I Sleep in Hitler's Room (38 page)

She cuts me off: “Yes, of course. And there were no Nazis in Germany at all . . .”

She laughs as she says this. This woman has sarcasm, a sense of the ironic.

“A Swastika was hung in the Dom,” she goes on.

It doesn’t comport well with the stories I’ve heard thus far while in this town. But facts, I guess, are stronger than fiction.

“Six million visitors come here yearly,” she says, switching topics. I have to store all these numbers in my head: six million Jews, six million visitors. My head is exploding!

Barbara is a practicing Catholic, which helps her much in this job. There are five services a day here, she tells me. Sounds to me like a mosque. But I don’t mention it. Instead, I ask something much more important:

Where are the nudes? I like my church with nudes.

“The Dom is from a later period. Even Adam and Eve, originally done in the nude, were ordered to be covered, and this is how you see them here.”

She shows me. But I insist: No nudes in this church at all?

“Interesting question. I have to check into it. I never really thought about it. Oh, there’s one nude I know, a depiction of hell. You want to see it?” Of course. It’s free! We go there. But what we see is not very erotic. I ask: Any more? “I’ll look into it,” she says. “Now
I’m
interested!”

She shows me some treasures that tourists usually don’t get to see. For example, the architectural design of the Dom, done on parchment and beautifully detailed. This is from 1270. “A woman dried her peas on it in Darmstadt,” she tells me, illustrating the journeys this historical document took before it arrived back at its home.

Barbara knows a lot, there’s no denying it. It’s a pleasure to talk with her. She’s vivid, straightforward, funny, and highly intelligent. And after a while we’re going outside to talk some more, where I can also have a cigarette. As we schmooze I notice that the Kölner Klagemauer is missing from sight.

What happened to the Köln Wailing Wall? I ask Barbara.

“They’re off on Mondays.”

Barbara tells me of the time the Wall’s people practically lived here, right at the entrance to the Dom. “For years they had a tent here, they lived here.” It took time, but the Dom’s lawyers eventually succeeded in evicting them, only because the tent was on church property.

What do you think of those people, of the Wall?

“It’s plainly anti-Semitic and racist. There are some rich people in Köln who sponsor Walter Herrmann [founder and maintainer of the Wall]. Also, when he’s in the square here, I see people giving him a lot of money. A Jewish organization recently tried to move them out, but Köln legal authorities decided otherwise. They said that it’s an issue of free expression.”

Will a similar Wall against the Turks be allowed on grounds of free expression?

“No way!”

The
Befestigungssteine
, the stones that serve as a foundation for Köln’s Wailing Wall, are very heavy. Without them there’s no Wall. But where are they now? I don’t think that Herrmann, or his friends who stand there when he “makes,” take them along with them when they leave in the evening. The other day I saw one of them, who was manning the Wall that day, returning from “work,” and he had no
Befestigungssteine
with him.

Would you know where they store the
Befestigungssteine
?

“Not with us!”

Do you know where?

“You want to know?”

Yes.

“At WDR.”

This is hard for me to believe. I try to think of an equally powerful American news organization, such as NBC, that would ‘help out’ a similar activity, but I fail to come up with a name. In America, news organizations of this magnitude would rather close shop than even think of doing such a thing.

Maybe I didn’t get her right. I ask:

Are you telling me that the WDR—

“They help him.”

They help this group distribute anti-Semitic propaganda?

“Yes.”

Why?

“Ask them. You want me to show you the
Befestigungssteine
?”

Yes.

Barbara walks with me down the street and shows me where Herr Herrmann puts the heavy
Befestigungssteine
every night before going home. Right next to an
Eingang
door (entrance door) of WDR, an
Eingang
that’s pretty close to the Wall.

This is a media company. Are they so dumb?

“Ask them.”

I take Barbara’s advice and walk into the WDR building. Try to, would be a better way of putting it. WDR is a high-security building, with electronic gates, red lights, and guards.

