Larry's Travel Journals Chapter 5..............Journey to the Real Heart of Darkness
Published Monday, August 2nd 2021 - Updated Tuesday, May 31st 2022Chapter 5...........The Journey to the Real Heart of Darkness
October 4-6, 2002
Clearly I’ve been doing this a bit much as I asked for a specific seat when I made my plane reservations a few weeks ago. Good old seat 32H on a Boeing 777…..; on a cost/leg room basis it’s the best deal in the world. Funny how your perspective changes when you travel across the pond a few times as I have this year. My trip to Baltimore last week was twice as hard as my trip to London the other night. Even in coach, nine hours 50 minutes in a 777 and a sleeping pill is infinitely better than six hours with a switch in Columbus, Ohio.
Anyway, the travel saga continues as I make my way to Lisbon, then Paris, Cologne, and Kassel, Germany before heading back to London for the return. As usual, I won’t be commenting on the commercial part of the trip except to say that yes, I do have business to tend to in these cities.
When I re-read my previous journals I become even more aware of the importance of travel as a way to broaden my perspective on world history, current events, and my place in this world. This trip is a bit of a personal challenge. I have previously gone “In search of Kurtz” to search out ways of living that are quite different (almost alien) from the way I live and have journeyed to “Philadelphia” to honor the patriots of Normandy who defended the brilliance and courage of the “Founding Brothers”.
The last time I was in Germany I wrote of my visit to the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. It was so moving to see the remnants of a centuries-old thriving community housed in one building. I experienced a sadness that I’m not sure I had ever experienced before. Such loss…..and the realization that part of my cultural heritage is stored in that repository of what was. Frankly I was ashamed of myself for not feeling an even deeper sense of connection to those people. Then a month or so ago the NY Times (of course) ran an article by the ABC newsperson Lynn Scher about her visit to Auschwitz. How I thought, can I go to Germany and not pay my respects and honor my forebears and not go to a concentration camp? So I asked Marc, my German colleague and he volunteered to take me to Buchenwald, a camp close to where we will be having meetings next week. So, this is a journey from the comforts of 21st-century Westlake Village to the horrors of the 1940s. Frankly, I feel funereal even as I write this a week prior to my visit.
My kids are stunned at my need to go and it’s hard to describe the impulse- it's not, after all, another museum or another famous site. I’ll feel what I feel when I get there but in anticipation, it feels like a need to have a completion…. to experience, not just understand my identity as a Jew.
On the way over to Heathrow, I was reading the obituary of Norman Brown, the philosopher. There was an interesting reference to his work, “Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History” in which he says that the individual and society are imprisoned by the Freudian notion of repression. The only escape he argued was to face death head-on and affirm life. That resonates with what I’m trying to say about my need to go to Buchenwald. Since I’m not about to start bungee jumping from airplanes this is my way of facing death head-on.
But anyway, on the cheery side, I had a delightful afternoon and evening in London yesterday. Spent the afternoon in Knightsbridge with Harrods as my destination. (Jacqui was out of vanilla tea). Trading the bright sunshine of LA for the dreary, (but not rainy) streets of London is good fun, especially on a Saturday afternoon as people are bustling through the streets with shopping bags. I guess I’ll never lose my NY roots as a city person. The pulse and the energy are good. London is a very young city. It seemed to me that everyone was in the 18-30 year old demographic (maybe it was the fact that I was traveling by rail and then underground) but it was fun to see hand-holding and public smooching. If London has become a romantic place what will I see in Paris!
Some random observations and thoughts:
I wonder why BMI (British Midlands) thinks it’s still the 1950s. You see their female staff walking through the airport with their funny hats; it seems so incongruous after 9/11. On my British Airways flight to Lisbon, they still give you those little hand wipes after take-off and draw the curtains between classes and gently tell you to stay in your place. Hey, didn’t they get the message, the glamour is gone from flying, just get me there safely and do some more profiling please of these four guys who just got on my flight to Lisbon.
A big issue in the states is of course the hyphenation of everyone (e.g. Mexican-American, African-American, etc) and I think we struggle with the resultant issues (at least I’ve always thought so) because we are made a common people due to our beliefs and values as embodied in the constitution, not because of common language or common tribal heritage like here in Europe. So, what is going on here in London? If this isn’t a melting pot then I’ve never seen one. Did I read somewhere recently that some Muslims see a Muslim republic in England in the future? Seriously. I really wonder how the Brits can bring their fast-growing non-Anglo-Saxon population under their national and cultural umbrella- or how they’re going to keep them on the outside. I actually have the same question as I anticipate Paris later this week. What does it mean to be a Brit or a Frenchman in the 21st century?
