Coming home

Yom Rishon, 7 Kislev 5771
Sunday, 14 November 2010

In fact, it’s a bit of a lie; Mitzpah and I actually came home on Friday about an hour and a half before Shabbat, in other words with just sufficient breathing space to pull out the wettest, dirtiest clothes and prevent them from souring the holy Sabbath by slowly going mouldy in the bottom of the rucksack. There was just time enough, too, to stuff newspaper in my boots in what I, of little faith, presumed to be the vain hope of drying them out in time for Sunday’s, that is today’s, perambulations. ‘You’ll see’, said Nicky, ‘They’ll be fine’. She was right; and just as well too, as there was plenty more liquid sunshine, this time of the uniquely British variety, for them to keep at bay.

I think coming home has initially been more of a culture shock for Mitzpah than for me. For one thing, he arrived back at Amberden Avenue to find the house occupied by another border collie, albeit a long standing girl-friend of his, John’s dog Pippin. But it’s quite another matter to discover that precisely when you’ve temporarily moved out, she’s decided to move in. However, the two of them seem to have got on reasonably smoothly, with only the odd bark and show of teeth at meal times. For poor Mitzpah it’s rather the bewilderment of being back here: What’s happened to my long walks? Where’s that big river gone, along which we were playing so merrily for so many days? Where are my new friends and their strange machines which show pictures which look very much like me? Poor dog, he’ll need at least three or four hours of serious walking every day and some new crazy project to look forward to.

Well, today at least he has his wish. We set off for Liverpool Street Station, where, by the Kindertransport Memorial, we begin our final stretch of these particular shared adventures, back through London to our own shul. ‘Shul’: Mitzpah must be one of the few Welsh border collies familiar with that particular word. It is the cornerstone of his otherwise limited Jewish vocabulary, which also includes ‘Shalom’ and, judging by how reliably he appears for his Shabbat challah, the blessing over bread hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.

From Liverpool Street to the New North London Synagogue

We only have time to hear a brief outline of the events leading to the decision by Britain in the days following Kristallnacht to accept ten thousand Jewish children into this country.

Hermann, who has specially come to address us at the start of today’s walk, emphasises that it was a unique act of generosity; the United States did not do likewise, nor did any other country. He notes the role played by the Quakers and the close co-operation between them and Jewish relief organisations. But most of all he focuses on the courage and heroism of the parents. (When Hermann stresses that fact that Britain agreed to accept children, but not their parents, I cannot help but think of the crueller side of this act of generosity; acceptance entailed severing perhaps the closest and deepest of all relationships, between parent and child. I know of at least one ‘Kind’ for whom it took a long time to appreciate that what his parents had done was not an act of abandonment, but of the most selfless love.)  Two thirds of these fathers and mothers would never see their children again. Their last sight of their beloved offspring would be at the railway stations of Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Dresden. I think of the letter Vera Gissing’s mother prepared for her two daughters and left in safekeeping with a non-Jewish friend when the time came for her too to be deported. In it she expresses her great love for her children, telling them that she and their father will be watching over them in blessing. They should remember, but not mourn, for their former home, because the staunch love of their parents will travel with them to their new country, their new life and the husbands by whose sides they will build new homes. (Vera Gissing: Pearls of Childhood)

It is fitting that we set off today from this memorial, because it is at the site of a similar commemorative statue by the same artist, himself one of the Kinder, that our journey on the Continent was completed. Most, but not all, of the children travelled by boat from Hoek van Holland to Harwich, and from there to Liverpool Street Station, where they waited in great trepidation to discover who it would be with whom they would depart to strange houses and a totally unfamiliar life. Most of the children, Hermann tells us, made something of their lives; they gained professional qualifications and more than repaid this country for taking them in. But some, he reminds us, were not so able to adapt; they passed their lives in dank bed-sitting rooms the very image of their inner state of mourning and depression. Still, in 1988, the year of the first Kindertransport reunion, Margaret Thatcher wrote the Kinder a letter in which she expressed her gratitude for the contribution these ‘children’ had made to the life and creativity of Britain.

We walk together, Nicky, Libbi, Mitzpah, Pippin (my friend John’s dog) and I, and at least fifty members of our community. I am moved by how many people join us. The Trekkies, our synagogue’s valiant and well practised walking group, have prepared a brilliant route and we pass underneath the bridges of several of central London’s busiest roads along the cheerful banks of canals. Ducks, swans, canoes, long boats, - who would have thought we were in the middle of one of the world’s greatest cities. Sheva, Racheli’s dog, even decides that conditions are just right for a little swim. We pass Kings Cross, St Pancras, Euston; soon we are standing outside the Royal Free Hospital where Mossy, Libbi and Kadya were all born. I have attended on and witnessed both dying and birth in this hospital and I am full of gratitude for the care which it provides.  

We opt for the dog friendly route home here, which is also the muddiest possible way of crossing the Heath and the Heath Extension. The rain decides that it too mustn’t miss out; it generously accompanies us almost to the very last footfall. I’m deeply touched when, along the last third of the route across the Suburb back to Finchley, down through Big Wood and across Market Place and up over the North Circular, several families come to meet us with their children, to walk together for a stretch, to say hello, simply to cross our path. And when we do reach the synagogue for a hot tea and a warm welcome, there are still more people, including children, there.