The woman sitting in front of the security entrance comes out to talk to me. She says she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “What stones? What wall?”

Could I speak with higher-ups? I ask her, since she so freely admits that she knows nothing. She goes inside and calls whomever she does, I have no clue whom. Meantime, I have to wait outside. Of course.

After fifteen minutes of what seems like a frantic call or calls, she comes out and says that “The
chef
said that this is all false.” Never happened, never is. No
Befestigungssteine
here. Never were, never are.

I should be satisfied with the answer and go.

Good-bye.

Well, I don’t really feel like walking away.

I saw them, I tell her. I can show them to you. Would you like to come along and explain them to me? I also have pictures, in case you cannot leave your post.

“You took pictures of—”

Yes.

“Excuse me,” she says, and goes back to her phone.

I am waiting. About forty minutes.

At the end of this very hospitable introduction to WDR, she gives me the telephone number of one Herr Krenke, in charge of security. I should call him directly.

Can I talk to him now?

“No, he’s in a meeting. Wait fifteen minutes and then call him. Not from here.”

I stick around. Another fifteen minutes won’t hurt. Just in case something funny develops.

And something does.

A man in a suit comes out and explains to me everything I should know. He says:

“Herr Herrmann has not been around for quite some time. In the past, those stones, the
Befestigungssteine
, were put in the nearby café. It’s the café owner who allowed the
Befestigungssteine
in. But that was in the past. Now there’s nothing to talk about because that Wall, you can go to the Dom’s Square and see, is not there anymore.”

WDR could change its name to WDT, We Dislike Truth.

Why are you lying to me? I ask this nameless, tailored WDR man. Monday is off for them. Herr Herrmann, or whatever his name is, and his group don’t stand there on Mondays. But they’re there the other days. What, you think I just came to town? Well, I’ve got news for you: I saw them every day last week.

“Really?” says the man. “I didn’t know.”

He disappears into the building. He should go to Marxloh, have lunch with the imam.

I pay a visit to the café and have a talk with Heinz-Josef Betz, the man in charge.

Is it you who helps Herr Herrmann with his
Befestigungssteine
?

“Me? I sell cakes and ice cream.”

WDR people told me that you’re the one who let Herrmann leave his stones here—

“Come, let me show you where he puts the stones.”

We go there and Heinz says:

“You see, this is my business and it ends here. You see the stones? That’s not me, that’s WDR. They don’t like to admit it, but they are the ones doing it. That place is not mine. I can’t tell anybody what they can or can’t store there.”

He’s totally right. The stones are far away from his fence. I go to the main entrance of WDR. Impressive entrance, I must say. Just beautiful. An attractive lady sits at the reception desk. I start talking to her and the Beauty turns Beastly.

“I know who you are,” she says. “Go to the Dom. The church supports those people, not us.”

Really? Is this the official response? Because I have pictures and I already spoke with the Dom people and also with the guy from the café—

“Wait!”

The Beastly Beauty makes a call, just as the other lady did, but this one hands me the phone. Tanja Luetz, assistant in the p.r. department, is on the other side of the line. She wants to know my telephone number and email address. She promises a response but cannot guarantee it will be in the next hour, because “people are on lunch.”

They must be on a long lunch. It’s now six hours later and no one has called or written yet.

After so many lies, I wonder what’s next.

Germany. Anti-Semitic still.

Oh God! This is the last thing I wanted to see or find! I hate everybody, myself included, and leave Köln.

Before we began talking about the Wall, Barbara pointed at a lady, a beggar sitting next to the Dom, head covered and shaking. “Look at her legs,” Barbara said. “Do you see how young she is? She’s not an old lady; in real life she’s not shaking. And that old man on a wheelchair, you see? You have to see him at night. He gets off his chair and goes to the pubs to drink.”

Looks are so deceiving.

And news companies even more.

Well, if this is still a Nazi country, then as long as I’m in Germany I want to live here like the best Nazi ever! Whatever the Führer had, I should have as well. Don’t you agree?