Ah, the French. I’m getting myself warmed up for a few days in Paris by reading “From Paris to the Moon” a recent bestseller by a writer for The New Yorker who lived in Paris in the late 90s with his wife and baby. Tres funny and very insightful. This guy grew up in post-war NY and Philadelphia with many of the same images and archetypes of 19thcentury Paris emblazoned in his mind as I did. It’s not that Paris is necessarily “better” than everywhere else, it’s just that “Haussman” Paris is the standard against which every other city must be measured. This is what a city looks, feels, smells, and tastes like. Hmmm, sensuality. Can’t wait.
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
The meetings in Lisbon went well. I’ve been to Lisbon a few times now and one of the things I like about is the physical purity of the people. They surely must look like the people who sailed the oceans during the great Age of Discovery. You look at the faces and it is so easy to imagine being a movie producer and casting the folks in a historical drama.
Speaking of movies, I was walking back to my hotel from dinner tonight and I recognized the actor, Peter Coyote about a half-block away coming towards me. As he passed me I smiled knowingly at the lady on his arm and she smiled back in silent acknowledgment.
So, we met this morning for our meeting at La Coupola, a very famous brasserie in the Montparnesse area.
I won’t bore anyone to recount the late afternoon visit to Musee D’Orsay but if you’re a regular reader of these journals you know I’m one lucky guy to have seen Claude, Paul, Edgar, Vincent, and the rest of their buddies as often as I have.
Dinner tonight with our partner from Saudi Arabia. First drinks at Les Deux Magots, a very famous café on St. Germain de Pres then on to a nearby café. As we sat in Les Deux Magots it was fun to know that the very interesting conversation we were having about the Middle East, Islam, Judaism, Israel, Bin Ladin, etc, was not the first philosophical and intelligent conversation that has taken place under that roof since 1813.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
I think I’m having another of what my mother would have called a “busman's” holiday. I think that means that even though you are away you are doing the same thing you always do. That’s me. I worked this morning for about four hours and then returned to the e-café to send off some files. I wish they had a frequent user card at that place.
Traveling without Jacqui is a new experience, I have to do all the navigation myself. It was fun to jump on the metro and figure out how to get from where I am to the other side of Paris where I have never been before.
Scenes from the Metro…..loud New Yorkers…. and a pickpocket getting the shit kicked out of him for trying to ply his trade (not by the NYers).
The Musee Marmatton is the home in Paris of the Monet Center and while the collection isn’t huge it’s beautifully done.
The neighborhood where the museum is just fabulous. I think I got in touch with my fascination with Paris today. All the beautiful buildings are surrounded by parks, carousels, cafes, nannies with strollers, and ice cream vendors. It’s a scene from Curious George!!!! I think the man in the yellow hat lived in Paris!!
Whether he did or not I want to live right there. I went in to a realtor and he was kind enough to indulge me in fantasy. Hey, Jacqui, we can sell the house and get a very nice flat in a very nice neighborhood for a good price.
How’s this for a “synchroncity” moment. I get off the metro and decide to verify that I’m walking in the right direction to the museum. A pregnant woman with a baby in a stroller is there so I excuse myself for my French and she says not too worry she speaks English. Easy enough and then she says, “Are you Jewish?” Well yeah I say, I thought you looked Jewish too now that I think of it. She immediately invites me to shabbos dinner on Friday. I’m so thrown that I lie and say I’m leaving on Friday. So we chat and she says she’s from Brooklyn and moved here nine years ago. Why? To spread the faith. She’s from Chabad! I of course explained to her my objective for the trip and she says that it was fate for me to meet her and that I need to turn my life to Torah. She gives me her phone number and says that the next time I’m in Paris I must call her and her husband and come for shabbos dinner. Is that unreal or what?
Feeling very good after the museum visit, I decided to treat myself to a café and a pomme de tarte and walk back to my hotel in Montparnesse. Jacqui is going to shoot me but I had forgotten my camera; I just can’t get used to schlepping anything when I’m walking around. I was sorry.