Then I realise that this light, which I have helped to bring from the past, a past in which I have become more and more deeply immersed over the previous three weeks, really belongs to the future.


Now that the walking is over

I’m asked many times how I feel about being back home. I’m thrilled to see the family and delighted to see the community. But I’m also in some way sad that this walk, which I’ve been planning and about which I’ve been reading for a year and a half, is effectively over. I‘ll need to get some other crazy idea into my head pretty quickly.

A tragedy at sea

Yom Shishi, Erev Shabbat, 5 Kislev 5771
Thursday night, 12 November 2010

Scarcely beyond our view a tragedy had been unfolding. It must have happened only a couple of miles from where we had been walking. The first we learn of the disaster is when a man comes running into the terminal building overwhelmed by the shocking news. The tug guiding in the very ferry we plan to take back home later tonight has capsized in the storm. Five men are missing in the water. We see ambulances, a helicopter. Later we learn that three of the men have been found and taken from the freezing water alive. This itself feels like a miracle in such appalling weather. But two of the sailors, including the captain, are still missing.

Later on when we arrive back at the port an operation is underway to raise the tug from the river floor in the hope that it may contain an air bubble sufficiently large for the men to have survived in its oxygen. Divers have already been down and knocked against the hull, but there was no answering sound; the situation does not seem hopeful. All of us are full of concern and prayers for their safety.

It is frightening and chastening to end this part of my journey with such a terrible reminder of the power of the elements. All the way along its banks I have been aware of something ominous, as well as benevolent, about the river Rhine. Fast, famous for its treacherous currents, liable to rise swiftly by many metres (I pass many places where measuring rods show the heights of the most recent floods), it communicates power rather than beauty. It is, after all, Europe’s second biggest river, surpassed in length, but not in commercial significance, by the Danube.

I am reminded once again not only of the living, the vineyards, the trade, the beautiful towns, the Jewish communities along the river banks, but also of the dying.

As I write these words Ivo from the mayor’s office in Hoek van Holland returns my phone call. He tells me that the remaining two men have died. One of them has been found ten miles north of where the accident occurred. The captain has not been recovered, but must be presumed to be dead. I ask him if it will be alright for me to write, through him, to the two families.


Back in Rotterdam

Before setting off for England we return briefly to Rotterdam, to the home of Rabbi Albert Ringer and his wife. There can be no such thing as greater kindness than what we now receive. Albert has already sent me maps, advice, train timetables, guides to how long it will take to walk where. He has arranged a small gathering at his home, where we can meet a few members of his congregation. We arrive wet, weary, dirty and in dribs and drabs; a less appealing group of guests would be hard to imagine. Rabbi Ringer and his wife (I wish I knew her first name) are not in the least bit phased. Mitzpah receives food and water. We make hamotzi over home-baked bread, followed by hot soup, smoked salmon rolls, coffee, tea. We simply chat. 

Sometimes we remain ignorant of what will develop out of a human contact till much later in the relationship; on other occasions we realise at once that a friendship is being born. That is how I feel taking to Albert. With the warmest smile he tells me how he has become a rabbi later in his life. Everyone has stories here in Holland, he explains; everyone is a child of survivors. But you cannot create a community on a graveyard; you have also to think of the future. I can only imagine that his and his wife’s kindness, their warmth, their compelling personalities, enable the most wonderful congregation to grow, flourish and deepen all around them.

Poor people; even after we have leave for the ferry they haven’t truly seen the back of us. For we are forced to return. Stena Line will allow us to embark, but not Mitzpah. They explain that, due to the operation to search for the missing men, they cannot know when the ferry will depart and it is simply not right for a dog to be cooped up in a cage on board for an indefinite period of time. Furthermore, the storm is so bad (and still has not reached its peak) and ports and airports are shutting across the country) The film crew and I think on our feet and soon realise that the only route home is by car. Mitzpah rejoices; he hadn’t wanted to board the ship and had been tugging us away from the terminal with his poor tail tucked tight between his legs. 

We return to Rotterdam and knock once more on Rabbi Ringer’s door: please can we have the keys to our rented car back. I’m reminded of my grandfather’s love of the Talmudic phrase gam zu letovah – ‘this too is for the best’. Earlier we had been disappointed that the car rental company had closed earlier than we had thought and that it had proved impossible to return the car. We had trespassed further on the good rabbi’s kindness, asking him to drive it round the corner next morning and drop back the keys. Now, access to that car is our salvation. We pick it up and drive to Lille, drop it off there next morning, take the train to Calais where Nicky meets us, having brought our own messy but beloved Skoda, free of guinea pig food and bags of hay, all the way through the Eurotunnel to meet us. On this long late night drive, a big bag of food and drink prepared by the Ringers sustains us.

There are some things for which its simply impossible to say an adequate ‘thank you’.

