Do The Thing You Are Most Afraid Of
By Joanne Intrator, author of
I was in Edinburgh on my way to Berlin via Amsterdam to give a paper at a conference organized by Benedikt Goebel, an architectural historian and expert on East Berlin where my family’s large manufacturing building was located until it was stolen by the Nazis in a forced auction in 1938. He was also my very good friend since 2013. At the time he invited me to participate in an exhibit mounted by the Berlin City Museum The exhibit was called Stolen Mitte District (Geraubte Mitte) – The Aryanization of Jewish-owned Property in Berlin’s City Center, 1933 – 1945.” Our family was one of five families in the exhibition.
Now, ten years later, Benedikt asked me if I would participate along with experts in history, urban planning, and related disciplines about my thoughts. As a Jew whose family had a tormented history under the Nazis in Mitte, he was interested in what Jews’ hopes might be for Berlin Mitte ‘s reconstruction.
I had decided to go to Edinburgh before Berlin. Covid wiped out two hiking trips to Scotland. Four days in Scotland would be my consolation. The truth is without the gift to myself of visiting a place I had never been to before, I would never have been able to muster the courage to go back to Berlin so soon or ever again for that matter. My family’s nine-year restitution case had worn me out, yet I still had to face the book’s publication in a few months which had its own demons.
My father’s death bed question to me in April 1993, whether I was tough enough to take on the family’s restitution case, loomed ever presently in my thoughts. His prescient question fueled what has come to be known as Joanne’s counterphobic style. “Do the thing you are most afraid of.” Though the case was resolved in our favor after nine years, it was in large part due to my being daring even though unbinding fear of most Germans remained. Every trip was a struggle, yet I always returned to Germany. Having close friends there rooting for me made an enormous difference. And because the case was resolved the days of scaring myself in former Nazi hangouts or concentration camps were over and so was photographing antisemitic restitution judges or threatening my own lawyers with exposure for their insouciance.
Yet there was still one looming question of whether I should continue correspondence with the granddaughter of the Nazi tenant in our Wallstrasse building who owned the company that fabricated Nazi flags and bunting in Wallstrasse. In September 1941, her grandfather received the order from SS Reinhardt Heydrich to make one million Jewish star patches that would be used to segregate Jews and ready them for deportation East. All this happened in my family’s building.
Do I write her back? Her letters were not an apology but an attempt to make a bridge, ‘the two granddaughters face history’. I discontinued our correspondence when she told me one of her family members objected to our contact. That frightened me. Would someone try and hurt me for writing about her family’s Nazi past? I was already afraid of being sued by the lawyers whose reputation I challenged. A defamation lawyer I contacted recommended that I not set foot in Germany.
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I missed my Berlin connection in Amsterdam due to the inclement weather. Was fate giving me an opportunity to rethink going? I scanned the packed terminal for a place to wait for the next flight. I could feel the wooziness from the jet lag and the early start of my day. Worse was the exhaustion of always pushing myself. If I could only get off my feet to think. Leaning against a wall was my only choice. I slid down into a squat and unzipped my backpack. Something was not right. No computer, just its thick protective sleeve and notebooks
Odd that I had not noticed the backpack was lighter. Then it dawned on me I never retrieved the computer from the conveyer belt at Edinburgh security. I had a sinking feeling. My years as a great traveler seemed to have ended abruptly. I pulled myself off the floor, wiped my tears and looked for the KLM desk. The short walk felt like I was wading through deep water. I was told it would take not less than 24 hours to go back to Edinburgh and then complete the trip to Berlin. Why not just bag the trip, retrieve the computer in Edinburgh and go home?
Two trips ago, I traveled To Berlin via Iceland. One evening after a long dinner with Benedikt and his family and friends, he walked me back to my hotel along the familiar streets of my grandparent’s neighborhood when I heard whispering, coming from the windows, “You don’t belong here.” It spooked me. Would something bad happen to me in Germany? And now the computer. But I never backed out of a trip, and it never got easier. Even the fantasies of harm coming to me, and the worries about my son who would be left without his mother didn’t stop me from fighting the restitution case.
