On Günter Grass in the Age of “Like”

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…and What Mercedes-Benz Got to Do With It.

The world of media is quite busy these days with Günter Grass, a Nobel laureate (1999) and Germany’s most famous living author, who is probably best known in this country for “The Tim drum.”

Günter published a poem two days ago in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s premier newspapers, in which he claimed that “Israel’s nuclear power is endangering our already fragile world peace.” In addition, Günter expressed his fears that Israel would “annihilate” the Iranian people. Plain and simple, using prose instead of poetry, the very existence of humanity these days is in total danger because of a few really bad Jews in a little dangerous country called Israel.

German commentators immediately reacted, some with a ferocious counter attack. Are they honestly disgusted by what the man says or are they scared that their national poet is exposing their own ugly, intimate thoughts? The verdict on this is still out but an examination of one startling fact is worth noticing: the number of “Like” recorded by the Süddeutsche Zeitung to Günter’s lyric: 23,000. Just think how many people it takes to get this number of “Likes”! It tells more than just little on what the people of Germany really think. Show me another poem, in our time of shortest attention span in human history, receiving such an enthusiastic response!

This strange story reminds me of Tuvia Tenenbom’s interview with a top Mercedes-Benz official in Stuttgart, one example of many what the people think. Here goes:

“As we talk, a well-dressed man walks by, and Thomas moves nervously in his chair. His name is Volker Stauch, Thomas tells me. According to Thomas, he oversees 17,000 employees here. In Stuttgart, he is the Big Boss. No one above him. His official title is Senior Vice President for Powertrain Operations, Mercedes-Benz. He’s in charge of the plant here and of some other plants across this big land.

Would he mind having a little chat with me?

Gladly. Top Men love journalists.

An exhibition here lists different milestones in the company’s history. Usually, the date of the event is also listed. But I noticed that not listed is the date when this company paid compensations to forced laborers during World War II. I ask Volker if he knows the date.

He gets pretty emotional as he responds: “My mother lived in Poland and she lost her home. At that time, that was Germany. My interest is in that. That’s MY history. I am interested in that. She had some difficult nights with Russian soldiers!”

Do you have the date when the company paid compensations to its forced laborers?

“I know that the company asked people to write a book about what happened here, but I don’t know the details.”

He is an emotional guy, Volker. He loves his mama.

There’s no one like Mama. A few thousands dying here or there? Who cares! But Mama is different. Mama is Mama.”

There are many more examples like it in “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.” Read the book!

North Korea as a Role Model

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As President Obama and other world leaders meet in South Korea today for the Nuclear Security Summit, I am reminded of “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.” In the book, Tuvia Tenenbom interviews theater director Gabriele Gysi, daughter of the late German Culture Minister, Klaus Gysi, and sister of the famous political leader of the left party, “Die Linke,” Gregor Gysi.

It was during the World Cup when Tuvia asked Gabriele which country she wished to be the winner. Without hesitation, Gabriele said: “North Korea.” But Tuvia didn’t stop there. He approached other famed Germans in Berlin and, what a surprise, they carried the same wish in their hearts.

The threat of nuclear weapons, or the fear by millions of ending life in the most miserable of circumstance, mean nothing to some distinguished Germans of today. They claim, to whoever wishes to listen to them, that their lives’ mission is world peace. But what hides behind this glorious concept? North Korea. The country that, to their mind, should be the role model for all of us.

Maybe, just a thought, it will be better if our Western leaders take a fast flight out of Seoul and start checking what’s cooking in their own hometowns. The real danger is not in Korea, but much closer to home: our backyards.

“What Does It Mean To Be A Jew?”

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This week I’ll dissect an interaction between Tuvia Tenenbom and a knowledgeable Jew from Munich, a man by the name of Jacques Cohen who owns ‘Cohen’s Judisches Restaurant.’ Cohen is a remarkably intelligent man, as the narrator of our controversial book makes abundantly clear; he is well versed in a series of topics on his community. Or at the very least, he seems to have an answer for everything.

Cohen knows, for starters, that the extent of Jewish life in Munich is simply bar and bat mitsvah celebrations “so people can show off how much money that have.” He knows that the only people who eat at his restaurant are “the goyim” because “they like Jewish food.” And he also knows that because of modern anti-Semitism “it’s hard to be a Jew… (but) worse is to be a Jewess… because on top of carrying the burden of being hated, she also has so much work.”

Oddly enough, the only time our restaurant owner doesn’t seem to have an answer is when he’s asked “What does it mean to be a Jew?” He says that being a Jew is “Religion,” and that he is proud to be a Jew… and yet he is not religious himself.