A question in a raging storm

Yom Shishi, Erev Shabbat, 5 Kislev 5771
Thursday night, 12 November 2010

On the beach at Hoek van Holland, in a raging storm, almost as far down river as it is possible to walk to where the Rhine meets the North Sea, Guy asks me what I’ve learnt from this journey. I have an immediate answer, ‘How important it is to be able to listen to and honour the story of the other, to hear the heart of the other’. On this the sensitivity of individuals and the moral health of nations depends. I think of Emmanuel Levinas; ethics is first philosophy and the heart of ethics is our immediate and unlimited obligation towards the other.

Guy then adds, ‘Now that the walk is over’. But it is not. It never is. Not even this stage is over until we walk from the Kindertransport memorial at Liverpool Street Station to the synagogue. But the walk continues.

None of us has ever finished with the light.


Thursday afternoon - Meetings and hospitality

We are all still struggling to dry ourselves out at the Stena Line terminal next to the railway station in Hoek van Holland. This involves drinking several more cups of tea each and pooling precious resources of chocolate, while at the same time pulling off sodden footwear and replacing it with warm socks and shoes. Speaking of pools, I look at the floor where we’ve been sitting and see a small stream flow from our dripping clothing across the tiles.
I then call Ivo, from the mayor’s office, who’s due to meet us and show us both where a statue is shortly to be placed in commemoration of the children who came with the Kindertransport, and also the fortress at the sea’s edge where the Dutch Queen and government hid in May 1940 until the British navy could carry them to safety. Had they fallen into enemy hands the disaster of the Dutch defeat and its effect on morale across the continent would have been even greater. However, we are none too eager for a prolonged walking tour; none of us have the heart for much further exposure to the elements.

There has been a miscommunication and Ivo doesn’t realise we are expecting to meet with him today. He is not in the office. But when I reach him on his mobile he drops everything he is engaged in and comes to join us immediately. Within five minutes he is calling out to us in the terminal with smiles and greetings. I find this quite amazing. As a host on behalf of his town he had simply put us first and left whatever he was doing in order to look after us. He is utterly charming.    

He takes us in his car to the site on a busy road right next to the sea where the monument will be erected. He explains that they had at first thought to place it by the railway tracks in the port; after all the children had come all this way by train from Berlin, Prague, Vienna and many other destinations. But the artist had felt that what was most important here was the sea. The waves represented at once hope and separation. Through them lay safety in Britain, at least for the time being. Yet at the same time these very waters were to part the children from their families, most of them forever. It seems fitting that we listen to this explanation blasted  by the winds and shivering in the storm.

Inside over coffee we talk about the Kindertransport and the fate of the Dutch in the war. Ivo’s own grandparents died young; he didn’t have the opportunity of learning about the war directly from them. The years of occupation, the ‘winter of hunger’ in 1944/5, these subjects have interested him deeply and he has done much research. He refuses to allow us to buy him a coffee and instead insists on treating the lot of us.

Since he is so hospitable, I tell him a story about hospitality which moves me greatly even though I must have read it fifty times. Sidney Bloch recounts it in his book No Time For Tears. He and his brother are staying with their uncle near Newcastle; the year must be 1940.  His uncle is a deeply religious and strictly observant man, the sort of person who never locks his door so that no poor person will feel embarrassed to come inside for a meal. One day Sydney comes home and finds him on the phone. ‘No, it’s really urgent; I must have the sum today’. His uncle is borrowing money; later they go out together and collect sums of between five and twenty pounds from many different people. Then they go to a furniture store, buy all the essential items for fitting out a home with the basic necessities and help to load them onto a truck. It follows their tram to three empty houses on the outskirts of the town. Soon a groceries van arrives with large bags of provisions which they also help to unpack and install in each of the houses.

It is not until the next day that Sydney discovers what the exercise has been about. They go down to the docks where the last boat carrying refugees from Holland arrives. His uncle simply approaches three families and tells them in a mixture of English and Yiddish that they are expected. He them takes them to the three houses which he has carefully equipped and stays with them until a member of the local refugee organisation arrives.

‘Did you really know them?’ Sydney asks his uncle with great curiosity. ‘No’, comes the reply, ‘But I know that they are refugees and that’s all I need to know about them’. It took his uncle ten years to repay the loans. Soon afterwards he died.


Thursday - The elements

The last day’s walking take me from Rotterdam to Hoek van Holland, along the last twenty-five kilometres of the Rhine, or rather beside one part of this mighty river which divides as it traverses Holland into separate but still powerful courses.

Grace, our Noam worker, and Yoav, who runs Marom for students, join me for this part of the walk. It’s really important that they are here and I appreciate their presence. First of all they are extremely nice; secondly they take my thoughts, which have focussed so strongly on the past, into the future. The light must be carried forward, not simply for the sake of memory, but for children, for the young, and for hope. Eric and a Trekkies friend Priscilla join us too. We are now quite a merry band.

But I soon begin to feel guilty about the efforts they have all made to come here. The weather turns from a troubling grey, to light, then moderate, then finally, driven, lashing rain accompanied by a vicious wind. We follow bicycle paths out of town towards the dyke, along which runs a route right through to the Hoek. ‘In Holland’, says Guy, as we discover that this path is somewhat less romantic than its equivalents in Germany and in fact takes us right next to the motorway for several kilometres, ‘cycling is a serious mode of transport, not a pleasure sport’.