I walked past the statue of Ben Franklin (who was a great Francophile in his day) and came upon L’Tour d’Eiffel from the “other’ side of the Seine. It was magnificent. I actually haven’t been close to it in many years. It really is beautiful, the symmetry is perfect. Being such a postcard perfect day I could have had great pictures. Ouch.
Friday, October 11, 2002
If the theme of this trip is about touching the real heart of darkness then I have now had the pleasure of touching real beauty and light. Oh how I love being here. I must have walked 25 miles in the last two days.
I had a “duh” experience today when I read in a tour book that the 16th Arrondissment where I was babbling about yesterday is described as follows; “If Paris the heart of France then the 16th is the heart of Paris” Sure I like it. It’s the Beverly Hills of Paris!! I can spot “good” wherever I go.
Today after a brief period of work in the morning I took the metro over the Seine to the Marais. Besides being the Jewish section it is also home to so many other sites. I started with a lunch of soul food at the Restaurant Marianne which Jacqui and I discovered the last time we were here and then I went off in search of the Museum of Jewish History and Art. Opened in 1998 it is housed in another magnificent “hotel” and does a very nice job of explaining and showing Jewish culture and history with two major exceptions; nothing about Abraham and nothing about the holocaust. The folks who made comments in the guestbook were pretty upset about this obvious omission. This is particularly odd given that the Marais was where Jews were rounded up and deported by the Vichy French.
Then it was off to the Bastille and a tour of the Carnavalet Hotel and Museum which is the museum of the city of Paris. Wow. In room after room of paintings the history and the evolution of this marvelous vision of the way people are supposed to live in cities is presented. Some of the paintings and sculptures you’ve seen in books but I found the paintings of poor Louis XVI and his family as they were being separated and then the inevitable painting of Louis’ head on a spit and the blood gushing into a bucket was quite touching.
They also have Napolean’s travel kit. I wish they had a description of each item. What were all those things?
As I sat in a café by the Place des Vosges and admired the incredible architecture of the 36 building designed in 1612 for Marie de Medici (yeah, those Medici from Florence) I wondered what archtypes I put in my kids heads. I have the man in the yellow hat (who must have lived in the 16th Arrondissment I’ve decided); what do they have? I hope it’s good and I hope it’s driving them to touch their visions. I’m certainly touching mine and it’s just great.
So I made a wrong turn after searching out a cyber café and ended up walking about a mile in the wrong direction and had a cute encounter with a taxi driver. On the corner I pulled out my trusty map and this cabbie pulls alongside with this look on his face like, “You need a cab?” so I say, “Merci, not right now, I haven’t surrendered to the city yet, I’m gonna find my way”. He understood and smiled. Then I said which way to XYZ? And he coyly shrugs and says “Hmmmm” I said, “come on gimme a clue; play fair” and he did.
My feet are really tired. I’ve gone from Pompidou Center to Montparnesse today in about nine hours. I’m looking forward to the train experience on Saturday.
I was “this close” to buying a beret but Pierre had told me that wearing a beret in France would be like him wearing a cowboy hat in LA so I passed. It’ll pass as I get further away from here and closer to LA. But when we move here………
For now, it’s off to Cologne. Bon soir.
Saturday, October 12, 2002
It was probably fitting that I awoke to a grey, drizzling morning to mark the transition from the beauty of the last few days in Paris to the Heart of Darkness.
Cologne (Koln). What can I say? You close your eyes as you leave Gare D’Nord and awaken to what? Winter? Steel grey overcast, people in overcoats, damp air, charmless buildings and what’s this? Arabs holding a festival of sorts in the city center!! If the CIA and our Special Forces want to infiltrate Al-Qaeda they better come here. Multiple internet café storefronts and very suspicious people busy in them. If the people I walked past on the street were getting on my plane I would have to say something.
You know how I “knew” that it was ok to talk to that Chabad woman in Paris? I made inadvertent eye contact with some of these guys and my blood ran cold, cause they “knew” who I am and I “knew” who they are.
What the heck is going on here? Today is a special shopping day and the stores are open till 21:00. The streets are packed. (My German colleague Marc tells a German joke….how do you get 21 Germans to leave the pool? Tell them to leave the pool!) and I wonder if the city mandated that every single person in the area go shopping today.
If you want black clothes and shoes and want to spike your hair, this is the place to be. Oy vey.
