Back to Bad Kissingen

When Frau Marlies Walter inched open the beautiful, newly paneled light wooden door to the small synagogue with the key only she possessed, I caught sight of the prayer benches on the men's side to the right immediately. In the middle of the synagogue stood the raised pulpit with the high table on which the Torah scrolls were laid and from which my father had read and sung.

In a flash, I could see him standing there: His long talit wrapped around his shoulders falling nearly to the floor as he swayed back and forth, side to side, murmuring the prayers; or raising his voice high to the heavens and singing them in his beautiful Hazan voice that echoed back through the ages, filled with Jewish suffering, mourning and heartache. I could see him there in front of my eyes, his body moving forwards and backwards, his voice rising and falling, as he led the congregation in prayer.

And then I could hold it in no longer. The dam burst and the tears gushed forth as I sat myself down on one of the benches, my daughter Rinat standing behind me and comforting me, as I wept and wept, remembering.

It was a charming little synagogue that my father had established with the help of the Municipality after the war. It had come to replace the exquisite neo-Renaissance synagogue that had been burnt nearly to the ground on Krystallnacht. The Holy Ark was covered with a thick, deep blue velvet curtain, the Ten Commandments embroidered on it in thick, golden thread.

The women's section was separated from the men's by a low oak paneled wall and delicate white lace curtains that fell from a rung from the ceiling. It took my breath away as I recalled how full the Shul used to be on the Sabbaths and holidays as I ran back and forth to the kitchen when I was a little girl. Yiddish engulfed me. In post-war Germany visitors from Israel and all over the world came to Bad Kissingen in beautiful Bavaria because of Josef Weissler's "Shul" and raised their voices in prayer.

After the prayer services, my mother would prepare a Kiddush table for those guests who wanted to stay, my father would raise his silver wine glass and, with trembling hands, say a blessing over the wine and then over the Challah.

It was there, in the heart of Bad Kissingen – this breathtaking German spa city, whose citizens – it turned out – had cooperated so willingly with the Nazis – that this bit of Yiddishkeit was played out. This beautiful small city whose roots went back to the Emperors and Regents of Europe; whose visitors were among the most famous aristocrats in history – Otto von Bismarck, the Empress Sissi, the Royalty of Austria and so many more. They came to drink the special, healing mineral waters that were unearthed from the springs in the ground and prescribed by doctors all over the world to strengthen their constitution.

Yes, it was here, in our family home, where the Challah crumbs and the drops of wine fell onto the whitewashed tablecloth laid out carefully for Shabbat, that my father raised the wine glass to his lips with his shaking hands, his talit wound tightly around him, as he murmured the prayer for the Kiddush. My mother would rush back and forth from the kitchen to the living room with gefilte fish, and "Galle" and other fine Shabbat delicacies for our guests.

And again I asked myself, "How could my parents have stayed and lived there after the war? Yes, my father did important things when he set up the charming prayer hall in the Jewish Community Center and saved the Mikve and lived in the apartment of the Cantor and Religious Education teacher, Ludwig Steinberger. But my bedroom window overlooked the space where the exquisite synagogue had once stood before it was nearly burnt to the ground and then taken completely apart so that there would no longer remain any signs of its existence. Now an ugly municipal building stands in its place.

I had always found excuses for them. One cannot really judge after what they had gone through. They were so traumatized that rational decisions were almost impossible to make. I remembered being sent to the United States to live with my mother's sister and husband, "die Tante und Onkel von Amerika", because no one wanted nice Jewish girls to grow up in Germany at the time. I remember the tears rolling down my parents' cheeks as they tightly clasped each other's hands and sadly waved good bye to me. I was sitting in a huge back cab on the way to the airport to start my new adventure far away from home in a country whose language and customs I had no idea about. I did not see my parents for three years after that.

And where had I been all these years? What had I been thinking? How could I have idealized the city of my birth so much? Had I not realized it had been a Nazi city just like all the others – maybe even worse, as it was one of the first to cooperate willingly?

I have no words to thank Herr Hans-Juergen Beck and Herr and Frau Marlies u. Rolf Walter for the research, time and energy they put into setting up the exhibition next to the synagogue where we lived. There are no words.

One particular story that Rolf told me touched me so deeply, I shall never forget it.

On the wall of the exhibition, there hung many photos of Bad Kissingen Jews. One photo was of 10 Jewish soldiers wearing WWI uniforms and helmets with the high "Spitz" in the middle, quite ridiculous-looking. They fought with the Germans side by side during WWI and were incredibly proud to be able to fight for their "Vaterland".

A few years later everything changed. Rolf Walter, who set up the exhibition, with the help of his Gymnasium History students, told me the story of more than one proud German Jew who had begun to feel the direction the winds were blowing, the horrible wave of anti-Semitism arising around him. One day this Jew was thrown out of a restaurant where he was no longer allowed to eat, he was fired from his job, he was told there were benches in the Kurgarten and Rosengarten he could no longer sit on and places he was not allowed to enter anymore. He was so bewildered, his heart broke. This was the land of his birth, the country he loved. How could he be treated this way?

One day he could stand it no longer. He took his pistol and fired it into his forehead. Next to his body, a note was found. It read, "To the Vaterland I have always loved and will always love!" How very tragic.

Why had I come back to Bad Kissingen? What had I expected to find? This was a visit to go back to my roots. What was I looking for? Perhaps I returned to see what I had missed, to see it again with fresh eyes after I had left at the age of 7 with only occasional short visits back and now more than 20 years that I had not returned. Whichever way – return travel is as much an act of time travel as it is geographic.

I've changed and the place has changed. I've visited not simply a place, but a place captured in a moment in time – one that existed for me in the past to a past version of myself. I was looking for closure, but instead my visit had opened up the chasm of trauma I had tried to push down. Despite a few precious memories of that time, it seems that no matter how many years have gone by, the past has come back to haunt me and overtaken my emotions as it reared its ugly head.