We finally emerge from the city and its suburbs into open country. The path runs by the side of the huge river, on which sail ocean going ships. Mercifully, the violent wind blows from behind us, literally pushing us forcibly inland and blowing us onwards with such force that our speed increases substantially. If we could have flapped our wings the last twelve kilometres would have passed in a couple of minutes. But by now the driving rain has soaked through my trousers and my boots. Grace and Yoav have made the sensible decision to go back, though where exactly to turn round to is not a simple issue. Eventually, they find a station and take the train. I feel deeply relieved for their sakes when I hear this. I hesitate, beginning to feel seriously and unpleasantly cold. But Eric points out that from where we now are, the only direction is onwards. The sole way to keep warm is by walking, as fast as my feet will carry me. This I’m glad to do, and backed by the driving wind keep up an extremely rapid pace.

Meanwhile Mitzpah, born for the wet Welsh hills, thinks that this terrain is wonderful, the walking, or, in his case, running just a piece of cake. He rushes along the dyke path, stops for a stick, ignores the rain, enjoys his day. I make my sodden way with the roaring wind behind me and am delighted and relieved when, just short of the town, I see the film crew and their warm car. A café, dry shoes, dry trousers, warm tea, safety. I take out the towel and rub down the sodden dog; Mitzpah loves this attention and even raises his paws, each one in turn.

Different kinds of story

Yom Chamishi, 4th Kislev 5771
Thursday 11 November, Armistice Day 2010

Daniel brings me a poppy from England and gives it to me when he joins us in a small town in the east of Holland, ‘Would you like a poppy?’ ‘Of course’. I pin it onto my jumper; how can one not believe that it is important to remember?

Daniel has brought us to this town of Barneveld and we stand outside a remarkable castle, set in beautiful grounds. A canal runs round a huge oblong lawn; on the far side of the water are tree-lined avenues and beyond them compelling woodland paths. It is dog heaven and, as soon as I see other dogs off the lead I let Mitzpah run free. Mercifully he ignores the cows and other animals just visible behind the trees.

But, far from the first time, I experience a disturbing dissonance between the glory of the scene (even the sun has decided to come back from a week’s holiday) and what transpired at this location 68 years ago. For it was to this castle that the leaders of Dutch Jewry were brought, politicians, heads of community, doctors, those with powerful connections, in 1942, when the first round-ups of Jews were taking place through the country, to be held safely out of contact with those whom they might have persuaded to object and intervene, prior to their own deportation east. The six hundred and fifty Jews held here, including all Daniel’s family on the paternal side, were locked within the castle. They could not enjoy the glory of these grounds where we roam free. Within there was a certain degree of autonomy; here concerts and lectures were held. Daniel tells us that he still has some of the invitations to them. The place is thus a kind of Dutch Theresienstadt, on a far smaller scale. From here, Jews will have gone to Westerbork in the north of Holland and thence to Sobibor, or to Auschwitz.

Daniel then tells us how, when everyone was told they had to travel on a certain day, his grandmother, then in her early twenties, had an instinct that they must not go. His grandparents hid in the cellars and thence escaped. They survived the war in hiding with a young doctor, who, when he built his home in 1939 had a double wall constructed in the knowledge that he might one day have to conceal fugitives. When nominated afterwards by Daniel’s grandparents to be honoured by Yad Vashem, he refused, on the basis that he was only doing his duty.  The rest of Daniel’s family went on the convoy; most of them perished.
We walk through the pretty town (the castle is right within it, scarcely far from eyes which might see and remember) to the tiny Jewish cemetery. Here lie buried Daniel’s great-grandfather, an eminent doctor, because of whom the family were included in the list of leading Dutch Jews brought here, and who died in 1942 of a heart attack, and Daniel’s grandmother who specially requested that this be her final resting place and who is, as far as I remember seeing it, the most recent person to be interred here, in 2002. Daniel places pebbles on the graves and says the Kaddish. He cares deeply about these moments, he has thought long and hard about how to use them. There is no minyan, but we are his witnesses before God.


Hidden histories

It feels ,as we walk through the wet but glorious autumnal forest, that history is like the paths we follow, only just beneath the fallen leaves. Emma and Evelyn, who walk with me, talk about hidden children. The Dutch context is complex; thousands of people hid Jews, but there were collaborators as well, and also those who expressed sorrow when hidden Jews returned. Evelyn explained that she had a wonderful childhood in the nineteen fifties; unlike in Germany, enough people returned for there to be some kind of continuity with the life which had existed before. Her parents, and most others, endeavoured to create a future for themselves and their children. Many did not speak about the past, not, at least, until they were far older, and not perhaps to their own immediate family.

But there were also those survivors who would say to their children, ‘You are free to go out and do as you please. I was never able to do that. Look, here’s my number on my arm’. Many such children struggled with depression, needed help. ‘There is an extensive system of Jewish social services’, I’m told. Every Dutch Jewish family has a story. That Anne Frank is iconic (later I’m told that there is a feeling that her story is exploited by almost anyone who is against virtually anything they consider wrong) provides an escape from both the depth and the uglier realities of mush of what happened here.