The rest of the conversation falls apart, exposing poor Jacques’ obvious simple-minded-ness and flawed logic. But when studied from afar, the interaction does leave us with an intriguing debate question.

What does it mean to be a Jew?

For me, it is my nationality. In this melting pot of a nation I’m often prompted with that introductory question: What is your Nationality? Like it will reveal some hidden truth about me, offer some deep understanding of who I am and what I am about. And in the spirit of this quest, I answer it the best I can, by saying that I am Jewish.

My family tree has branches and roots that extend to Hungary, Austria, Poland, and Ukraine. However my customes, my traditions, the principles I was raised on, all have a Jewish background and are centered in a Jewish upbringing. The positive values I was taught as a child, the mission of Tikkun Olam and repairing the World, this is who I am, and this is what I am referring to when I utter the words I am a Jew.

Someone who asks my Nationality, surely, is more interested in what that nationality says about me, not about whether my descendants came over on the Mayflower, the Santa Maria, or the MS St. Louis. Which is why my reply is and will remain: a Jew.

So, my fellow tribesmen out there, I ask: What does it mean to be Jewish? And for those non-Jews reading, I tender the same question. Whether you consider yourself Jewish or not, you surely have an opinion on the question What does it mean to be a Jew?

Unless, apparently, your name is Jacques Cohen

The Second Encounter with Neo-Nazis

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At the request of many, we post a segment from Tuvia Tenenbom’s book, I SLEEP IN HITLER’S ROOM: AN AMERICAN JEW VISITS GERMANY, in this blog. It’s about Tuvia’s second encounter with neo-Nazis in Germany.

 Club 88. Have you ever been there? From the outside it looks like a great place, full of promise. Problem is, it’s closed. Its black doors do not respond to my attempts to open them. But Jews, let me tell you, couldn’t survive thousands of years in exile if they didn’t have patience. I have patience. And patience pays.

Frank, the owner of Club 88, drives by. He parks his car and says Hallo.

 Heil Hitler. We are in business.

He opens the doors wide.

And more people come in. Devotees.

I tell my new friends that I’m a computer analyst from the United States and that both my parents are German. I was born in Germany, I explain to them, but my parents emigrated to America when I was one year old. My name is Tobias and I’m a perfect Aryan. I came to Germany to reconnect with my roots, and I’d love to have one of those Club 88 hats that they have in their club. They like what I say, I can see it in their eyes. I choose the hat in which I look the most stupid, practically retarded, and put it on my head.

So good to get in touch with your roots!

 Sieg Heil, my friends. Wish our Leader, Adolf Hitler, were here to see me.

Frank takes a liking to me. This club is also a drinking joint. There are many sweet drinks here, not just beer. This is not the Rote Flora. Here they love sweet. Would I like the blue liquor? Very good, Frank says. Anything I want, on the house. As much as I want. Club 88 welcomes its lost child. Tobias. Me.

Frank, let me tell you, is friendly, sympathetic, always smiling, and a very welcoming man. I have no idea why the kids from the extremely dirty Rote Flora want to kill him. He is cleaner than God. And, as he talks to me, he keeps on cleaning every dirty spot he finds. Maybe that’s why the leftists hate him and his friends.

Would I like an energy drink? Everything for the guest!

Most of my life, how sad, I lived outside the Fatherland. I missed much, obviously. Frank would be very glad to fill in the holes and gaps in my cultural upbringing. Would I like to know? Would I like to acquire knowledge?

Please teach me, my friend!

Frank takes his new task seriously. He brings the books in.

Here is a book about Jews. With pictures, illustrations, tables, and other scholarly stuff. This is a textbook, as they call it in America. This is not fiction. This is reality.

Here, he shows me, is the image of the Jewish Devil. Jüdischen Teufel. It’s a stamp.

He explains: “The Jews, who control the world, stamp everything that belongs to them with this stamp. When you see this stamp, you know you are under total control of the Jews.”

Does The Stamp remind me of anything? he asks.

Not really.

He takes out his German ID card, turns it to the back, and then turns it upside down. He puts the image next to the one in his book, titled, if I’m not mistaken, Das Deutschland Protokoll, and shows me the similarities between the image of the Jewish Devil and the image on the German ID card. Practically the same.

Could he interpret the image for me?

Gladly.

Two horns on top. Jews have horns, naturally. In middle-bottom there is a long nose, another Jewish natural feature, as is known worldwide.

Yes. The Jew controls Germany. And he also controls America, in case I wondered.

Let’s leave the Jews for a moment. What does Frank think of Obama?

“Obama is a Nigger and he should go to Africa.”