As if Elisabeth preternaturally knew I was sinking, a call from her, my Berlin friend, whose warm and welcoming voice told me how excited she was that she was able to pick me up at the airport! As relieved as I was to hear her voice it kicked up a discarded question. Why were these Germans always so nice to me? I refrained from sharing my predicament with her and proceeded to travel to Berlin. She and her sister Christina greeted me with tempting cakes and fruit and delivered me to my hotel which was smack in the middle of my grandparents’ neighborhood. The lobby was very lively, causing me some panic feelings regretful that I did not go back home. The hotel manager greeted me warmly, and all the noise around me diminished as I took a couple of breaths and made it to my room.
I opened the door and was pleasantly surprised to see a generous size bed covered with beckoning plump down pillows and quilts. A memory came back to me from childhood when I told my mother that when I die, I wanted to be buried in my down quilts. Yes, weirdly that calmed me, and I prepared for the predictably well made German bed and slept.
Next morning, famished, I filled up with eggs, salmon, bread, fruit, and cappuccinos. I returned to my room to try and reconstruct my talk for the next day. I scribbled down some ideas and went back to sleep. Dinner at Elisabeth’s family was hours away so I went outside and amused myself by walking along familiar streets posing for my camera pretending I was a mysterious and beautiful 1930’s Jew in hiding. I laughed aloud as I made it undetected in and out of courtyards and gardens. My small victories. I easily found Elisabeth’s apartment and we sat down for a hearty meal and caught up with her Christina and their families.
Later that evening, Benedikt called to tell me the meeting would be in a church that had no heat, that I should wear two layers of clothes as the weather turned below freezing temperatures. That was when I realized not only was my computer in
Edinburgh, but the new plum cashmere sweater and black wool pants were in the drawer of my Edinburgh hotel room. I felt unglued.
The church is the oldest Protestant church in Berlin completed by 1703 situated in a drab and lifeless unadorned area in east Berlin. Similar locations never ceased to cause my imagination to fire up as I pictured the violence of Nazi Germany on isolated streets like these. I saw people, men and women against a wall being shot and balletically fall to the ground. Images like this hounded me each trip to Berlin. I rarely shared these visions with my Berlin friends as I didn’t want them to worry.
The church indeed was frigid. Benedikt provided blankets to sit on until it was time to go on the stage, There I faced the gray and black dressed German intellectuals, mostly men, who came to hear a New York Jew, complaining about East German bureaucracy and its holdup of restitution of Mitte properties .
I always erred in the side of appearing as if I understood more German than I did. At the church I managed an interested, scholarly look with an occasional nod, but I had no idea what the speaker before me was saying. My steadfast newly developed ignorance was becoming my private joke. As for my talk, I read a chapter from my book that explained how visiting Sachsenhausen alone on the day of the 50th anniversary of liberating Auschwitz, led me to demanding the truth about the family building. I would no longer accept my lawyer’s repetitive spiel that such information was impossible. As to hopes for the Mitte’s development history of the Jews in Mitte is far deeper and richer than its devastation by the Nazis, especially following the arrival of the scholar Moses Mendelsohn in the 18th century who had an enormous impact in integrating Jews into secular society.
Afterwards, I joined Benedikt and other friends for dinner a block away from my grandparents’ apartment in a restaurant that replaced Grosz, my favorite restaurant
from earlier trips, with The Cumberland. Grosz had been a lively coffee house named after the renowned artist whose paintings anticipated the Nazi horror. The new restaurant is noted for its elegance, muted beige and pinks and candlelight to dine. It spoke to me of German romanticism and fairy tales. Grosz was more my speed.
We were eight of us, which included the elderly husband and wife, the distinguished sponsors of the event. What started as conversations in English quickly slipped back into German and I went along with it without a peep. The others must have assumed that I was tired. I was, but I could have conversed a bit more in German, but I chose not to. I was done pretending to myself that I fit in, that I was one of them. I would have a delicious meal and call it a day. I relaxed, all smiles and nods. I loved my secret silence.