It must not be forgotten either that there was great suffering throughout this land. The final winter of the war brought terrible hunger. Much of the country was only liberated at the evry end, in the spring of 1945.

The sun shines and the trees are beautiful. Mitzpah runs and the ducks waddle with remarkable speed and launch themselves in to the water.


Darkness

I’ve been asked more than once, ‘You’ve talked a lot about the light, but what about the darkness?’ I also receive an email from Katharina, the niece of Adam von trot, with whom I had so much appreciated talking last week. She writes, among many thoughtful observations, that the Synagogue in Bad Hersfeld, where we met, had been the first in Germany to burn. The Nazis took the lack of reaction as indicative; there would be no mass protests, popular opposition was something with which they would not have to concern themselves. She then writes about the silence today, her doubts about some of the worthy - but how truly effective? – groups which now exist for dialogue and discussion. Still the silence reigns…

So what of the darkness? I think of the Hasidic explanation of the ninth plague over Egypt, ‘Neither could any man see his brother, nor could anyone rise up from his place for three days’: true darkness, says the interpretation occurs when ‘no one can see his brother or his sister’. Perhaps the most central, the deepest, matter I am learning from this walk, concerns that issue of being able to see one another, hear one another, have regard for each other’s dignity, listen to each other’s story, take account of one another’s humanity. That is the secret of a healthy society. We may not live in lands where children must be hidden, but we do live in a world where so much of each other’s humanity is de facto concealed, unless we truly listen, unless we search it out.

But I am asked less about darkness as a metaphor for evil than about darkness in its relationship to light. Do we not need the dark? Is it always bad? ‘Darkness is not too dark for you’, says the Psalmist; this verse often goes through my mind. Is God not present in the darkness too? And are there not times when we need, even desire, the dark, when we pull the blanket over our head and seek comfort and respite in keeping out life’s constant intrusions so that we can discover ourselves in that warmth and comfort once again? Darkness is also the womb of thoughts and deeds. The Talmudic legend speaks of a candle by the unborn baby’s head, by the light of which it sees from one end of the world to the other. But the safety of the womb lies also therein that it is not just warm and vital and secure, but also dark.

No, darkness cannot simply be a metaphor for the bad. It is that out of which, in partnership with which, as well as in contrast to which, light is created. It belongs to that first and most abiding rhythm, day and night, dark and light: ‘And God called the light “day” and the darkness God called “night”; the two belong together.

Perhaps, then, the question is how we use our darkness. What breeds there as we brood over it? What do we make of our ignorance and unknowing? Is it the source and womb of creativity, ideas, exploration, the desire for contact and for truth? If so, then, as the verse from Ecclesiastes has it, yitron ha’or mahochoshech - ‘the benefit of the light is because of the dark’. Or is the ‘dark’ unknown the source of fear only, generating prejudice, narrowness and hate?     

The Talmud employs a wonderful euphemism when it speaks of someone who is blind; such a person is called sagi nahor, ‘of great light’. Indeed, the phrase lashon sagi nahor is used in Hebrew to mean ‘euphemism’. But this description of a blind person is not in fact simply a euphemism, it expresses a challenging truth: is the creative darkness to which we must all regularly return, within ourselves, within our hearts and minds, the source of insight and wisdom? Can we turn our blindness as individuals, as societies, into ‘bright light’? Then indeed the dark and the light become the true partners they must be. As the Psalm goes on to say, cachashechah ca’orah, ‘as is the dark, so is the light’. You, God, are there in them both. 
It’s getting light outside, time to put on Tefilin. Mitzpah looks up at me from the bed; he and I are in this together, we’ve shared most things on this journey, including our prayers. I say birkot hashachar, the morning blessings, as I take him out each day for his first pre-breakfast stroll, then, when I say the keriat shema he rolls over, expecting me to sit down next to him tickle his tummy and incorporate him in my devotions. I do. Perhaps his (relative!) innocence is more acceptable before God than my many words?


Some words in praise of Mitzpah

I just want to express my appreciation for that rascal of a black and white dog who has shared my wanderings, adventures, kilometres, prayers, and, on occasion, dinner over these last twenty days. I don’t think he’s put a paw seriously wrong (though both he and I still have a day to go) and he’s been a wonderful companion. He’s come a long way since that first unforgettable occasion when I took him on the tube in the rush hour for the first time to accustom him to lots of noise and people. The carriage was packed and everyone was squashed together; I found myself squashed up right next to a young lady. People made a fuss of Mitzpah and stroked his head. Then, all of a sudden, in a loud voice, the woman next to me said, and I quote her exact words, ‘Who just touched my arse?’ Silence throughout the carriage. Then, the very next moment, Mitzpah licked her hands and she burst out laughing.