Frank comes back to the Jews, his real passion:

“Six million Jews did not die in World War II. It takes seventy-two minutes to gas and burn one person. How could you burn so many so fast? What I say now, if the police heard me, would cost me six years in prison.”

OK, let’s talk about Jews. What should we do with the Jews of today?

“Kill them!”

Turks are bad. Idiots. Or, as he calls them, “dumb Jews.” Turks have no patience, can’t calculate ahead of time. Not so the Jews. The Jews, who are the worst of creatures, they can stick it to you five years later. Just wait and see. “The Jews are the worst. There are millions of Jews in Germany.”

How many millions?

“At least one million.”

Let’s hope, says Frank, that “the Nigger American president takes care of the Jews of Israel, who steal the water from the Palestinians, and stops those Jews once and for all.”

Frank is well versed in politics. Knows everything. He tells me: “The German chancellor must always visit America in order to submit to the Allies. Still. This is a shame for Germany!”

What does he think of, let’s say, Helmut Schmidt?

“He is good.”

Is he a Jew?

“No.”

I heard that he is.

“Really? Scheiße!” (Shit!)

The German Reich still exists, he instructs me, though it’s not functioning because of America and the Allies, which are controlled by the Jews.

Frank now offers beer and brandy to his guest, free of charge. He continues to talk: “The German left is dumb, stupid. All they care for is porno and alcohol. They just want to consume alcohol. Very bad. And porno. Who provides the porno? Jews. The Jews, who consider themselves Children of God, used to sacrifice their own kids to their God. This is a known fact. Today, in keeping with their ancient custom, they take dolls and perform a sacrificial ritual. Yes. When George Bush was president, Jewish leaders performed such a ritual in the presence of President Bush and other world leaders. This ritual was filmed and is available on YouTube.”

Where on YouTube?

Frank opens his laptop to show me the YouTube clip. It takes some time. Much time. He can’t find the clip. Maybe a Jew from Berlin has blocked him. But don’t worry. Frank has the clip on a DVD. In his house. Maybe I will come again.

“Did you see the Jew Michel Friedman? Easy to tell he is a Jew because of his hairstyle. Jews have a different hairstyle. It’s a wavy hairstyle. That’s the way the Jews have it. And Michel Friedman, a Jew, smokes all kinds of forbidden leaves as well.”

I’m delighted it’s so easy to recognize a Jew.

No, Frank is not looking for trouble, he explains. All he wants is peace and love. Unification of Germany, Austria, Denmark, and other countries is needed because they are one country, one people. It’s important to unite and protect the white race. But not the Poles. And, by the way, for the sake of honest and true history, may it be known that “Germany never invaded Poland. It’s a lie.

Honor of family, love of brother and sister, that’s what’s important. And getting rid of the Jews, once and for all. Those schemers, creatures who invented a story about some holocaust so that they could squeeze out of Germany billions of euros plus four submarines. And then, when they wanted more money, they bombed the World Trade Center and made America fight for them.”

After the Jews, Frank’s biggest enemy is the police, the German police. And, like the anarchists, he would like to see them gone. And like those on the left, all he’s really wishing for is Peace and Love.

What is most striking about Frank is that he is really a very lovely and generous person. Before coming here, people warned me of the dangers awaiting me once I crossed the entrance door to Club 88. They see the neo-Nazis on TV and think they’re beasts. Little do they know. Frank, like the other people in the club, is no mass murderer. Quite the opposite: He is kind and so very welcoming. He offers free drinks, maintains constant personal attention, and is always smiling.

He likes to sing sometimes. He sings for me a little song, a romantic tune. Let me share it with you: “We have crematoriums, and in each crematorium there’s a little Jew . . .” He smiles as he sings it. He has a good voice, by the way.

And I think: Probably that’s how my family was led to death. With a song and a smile.

It’s time to leave. Frank poses for a picture with me, the American computer analyst. We shake hands and we hug. “I love my people, I love my family, and I love my land,” he says to me before I leave his place. “All I want is to protect them.”

He’s a Believer, like any churchgoer you’ll meet on Sunday morning during prayer. Both want the best for their families, both are dedicated to their beliefs, and both, it strangely strikes me just now, believe in dead Jews.

© 2012

 

How Sports Bring A Community Together

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I sat with Tuvia Tenenbom a few weeks back to discuss a series of things, including his controversial book I Sleep In Hitler’s Room . Among the other topics we discussed was my love for professional sports (admittedly, I did a majority of the “discussing,” as I tend to ramble when the opportunity to discuss sports comes up).