The dinner went along easily. The food was delicious which I ate too quickly. I retired my fork and knife, hoping to avoid payback from my gut. I leaned against the comfortable pillows, wishing it would not be much longer before I could get back to my hotel, into that comfortable bed, and sleep when the distinguished older gentleman seated across from me asked if we could talk.
We each stood up and moved a bit away from the others and before I could process it, he took my two hands in his. With tears in his eyes, he told me he was Jewish which he had only recently learned when his mother was dying. With his hands in mine, he wept and fell into my arms. I quickly steadied him. He felt so fragile, as if his bones could snap without much force. His weight shifted and he stood up a bit firmer, still looking so helpless as if he had lost who he was. What was I supposed to do, something to comfort him? About his mother’s death or he being Jewish but spared our fate? Even the psychiatrist in me was inaccessible. I took him back to his seat. The others either did not catch on or politely ignored the brief intimacy.
We said nothing more to each other. I contained myself until I could politely make my goodbyes and leave.
The next and last day, Kerstin, my former research assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, picked me up for lunch. To my surprise, the day sparkled in autumn sunlight. The winter chill passed but the sun did little to ease me. I could not hold my share of German conversation with my friend. For thirty years, when we saw each other in Berlin or New York we practiced each other’s language. It wasn’t like last night’s dinner. It was a special bond we had. We were in the center of my grandparents’ neighborhood, which a hundred years ago must have looked to others as inviting as today but I could only see destruction. “What’s up?” Kerstin asked, noticing my vague presence. “I’m done,” I said, resigned, shaking my head. “I am seeing Nazis again.”.
“Jet lag, exhaustion and a vivid imagination,” patiently said my dear friend.
We walked over to see the stolpersteine markers for my grandparents in front of their apartment building placed there with Benedikt’s help ten years before. The last time, two years ago, they were freshly polished. Now one could barely make
out their names. I felt ashamed that I didn’t protect them. Kerstin gave me a reassuring hug and suggested another coffee. I never know when seeing Kerstin would be the last time. I think she felt that too. We held each other with that intensity before we parted.
Early morning, the airport limo picked me up, though I blithely left my phone as I went through security. Someone quickly caught up with me. I wanly smiled a thank you. I began to think I really wasn’t well that I had been fighting too hard to stay grounded in this complex city, Berlin that both thrilled and terrified.
Just as I was comfortably seated on the plane to New York it was announced that a crucial piece of equipment was missing. We disembarked and were led to a special waiting room for four hours until we were told we would not leave until the next day. Hotel rooms were arranged.
I did not call my Berlin friends. They had done their dependable part in offering their hospitality and understanding which provided a buffer against all that urged me not to follow through on my trips to Belin. I was hungry. I called my patients and rescheduled their appointments. I ordered food and went to bed. Pills would
help and thank goodness the quilts did not disappoint.
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Joanne Intrator’s life has been shaped by being the daughter of German Jewish refugees. Since childhood, she pondered why people perpetrate atrocities on their fellow human beings. After studying European history at Connecticut College, she received an MD from Columbia University and became a psychiatrist. She did a fellowship in Psychiatry and Law at Albert Einstein. Mentored by Dr. Robert Hare, she spearheaded the first brain imaging research on well-defined psychopaths, published in The Journal of Biological Psychiatry. Following her father’s death in 1993, she took it upon herself to fight for the restitution of a building in Berlin. Her journey has been the subject of news articles, television interviews, and museum exhibits. Joanne practices psychiatry in New York City. She has written for The Journal for The Study of Antisemitism, Ästhetik & Kommunikation (Berlin), Women Writers. Women(‘s) Books, and she writes a blog on psychopathy for Psychology Today.
Summons to Berlin: Nazi Theft and A Daughter’s Quest for Justice
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions:
“Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?”
Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did.
Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path.
The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a reader, you’ll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You’ll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father’s unnerving final demands.
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Category: On Writing
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