A doubly moving evening

Yom Revi’i, 3rd Kislev 5771
Wednesday 10 November 2010

It strikes me as I write that this must be the exact date when, seventy-two years ago, my grandfather was summoned by the Gestapo to appear at the Hauptsynagoge in Frankfurt with the keys. It was then that he learnt about the Ner Tammid of the Westendsynagoge.
First impressions of Holland are marred by dismal weather. It is damp and extremely cold, with no hills to impair the impact of the wind. The fields, the lines of poplars, the ponds and canals are grey beneath the low cloud. Only, water birds bring life into the somewhat sullen seen. We see herons, geese and a pair, I think, of glebes, diving into the water and then re-emerging with their long pointed heads and beaks.

With our walking for the day completed by the mid-afternoon, we go to Arnhem and meet Isidor Nathan who waits for us with great patience and kindness when we get thoroughly lost on the way. He greets us warmly; his daughter Lia Bogod is a member of our shul in London and his grandson celebrated his Bar Mitzvah the Shabbat before Mitzpah and I set off on this crazy but wonderful journey. Isidor takes us to the synagogue.

It is utterly beautiful. Used as a warehouse during the war (here the Nazis made the population bring their confiscated radios) it was recently restored with the greatest of care. I see it in my mind’s eye now, bright and full of light because of the high white ceiling, tasteful with a classic harmony of design. I’m struck by the huge brass lamps; where the long cables from which they hang are attached to the ceiling there is intricate circular tile-work, making the whole place feel very Dutch. The ark is of thick wood; it looks like oak. Inside are over twelve Sifrei Torah. I ask, and learn that many of them have been gathered here from small communities all over the east of Holland which are no longer functioning now. I believe something like ninety per cent of Dutch Jews perished. 

But Isidor was hidden as a child. He tells me first of all that he remembers seeing from the attic window of the house where they were concealed, in a village a few miles from Arnhem, the British air borne troops landing in Operation Market Garden, for the forlorn battle which was to become known as One Bridge Too Far. It was a disaster; although the British had some late intelligence that crack German Panzer units were resting up exactly where they were intending to land, warning voices were not heeded. One interpretation of this over hasty decision, which was to cost many hundreds of British lives and lose them vast amounts of equipment, was that Montgomery wanted to prove to the American general Patten that the British could advance with equal speed. Isidor remembers later watching the British soldiers returning as prisoners of war. There are many accounts of the terrible, and courageous, fighting in the streets around the bridge. Many Jews fought here in the British Army, and many died. In the end, this region was to be liberated only on the 17th of April, exactly seven months after the abortive operation. Isidor shows us the bridge over the Upper Rhine where the fighting took place. It has been rebuilt since, yet the film One Bridge Too far gives, he tells us, a very accurate impression of what happened. I had wanted to go to see the British war cemetery, but have, to my shame, not got the time on this visit.

Isidor continues to tell us about how he was hidden. After six months his parents joined him and his sister at the same hiding place. There they remained from 1942 until the end of the war. At first they thought it would only be another few months, but that became a year, then two years, then three. (That evening I stay at the home of Bert Engberink, whose mother was hidden in 47 different places. That means that there were forty seven people, or families, prepared to take them in, whether for one night or a few weeks or months, and all of whom kept faith with the secret. Bert tells me that until recently his mother could remember them all.)
After the war Isidor celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in this very synagogue. He explains that a lower ceiling had been put in to allow the creation of offices above it. But the building has now been restored to its former grace and beauty. I wonder how strange it must have felt afterwards, returning to a community which must have been full of children and vitality, but now of memories and mourning. I ask Daan and Bert, with whom I am staying, whether the past doesn’t feels like a constant presence, an inescapable undercurrent in one’s Jewish consciousness all of the time. ‘We’re used to it’, Daan answers, then adds, ‘It’s changed now, but this was a community where no one had grandparents’. I at once recall Lia, Isidor’s daughter, telling me how when she was growing up she was one of the only children who did indeed have grandparents; quite exceptionally, her parents had both been hidden, and survived, together with their own parents. Daan continues, ‘We go to Amsterdam to buy kosher meat. There’s only one kosher butcher in the Netherlands now. Before the war here in Lochem there were four kosher butchers and three kosher bakeries.’ Lochem is a small town in the east of the country, in the  Medinah; Amsterdam was of course lovingly called Mokum Aleph, the place par excellence.


The shul in Haaksbergen

We are given the most lovely welcome here. This is doubly important, partly because such things always matter (and I’ve learnt a lot over the last twenty days about both how to, and how not to, look after guests) and also because we all arrive about five minutes before ma’ariv and the talk I’m supposed to give. There has been no time to change from muddy clothes, to feed the dog, to do anything. I whisk out Mitzpah’s bowl, and while he has his nose in his dinner (he wakes me in the middle of the night to be taken out urgently with a dreadful upset tummy), I rush into the bathroom and try to transform myself from mud covered hiker to respectable rabbi. It makes it all so much more comfortable when everyone says, ‘Don’t worry; take your time. Would you like some tea?’

The people present here tonight come from all around. Some live many kilometres distant, but they come because they know that the very survival of the community depends on them, on their personal commitment to attend. This is what gives the group its warmth, and, as is later very evident, its outgoing good humour. This is one of several places where I’ve arrived tired and left hours later feeling awake, alert and very much alive. Thank you!