I am in Weimar, at the Hotel Elephant. Suite number 100 used to be Adolf Hitler’s room. And now I am here. A great feeling!

Yes, they changed the room somehow, the furnishing is different, the bathroom is bigger, and they made some other such modifications. But this is it. His suite. Heil Tuvia!

Forget Rabbi Helmut. Forget Half and Half. Forget Sheikh Jens. Forget the Jewish Bride. Sieg Heil! Heil Tuvia! Let the Three Ravens see this and report it to the world. Heil!

At the time, when beloved Adolfy was staying at this hotel, people outside were shouting the most brilliant, most poetic line ever composed in the German language:

“Lieber Führer komm heraus, aus deinem Elefantenhaus.” (Dear Führer: Come out, out of your Elephant House.) And the lovely Führer, in recognition of his followers’ genius, would then go to what has become known as the Führer Balcony on the other side, the one pointing at the square, greet them and wave at them. Kind of Heil Hitler them. And if he could do it, why not me? Yes. Which is exactly what I do. I go to the balcony, stand there as he did, and look down.

A group of older people pass by. I wave at them, Hitler style.

They love it! They wave back. What a country!

Ehrengard, whose job it is to explain to wandering visitors all they can listen to about Weimar, is walking along with me today. She tells me of this city, where the Nazis as a party had their first rally. It’s here where they started winning, it’s here where they first rose. They were highly motivated to make their start in this city. It was here, after all, where the most enlightened nation on the planet had its center: Weimar Republic. And here it is where Hitler and his party were most welcome.

How could people so enlightened turn that barbaric so fast?

Ehrengard doesn’t know. There are some explanations, she says, and she even recommends a book that I’ve read already, but she tells me that there are no definite answers. I don’t let her off the hook so fast and easy and ask her what she thinks of the period. Was any relative of hers involved in the war? I’m thinking of the students from Frankfurt. Was a grandpa, maybe, a train driver in Kiev . . .?

“No. No train driver. But something else.”

What, who?

“Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, finance minister of the Third Reich, was my great-uncle.”

That’s a fat fish. At least, fatter fish than my relatives.

What did he tell you? Did he admit to doing, or at least knowing, some bad stuff?

“He told me that he knew about the KZ but not know about the cruelty.”

Did you believe him?

“No.”

Was that the extent of the conversation?

“I asked him: Why didn’t you do anything?”

What was his response?

“You can’t jump off a moving train.”

That’s it?

“No. He always came to a point where he said, ‘You will never understand.’ ”

Ehrengard, who has done this tour for many years, tells me that it’s the first time she’s been asked these questions.

Yep. I probably went too far. And as we move on, I talk about soccer and flags.

I go back to my Elephant. Next to the Elephant is the Rathaus. An Israeli flag hangs from the top. Wasn’t there last night. I try to find out why but don’t get a real answer. Go figure.

Inside the Elephant, Martin Kranz waits for me. I don’t know this guy, so I sit down with him for a cup of coffee and Cola Light. We talk and he tells me his story. Raised in the GDR, and a son of pastor, he could not go to gymnasium and earn Abitur.

Reason?

“Because my father was clergy.”

I sip my Coke and he adds more details about his life. I jot down on my iPad: Went to army of GDR. When antigovernment demonstrations in Leipzig were flaring up he was sent to prison and stayed there for ten weeks. Other soldiers, those deemed credible by authorities, were put in charge of stopping the demonstrations. After ten weeks in jail, during which the Wall fell down, he was sent with other soldiers to Protect the Economy of the former GDR, by working in a cigarette factory. Was stupid. Four months later the soldiers said Enough! What are we doing? Hasn’t the Wall fallen? They were sent home. He went to study music, because for this he didn’t need Abitur. About ten years ago, when Weimar was the European Capital of Culture, Martin did fundraising to bring Israeli and Palestinian musicians to Weimar.