller hums, and a Soviet pilot urges them on board. They're headed for Moscow, where they will become the officer corps of Judenstaat's defense force.

Grainy footage of three slender Americans in well-tailored raincoats, walking beside Leopold Stein as they survey the sandstone foundation of Judenstaat's new Parliament. 1949. One of the Americans whispers something to Stein, who turns his head away.

A carnival in a Displaced Persons camp in '47, Churban survivors pitching pennies next to girlfriends who are dolled up for the evening, looking proud in their high heels. Why was this one discarded? Were they too happy? How vulnerable they seem, as they flick American pennies into those bowls, neat as sharpshooters.

Stein and Weiss and the flag. Weiss at Yalta, half-buried in a fur coat with his glasses flashing. Weiss standing by the ruins where the Great Synagogue of Dresden once stood, obscured by smoke. No, the film she'd screened a few days ago was not Stephen Weiss at the ruins of the Great Synagogue. It was Stein, pre-1947.

That's what she'd been watching the day that man broke in. Stein with his mouth moving through that full beard, his hands making that round, half-shrugging gesture. So you don't like that story? Then she knew: she'd never seen that film before.

They lied about the murder.

That stranger—she could just make out the shape of him. He was not the black-hat from the junk shop. He wasn't lean and frail. He'd shouted in coarse German and he'd slammed that note down with a force that shook the table.

Judit held that note in her hand, and then that hand began to shake as she inferred another meaning. What if Hans was still alive?

 

8

From Helena Sokolov's Inaugural Address: January 1986. Released in special video edition from the National Museum, November 1987.

[Sokolov enters the Grand Hall. Standing ovation as she walks down the center aisle and shakes hands with representatives. She moves forward before turning back to wave at Anton Steinsaltz, on whom the camera lingers. She is at least a head shorter than everybody else, and once behind the podium, only her face and trademark ink-black pageboy are visible. She adjusts the microphone and waits for the applause to end, waving and gesturing happily, then raising her hand for silence.]

I come to you as a true outsider. You knew this when you chose me, and I make no secret of my past. I am young, not much older than this country. I come from a foreign land, Birobidjan, that region on the border of Manchuria that has become a desolate wilderness. And I am a woman. How many women have ever sat in Parliament? I say to you that when a girl like me can stand before this body and tell the truth, everything is possible.

Moreover, I am the leader of a party that breaks with tradition by its very nature, the Neustadt Party, that group of young upstarts from the Polytechnic's School of Economics which itself was only created ten years ago. There was once a rule that no member of the Neustadt Party could be over forty. Then, two of us turned forty. [Some laughter.] Once, Anton Steinsaltz said that we would never be taken seriously until at least one of us had gray hair. I told him that if he joined, he would have enough gray hair for all of us. [More laughter. Camera briefly cuts to Steinsaltz, who isn't looking at it. Scattered applause.]

And why did you choose me? I know there are some among us who say that tradition is the very foundation of the Jewish state. I also know that there are some who fear that to break with tradition is to break a sacred covenant that binds us as a people and a land. What I will carry forward as we begin our work together is perhaps the greatest of our traditions. I speak now of the need to let go of fear, to embrace possibility, to chance an opportunity. I declare to the world: Judenstaat is a nation of opportunists.

Have Jews not, in our long history, embraced opportunity? Did we not embrace it when we planted deep roots in this land so long ago? And have we not taken this greatest of opportunities, a return to our own land? Here at last, we can live out our destiny, we can be safe, we can be free. [Applause.]

Who are we, citizens of Judenstaat? We are Jews. We are Saxons. We are united under one flag. [Scattered applause.] As I stand here before the Stripes and Star, I think of my first glimpse of the flag many years ago, when we crossed three borders with the help of Czechs and Poles, and, of course, Germans. Many are times I've praised these Righteous Gentiles—[From the floor: “The fascists have their own damned flag! That's why we build the wall!” This is followed by silence, and a moment when Sokolov lets the echo disperse before continuing.]

My family were opportunists. After we came to Judenstaat, my mother got her diploma from a Dresden secondary school at the age of forty-five. We took the opportunity to work. My father made use of what he'd learned in a Soviet forced labor camp and joined the Saxons in the local gravel pit. My mother scrubbed floors in a Chabad House. We had no family here. But the more opportunities we took, the more it bound us to our neighbors. The more we felt invested in this country. The more we felt at home.

Let us look to the future. The world is changing. New technologies, new methods of communication, new faces on the television at night. In Washington, an unpretentious president speaks the plain truth about world affairs. In Moscow, his counterpart acknowledges the very crimes that cost my grandparents in Birobidjan their lives in 1938. If we want to be true to our best selves, we need to make the most of this historic opportunity. We must take our place as part of the world community. We must step forward, with a daring pragmatism that is the trademark of our national genius.

But, some may say, if we are opportunists, what of our principles? What of our founders and what of their ideals? How can we help but think of Leopold Stein at this moment, who stood where I am standing nearly forty years ago? He was not much older than myself. And he looked at the world around him, a very different world, and he held out his hands to that world. He reached for opportunity, and at the same time, reached beyond our borders. In his own words, “We shall build a bridge between East and West.”

Prime Minister Stein poses the challenge. We must hear it as an opportunity. We must reach for this opportunity and know the challenge of this generation will be for Judenstaat to join the family of nations, fully and enthusiastically. And know that in doing so, we are fulfilling our historic destiny. [Sustained applause.]

 

T
HE
S
AXON
Q
UESTION

 

1

Journal of Historical Inquiry: March 1973

On the eve of our country's twenty-fifth anniversary, the nature of the ever-present Saxon Question has changed both in form and substance. As was once said by the most venerable of historians, Bruno Webber, “Everyone knows a German, but nobody knows a Saxon.” In short, both the individual identity of Saxons and thus the German State of Saxony was dismissed as—at best—myth, and at worst, sabotage intended to undermine our historic claim to our land.

What is Saxony? Is there, or at the very least, was there, a Saxon tribe? Are there Saxon traditions that constitute a separate identity with commensurate forms of ethics and cultural norms and historical memories? A close examination of the documentary evidence opens this question further, and ultimately leads scholars to more existential questions about the nature of claims, or memory itself.

The article gave Judit a headache. Still, she was willing to wade through this pretentious nonsense if it held a key to the man whose bed she had been sharing, and who made her see the world all over again. She tried to concentrate and failed. The library's reading room smelled like him. She walked across the lawn and every blade of grass gave a sweet crunch. Back at her desk, she recopied her notes, and her hand wouldn't cooperate; it crept up through her hair and raked through strands until the curls stood straight up. She had to keep things secret.

Judit had been in love before, with boys in school, always older and smarter, who told her their troubles and never kissed her; with her counselor at Archeology Camp, who was about to be inducted into the army and on his last night of freedom did kiss her and do some other things to her in the back of a van; with her physics teacher, who made quiet jokes about gravity and time, and who treated all his students with such tenderness that any of them would have followed him home. This was different. Somehow, the secret made it different.

Judit was a vessel for that secret. She carried it around, fearing and hoping or even daring it to tip and swell. She slept only fitfully. Something precious and dangerous was inside her. Later, she would learn that all lovers accumulate secrets, the ones they share, the ones they keep, and the ones that spill into bed. With great luck, those secrets never stop feeling powerfully dangerous.