There follows a beautiful, musical memorial service for Kristallnacht in this tiny, simple, harmonious shul. I learn that it was untouched throughout the war. Daan explains, ‘The Nazis asked who had the key and everyone said that they had no idea. So the building remained locked and the inside undamaged throughout the entire war. This is quite unique.’ The synagogue is small, with arched windows, wooden ark, ark platform and bimah and simple wooden seating. At the back is a small gallery. It is filled with people; that is filled by the thirty or so people present. They are absolutely lovely; we could not have been made to feel more welcome. Mitzpah is not simply allowed, but encouraged, to join me when I speak from in front of the ark (on their requested topic of Jewish law today). In fact, this constitutes a very small space surrounded by what feels to all intents and purposes like a fence with a gate. You climb the steps, enter, and someone else closes that gate behind you. I wonder aloud if they ever leaves rabbis whose words they don’t like locked in here forever. ‘Yes’, someone replies from down below, ’You’ll find the bones soon enough.’

Crossing the border into Holland

Yom Shelishi, 2nd Kislev 5771
Tuesday, 9 November 2010

In the end we cross the German Dutch border in the simplest way and almost without realising it, since it traverses the cycle path we follow along the Rhine to catch the ferry at Millingen. Mitzpah crosses it about two minutes before us, running as ever eagerly ahead. But as we stand in the boat, which we catch by the skin of our teeth, I am moved, and for many reasons.

First of all I think of the Kindertransporte; they have been on my mind for a long time. If I’m not mistaken many of the trains halted at the final station on the German side of Emmerlich, bringing a final rising fear that children would be removed from the train just before the border to freedom. But when the trains stopped in the first Dutch station, in Arnheim, women lined the platform with food, drinks and the most precious gift of all, a friendly heartfelt welcome. The rest of our route follows that of the Kindertransports closely, Hoek van Holland, Harwich, Liverpool Street Station, where they waited anxiously, it must have been terrifying, to discover what those grown-ups would like and be like. I cannot forget the words of Vera Gissing, whose wonderful book Pearls of Childhood, is one of the most heart-rending accounts of these experiences: her English foster mother’s first words were: ‘here you will eb loved’. Many Kinder were much less lucky. Vera also recorded how she was told she had to be quiet as the lady had a heart condition. A few years ago when I last met her she was of to join her ‘English foster-mother’ for the latter’s 104th birthday.

I also think of my grandparents. When, on A;pril 9, 1939, they were finally able to leave Germany, travelling by plane for the first time in their lives, my grandfather asked the stewardess to inform him when they had entered Dutch airspace. When he heard that they were no longer over German soil, he, a deeply civilised man, said to his family, ‘jetzt koennt ihr spucken – ‘now you can spit’. Guy asks me why; I can only imagine that it is the release of almost incomprehensible tensions, relief, release, the freedom at long last to express what is actually the case. After when he was released from Dachau, my grandfather had to promise to tell nothing but the truth, that he had been well treated there.

And, I have to say, I feel a sense of relief as well, that this part of the walk has safely been completed, and, for all the kindness I encountered,, that I have left the land where my family was persecuted.

The way from Xanten to Kleve

Yom Shelishi, 2nd Kislev 5771
Monday evening, 8 November 2010

Xanten is the most beautiful old city with many Roman remains. I leave it with regret that there is no time to explore it properly, or to visit the old Jewish cemetery. But all through this walk it has been necessary to make choices, and as it draws towards its close it feels as though it has all gone very fast. There are so many places, and even more importantly, people to whom I hope to return.

It is not my best day at map reading and I make the further mistake of trying to follow small footpaths. In general I’ve found that the cycle routes are actually ideal; clear, easy to walk and traversed only now and then by the occasional cyclist, Mitzpah likes them too as I can generally let him off the lead without too much trepidation. But today I manage to take one wrong turning after another. However, my errors also bring their rewards, - a shortcut across fields alongside a stream allows me to see the most beautiful flock of geese, I surprise two deer grazing in a cornfield and Mitzpah gives chase (even more surprising is that I succeed in calling him off).

But the best of it is that I’m saved from my zigzagging meanderings by coming upon a long, fairly straight path which takes me all the way to my destinations and this same blessed and helpful route boasts the name of Oyweg! I make sure to take a photo.

The afternoon proves equally rich in unexpected gifts. I pass a field full of deer, then four goats come running up to me with such enthusiasm that I cannot even get the camera out to take their portraits. Later we watch a kestrel hunting above a field, now gliding, now keeping itself still with swift flapping of its wings, then folding them to halve its height in a moment. Wondrous. I’ve never in my life seen so many birds of prey.

Then, as the cold and damp midday yields to a short late glow of sunlight, a rainbow, the sharpest, clearest rainbow I’ve ever seen loops from one end of the fields to the other like a bright hoop, followed by another, fainter bow, the one within the other. Mitzpah breaks loose and races through the muddy grass, driving an entire flocks of gulls upwards into the light, their white wings radiant.