There is a famous cathedral here in Cologne and suffice to say it’s tall, big, dirty (on the outside) and looks eerily like Notre Dame on the inside. I walked through, snapped some photos and that was enough.
Sunday, October 13, 2002 Buchenwald
To my dear, beautiful, wonderful children,
How can I begin to tell you about my experience today? Words are not adequate to express the enormity of the loss, the enormity of the inhumanity and the enormity of the feelings.
I really don’t know where to begin, usually I write these words and they flow pretty easily, not tonight.
I took pictures and bought the books so you’ll “see” for yourselves but you won’t really see anything.
How can I tell you about walking over the ground where 250,000 people lived in inhuman conditions and 50,000 died? True, not all of these innocent people were Jewish and so they were not all connected to you by religious heritage but they all were human and their lives were the responsibility of other humans. So for a moment think about this as a human, not Jewish experience. But then quickly come back to the realization that it was disproportionately Jews who were here and who died here. And this is but one of the many camps.
Our trip by car took almost five hours to get here from Cologne and as we passed the countryside I kept thinking of these poor frightened people whose trip was longer than this and in much worse conditions. Each minute of unknowing must have been frightening beyond anything I can imagine.
The people who came here arrived by a train and disembarked to a central receiving area and then walked through an entranceway that says “Everyone gets what they deserve”. How many ironic interpretations can we make of this today!
A dark, cloudy, damp and cold day was the only proper environment to take this in. I doubt if the sun ever shines here anyway. God must always be crying over Buchenwald.
I don’t care how many “Schindler’s Lists” you see or books you read (and I hope you see all the movies and read all the books) the solitude and sadness of the place humbled me. In some ways all the movies and books have numbed me into thinking I “knew” what I was going to see and feel. I actually had to disassociate myself from everything I thought I knew in order to take it all in.
Believe it or not the camp was almost all destroyed by the Soviets after the war, not in revenge for German atrocities but to hide the atrocities they committed when they took control of the camp after the war and before they relinquished control in 1950. All the barracks are gone. “Street” after “street” of flattened roofs and wooden beams. What’s left? The guard houses, the reception area and the crematorium. The wind and cold cut through you as you walk the site and you realize that this is October, not February and no one was handing out warm clothes to the, what were they anyway? Prisoners? Internees?, let’s just call them victims.
The silence, the barrenness, the cold, the lifelessness are so powerful and scream so loudly but I kept thinking where is the humanity? How would I know what had gone on here if I didn’t know. Yes, there are stone monuments on the grounds but where is the blood curdling scream of the injustice and the inhumanity and then I would come back to the realization that just asking the question supplied the answer. There was no humanity and the screams are here until the end of time…..forever.
Unlike other camps that are part of our images, there was no grizzly shower room and gas chamber at Buchenwald. Here they shot people in the head or did medical experiments or worked people to death and then sent them to the crematorium.
Yes, the crematorium is still here, perfectly preserved. In fact, it’s across the camp from where they shot people so everyone knew what was happening as they had to see the bodies being carted off and taken to the building with the big smoke stack. Every fiber of my body and soul was shaken at the first glimpse of six ovens-- they could have been bread ovens if I hadn’t known. Yes it was horrible but you know, as much as my thoughts were on the victims I wondered about the poor bastards who had the jobs in this chamber of death. What kind of human being could have worked there without going insane? As the sign on the door says, “Everyone gets what they deserve” and there must be a special part of the deepest part of hell for these, I don’t what to call them.
A basement where the ashes were dropped. A forest where the ashes were taken and dumped.
Street after street of invisible barracks that housed the then living memories of hundreds of years of European civilization and Jewish culture. And why were they killed? I kept asking myself that question too. I’ve read all those books too and I kept coming up blank. I don’t know. Because some insecure housepainter thought some people were innately better than other people? That can’t be the reason to create this level of pain for the victims….. and their oppressors. The “why” just can’t be known or perhaps expressed in mere words.
I’ve seen and touched the Heart of Darkness and I share it with you so you’ll know that it is there. As I write this I am aware that one message I mean to convey is that man has the ability to be beyond evil but the other side of the coin, and the other message, is that we hold the ability to create beauty and good (think Paris). I guess that Norman Brown was right, one has to face death head-on and then affirm life. I choose goodness and life.
I love you more than you can know.
Dad
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