I told Tenebom about how I was a self-described “die-hard” fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, as was every member of my extended family. I talked about how it was a unique bond that united all of us, for no matter how long it has been since my cousins and I have seen each other or had the pleasure of each others company, every Autumn Sunday afternoon we knew that wherever the other ones were, we were all watching the Eagles.

As my grandfather use to point out, one of the most splendid aspects of being a fan of the Eagles, or any sports team for that matter, was its ability to unite a community. This theorey is aptly on display in our family, and just as equally throughout an entire city or country. Everyone from the multi-million dollar CEO to the guy who cleans his toilet can strike up an equal conversation with the four simple words “How bout them Eagles?”

Silly me. I’d forgotten Tenenbom has witnessed this incredible unity personally. In Germany, of all places.

In a chapter towards the middle of Tenenbom’s controversial book, our narrator finds himself in Frankfurt, at a public location where gigantic television screens are set to broadcast the nations World Cup soccer match against Serbia. The wise reader will note Tuvia spends more time describing the crowd than he does the results of the game:

“Sitting at home and watching TV, coming to you from the same channel at exactly the same time, is not good enough. We must see the games with other Germans, many Germans. All of us together…

Thousands upon thousands of two-legged creatures, many carrying German flags, are at the ready… There are ten thousand people here. Who are they, really?

…When viewed from the stage, under the huge screen, the thousands of faces project back like a strange painting, faces upon faces made into one atomic unit of worshippers. Some, I am not kidding, pray to the screen, and I feel like God… Whatever it is, it is hard for me to take my eyes off them. It’s magnificent in its beauty and amazing in its ugliness, all at the same time. You can’t duplicate this image. No lens, no TV can capture the awesomeness of this moment.”

The beautiful irony here is that the majority of people Tenenbom meets during his travels around Germany are reluctant to display such pride in their nation. When asked by Tuvia “Are you proud to be German?”, most citizens hesitate, offering vague answers and sideways glances. In their reality, when it comes to politics and history and individual identity and life, they keep their passports tucked away deep in the bottom their pockets.

But when it comes to sports, to something as silly as a game thousands upon thousands of miles away, where they have no control whatsoever, they display a pride in Germany unrivaled.

And by the way, from that same World Cup:

 

What The Mercedes-Benz Factory Has In Common With NYC Cab Drivers

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During his travels around Germany, Tenenbom visits a Mercedes-Benz Factory. Unlike the previously described Volkswagon Autostadt, the MB factory isn’t nearly as “Disney-world like.” (Read more on the Autostadt in our past posts here.) In fact, from Tenenbom’s description in the middle of our favorite book club suggestion, the Mercedes-Benz Factory sounds like a miserable place to work. The employees he speaks to are depressed, they aren’t allowed to drink coffee or to smoke cigarettes, and most notably, no alcohol is sold on the property.

Now, I’m not allowed to have alcohol at my office either, but this is apparently a bigger deal in German culture where beer seems to flow non-stop. The reason behind the MB Factory banning alcoholic beverages on the property? Well, according to “Thomas of Mercedes-Benz’s Visitor Communication,” alcohol is not sold at the factory because “the company doesn’t want to offend the religious sensitivities of some of the workers whose religion forbids alcohol.”

For those unaware, later verses of the Quran forbid Muslims from drinking alcohol. My knowledge of the Quran is limited at best, but through limited research I beleve this passage can be found at 5:90-91.

Is this fair? Should the personal rules of one group change the external rules for all? In an elementary school classroom, if one student is allergic to chocolate the teacher will often prevent the entire class from eating chocolate based on the idea of keeping things fair for everybody. But of course, one of the realities of becoming an adult is that life is not fair, and one would assume that German Muslims working at a car factory would be aware of this fact. No one is putting a gun to their collective heads demanding they chug a Hefeweizen, right?

Meanwhile, halfway across the world, Muslim cab drivers in New York City were experiencing a similar conflict of religious morals. Many Muslim cabbies were being forced by their companies to display advertisements on the roof of the vehicle for “Flashdancers,” a gentlemans club. The ads typically featured very attactive women with very big features and very little clothing, which similarly didn’t sit well with the more religiously-observant Muslims.
The Islamic cabbies protested, and recently the Taxi & Limousine Commission ruled that if the driver owns the cab himself, he or she gets final say on what appears on the roof advertisement. Muslim cab drivers no longer have to be “crouched behind their steering wheels in shame while driving with ads for strip clubs atop their taxis.”
That being said, it doesn’t seem fair to call these displays of “religious tolerance” parallel. After all, you only need one person to drive a cab, meaning only one individual is being subjected to the rules and policies of the vehicle. To subject an entire factory of workers to specific rules based on the beliefs of one group is something different entirely.