However, a herd of cows expresses powerful disapproval of the poor dog’s presence. They gather round to moo, kick and stare him out. Mitzpah barks fiercely back at them, ‘Look at me; I’m bigger than you!’ For once I’m grateful for the fence. Joe, Guy and Anna try to persuade the cows to repeat their ‘first, fine careless rapture’ for the camera, but they refuse. One of them turns its backside towards us and, in a torrent of liquid, expresses her opinion of us all.

An evening of many facets in Kleve

It’s silly, but it’s only when it’s pointed out to me, ‘that’s the castle where she grew up’ that I connect Anne of Cleeves with this pleasant town of Kleve. (By the way, I was once told, with some authority that a former manor house, surrounded by its moat, on whose site our shul now stands, was where Henry the Eighth spent his illicit weekends with Anne Boleyn, prior to obtaining a Get.)

I’m very grateful to be taught something of the history of the Jews of Kleve. Nothing is known for certain about the Middle Ages but from 1661 there is proof of a Jewish community in Kleve. Its size varied but the congregation consisted on average of about one hundred and fifty souls: Klein aber fein ‘small but special’. Whereas nearby communities in the lower Rhineland were composed of poor peasant Jews, the central figure in Kleve was Elias Gomperts, a Stadtlan, a Hofjude, who financed the Prussian Princes. Gifted with a rare capacity to relate to people, he founded, among other achievements a Talmud Torah in his home where rabbis were trained for the region. He was the first Jewish guest to be invited to attend a wedding at the Prussian court. His own son was to marry one of the daughters of the famed Glueckel of Hammeln. She records in her wonderful memoirs (if you haven’t read them, do!) that she’d known Elias was wealthy, but when she arrived for the celebrations her eyes almost fell out of their sockets - the man lived like a king.

Thus the community became known as the stepping stone between Amsterdam and Cologne. For over a century and a half, until some point in the mid- or late nineteen hundreds, a particular tolerance reigned here between Jew and non-Jew. But then, matters descended in the Third Reich to how they were all over Germany. Among the Jewish families of the town who fled was the person who created Tomor margarine. Some fifty to sixty perished. We saw the so-called Judenhaus where they were held before their deportation.   
In fact, as events would have it, we arrive just in time to be present at the unveiling of three plaques to commemorate the city’s Jews, though as the mayor tells me, this is far from the first such event in the town. The first marks the location of the earliest synagogue, the second Elias Gomperts’ home and the third the ‘house’ referred to above. A small crowd has gathered and follows the mayor from one site to the next. It’s freezing cold.

My thoughts are complicated and confused. Guy asks me, ‘What do I think this means for Germans? Why provide such a visible permanent mark of a scar?’ On the other side of one of the walls is a large invitation to enter the Chinese restaurant. How does that past relate to this today? I cannot answer all these questions. But I believe that what is left to descend into the silence, memories, good, bad or terrible which are untouched in the mausoleum of the mind, cannot be worked with. At the very least, what is spoken about can be the basis for learning, reflection, change. It comes back into the consciousness, bearing its pain or bewilderment  within itself to instruct the heart. It is surely right to acknowledge what has been. That it may also be a gesture towards accountability, a means of assuaging the guilt of an earlier generation, that is no doubt the case. But it is right nonetheless. What it cannot do is bring the dead back. They are gone forever. I feel, with this small crowd around us – absence, just absence.

Light among the faiths

This evening on the themes of the light of understanding is one of many inter-faith events at which I’m invited to speak during the course of this journey. I explain how it was important to me to make contact not just with the Jewish past, and present, through the towns and cities I would pass, but also with people of all faiths and none. After all, what dims the light in our day more than anything else is the tension between religions. It’s important to me to speak for not too long so that there is plenty of time for reflection.

I speak on familiar themes, the inner light of the spirit which is part of the heritage of every human being; the light of nature and beauty around us, God’s gift to all of us which must be cherished; the light of our own faiths and cultures, which we are entitled to love; last but not least about the need to be able to hear the narrative of the other, acknowledge the truth of different faiths and perspectives, with the inevitable concomitant awareness that even our own most cherished traditions can only express a portion of the whole.

One comment interests me especially. It is spoken by a charming and fascinating man with a Jewish family background. We’d previously had dinner together and it emerges that he is an expert on the poetry of Avraham Sutzkever. So there, over a salad in the middle of this little town we’re discussing his years in the Vilna ghetto, those unforgettable verses in which he describes going to the printing works of the famed Romm Press to take the lead letters and turn them into bullets.

Now he says that he is troubled on two counts. Firstly, he finds the  metaphor of light too broad, so wide that it is liable to lose all meaning. Afterwards he adds that the Nazis celebrated light as well, they wanted to change the name of Christmas trees to trees of light. So what does light actually betoken morally? Secondly, on the question of truth, he is deeply suspicious of notions of truth. We can search for that which is true; but we can never possess die Wahrheit, the truth. I appreciate both comments; and on the latter point I most strongly agree. Little so imperils the world as the way we turn our ideas into our gods and kill and die for them.

Then I’m asked, not for the first time, ‘You’ve spoken about light, but what about the darkness? Is it simply the opposite of light, an absence? Or can blessings lie in darkness too?’

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