5: From Prague, after Berlin, München, and Dachau
Dear friends,
The last time I was in a concentration camp the world was a very different place. In the summer of 2009, the worst of the Great Recession had come and gone; Barack Obama was a newish president in the US; Dilma was serving her first term as president in Brazil in a surprisingly strong economy; the EU still had the smell of a new car, or at least the shine of a recent paint job. And as I walked around Auschwitz in June, I saw the inevitable march of time in the abundance of life that populated the camp: verdant trees and pretty little flowers, chirruping birds and sensuous, colorful butterflies filled my vision, even if I could still smell death in the immense gas chambers and see ashes in the crematoria. Auschwitz was a place of death, but when I was there, I had no doubt that life had won.
Yesterday, Dachau was not a faded memory of darkness overgrown with trees and butterflies. It was the longest-lived of the camps: it began as a place for political prisoners in 1933, soon after Hitler became chancellor, and was one of the last to be liberated, in April of 1945. On the way to München, American soldiers were confronted with an ungodly smell. They found its source in a train meant for the camp. The wagons were filled with what had once been humans: prisoners from Bergen Belsen who had been sent to Dachau for “safekeeping.” When they arrived, the preoccupied SS did not bother receiving them. The prisoners were kept in the train for 21 days. Covered in vomit and shit, freezing in the Bavarian spring, lacking fresh air, food, and water every one of them died. The Americans who discovered the train then stumbled across the camp. They were terrified and outraged. A number of the 15-year-old children who had been left as uniformed guards in the camp were shot in retribution.
The stories in Auschwitz had not been easier to digest, but they had seemed so distant. Now it all seems too close. In plaque after memorial after museum, the early history of the Third Reich echoes the world I walk in, a ghost ringing an octave higher. The disenfranchisement of the German Volk in the face of economic collapse, the scapegoating of minorities in line with ugly historical precedent, the frightening officials who surrounded Hitler… And all after a period of almost unprecedented growth and liberty: Jews in Weimar Germany had for the first time achieved legal equality, Berlin was a mecca for artists and intellectuals of all kinds, the economy thrived despite the retribution fees imposed by the winning nations of the first World War.
Which is all to say: I’m scared. I am scared of the fact that the most powerful human on the planet is soon to be a short-fused, temperamental ego-maniac. I am scared because he will have at his disposal an incredible amount of nuclear firepower, which he has intimated he is willing to use. I am scared because his Minister of Propaganda is as surprisingly powerful as he is fascist. I am scared because he has surrounded himself with generals and oil executives who have no interest in defending the planet from its inhabitants. And above all, I’m scared because all this is just the tip of the iceberg: Brazil is in political chaos, accompanied by a profound economic recession; the EU is on the brink of collapse, pending the elections in France; Alt-right parties have taken significant shares of parliaments across the Old Word; Venezuela has collapsed into a little-talked-about humanitarian crisis; North Africa is a more-talked-about and yet no-less terrifying humanitarian crisis, with dozens of people dying daily. Everywhere I look, I see the project of liberal democracy teetering at the edge on an abyss. The world we have lived in is ending, falling prey to old dark forces within us. As they say in the North, “Winter is coming.”
And yet there’s more to Winter than being cold and dark. As Germany was keen on reminding me, Winter is Christmas time, and it’s also Hanukkah time. In the darkest period of the year, right around the solstice, we bring indoors our sources of solace. We bring home little trees for all the forests we’re not going to and cover them in pretty little fairy lights, strewing them with shiny ornaments. We light candles not to read by, but to glory in their light. We fill ourselves with beauty, we surround ourselves with friends and family, we give each other gifts.
Christmas is a big deal in Germany. Berlin alone has something stupid like 200 Christmas markets filled with joyful Germans and tourists eating fried food and drinking glüweihn and the occasional eierpunsch (I have a lingering bad experience with that, though, so would not recommend the eggnog). In the market, people seem to smile and laugh more than your standard street Germans. The alcohol probably helps, as does the abundance of fried delights, but so do the children ice skating (depending on where you go) and the friends around you; the beautiful lights and carefully-decorated trees. The Christmas spirit infuses the place.
And to ride the wave, I decided to go to the Staatsballet to see the Nutcracker, that perennial Christmas-time classic. As Josh Tan, my dear friend and evening date, put it, most of the performance was cute, but rather sleep-inducing. Except for one dance. After the weirdly racist Middle Eastern bit and the definitely racist Chinese bit, following immediately on the tails of the dancing cupcakes, a couple of dancers gave a bravura performance. For an instant, everything else dropped away and all that mattered was their fight with gravity: the ways they managed to delay the encounter of foot and earth, the tragic inevitability of that encounter, the grace with which they rose and fell. It was purely beautiful. Rather like the mountains in Norway, they succeeded in silencing my fears, if only for an instant. It was a glorious glimpse of what existence could be, an unfortunately extra-ordinary encounter with an experience so pure that all constructs drop away and life is breathed in anew.
Even in the darkest of times — perhaps most of all in the darkest of times, there is solace to be found. Whether in solitude or friendship, in art or nature, in civic engagement, financial support for important causes, or spiritual practice, or maybe in all of the above or somewhere else that has not occurred to me, I hope you find light, my friends. And when you do, bring it home and treasure it. But make sure you place on in the windowsill where everyone can see it.
With love, early happy holiday wishes, and sincere hope that there is more light to come, soon,
Rafa
