Jew in Germany: A Heartwarming Couchsurfing Story
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…And a timely reflection on the repetition of history
A few months ago, I wrote a viral article about my first really shitty couchsurfing experience. When I started writing this article, I thought that I’d simply like to counter that by telling you the story of a wildly coincidental and touching couchsurfing encounter and then leave it at that.
That didn’t feel right, however. The story I’m going to tell you is unfortunately juxtaposed against a terrifying and rapidly-growing cultural movement in Europe that seems all too familiar.
In 2016, I found myself in Germany. I had come to a disappointing but necessary realization whilst traveling in Southeast Asia: Apparently, it is in fact sometimes necessary to stop traveling and earn more money before continuing. So with a backpack I could barely lift and a cute new German boyfriend in hand, off I went to settle for a stint in Dresden, Germany.
My Oma (‘Grandma’ in German) was born in Schlüchtern, a small village a few hours from Dresden. She spent her childhood there, but she rarely talked about it so I knew very little about this mysterious place or our history there. We decided to go visit.
We messaged a few couchsurfers and received enthusiastic replies galore. Everyone, it seemed, was ready and excited to help a Jew discover their history in Germany. (How things have changed!) Finally we chose a guy about our age named David, who seemed nice.
When we arrived at David’s house, we reiterated to him how Oma was from here and how we simply wanted to see the village where she had spent her early years. He translated our words for his Mom.
She cocked her head to the side and asked for Oma’s family name. Wolf, I told her. Then she did something very curious: She got up, went to the bookshelf, and pulled out a book.
“Wolf”, it said on the cover. She opened the book and my eyes widened. It was a book chronicling the history of the Wolf family, filled with pictures and explanatory text in German. Stunned, I took the book in my hands and began scanning its photos until I saw a familiar name.
There, in one of the old black-and-white family photos, was a girl sitting on the far right, with the name Else Wolf in the caption. My great-grandmother! I couldn’t believe it. I’d seen her photo before, but how strange it was to see it in the home of this unfamiliar family, a face so much like my own staring at me from the pages of a family history of which I know next to nothing.
Then, through a series of rapid translations, David explained via his Mom that our family had become well-known in the town because back then we had owned quite a successful soap factory, Dreiturm Werke GmbH (something I hadn’t known before.)
Apparently, when the political climate turned against them, the family was forced to sell the soap factory for an extraordinarily low price and leave town.
The next day, David and his Mom drove us to a neighboring town to show us the new (relatively speaking) location of the old soap factory, which had grown so much in the intervening years that a change of location had been necessary.
They even took us to the old spot, where the soap factory had been before (now a bakery).
Stumbling upon a local who could provide an insight into my family’s past by coincidence, through couchsurfing, felt surreal and touching.
This feeling was intensified by the knowledge that 80 years ago, I wouldn’t have been safe in Germany. But today, kids learn about the holocaust every year in school. So many young Germans I’ve spoken with talk passionately, without being prompted, about how important it is that they know their history, foster a culture of tolerance, and make sure nothing like that ever happens again.
Seeing the young folk talk like this, habitually, gave me some degree of hope for humanity and our collective ability to live and let live. I wish I could end the article here and let that be that.
Unfortunately, to do so would be to turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Germany (and much of Europe) now.
With the onslaught of refugees who arrived in 2015, Germany began to hear the rumblings of prejudiced attitudes reawakening, borne of fear of what’s different. Muslims became the new Jews. A group called PEGIDA (Translated as “People Against the Islamicization of Germany”) formed and grew in number alarmingly quickly. At their biggest march, 25,000 protestors were counted.
Pegida protestors aren’t peaceful, either — an English student of mine who works as a researcher on protest movements specializes in researching PEGIDA, and he told me harrowing stories of how protest researchers face very real physical danger when they try to survey PEGIDA demonstrators, and have actually been attacked on multiple occasions.
When I first arrived in Germany, I was trying to go home via the tram when the tram stopped prematurely and let everyone out. The route would not continue because too many PEGIDA protestors were blocking the streets. I got out of the tram and rushed to look at them, fascinated.
Suddenly, the sky opened up. Rain began to pour down on our heads as lightning flashed and low rumbles of thunder shook the air. At that moment, I saw them, through the crowd: Throngs of people in the street, marching with German flags and even adaptations of the fascist flag (which is illegal to fly). Gaping, I watched in disbelief. It looked like a history reenactment.
Once, 2 friends and I went to one of the PEGIDA rallies as observers, largely out of morbid curiosity.
We arrived towards the end, but the “Altmarkt” (a public gathering place) was still filled with protestors. The week prior, gay marriage had been legalized in Germany; the speech that evening was about how gay marriage is actually a part of the Muslim agenda.
According to the speaker, “anyone can marry their toaster and be unhappy forever, for all [he] cares…but one day it’s just gay marriage, and the next day it will pave the way for the Muslims being able to marry 12-year-olds!”
At one point, a man came out of the crowd to talk with us. My friends do look rather like dirty hippies, and he informed us that “the left-wing fascist rally already passed by. [We] had missed them”.
He then proceeded to explain to us that there are left-wing fascists and right-wing fascists. To prove his point, he even said “Ich bin fascist”. (“I am a fascist” in German). He said it rather frankly; he didn’t seem to even view it as a negative term.
It’s not just PEGIDA; now there’s a right-wing political party with similar views called AfD (Alternative for Germany). They intend to “get back their country” (from the perceived threat of radical Islam.) At their inception, they were viewed as a radical minority party, the butt of many a joke.
That was just a few short years ago, but in the September 2017 elections, they won 12.6% of the parliament. And today, they’re somehow, astonishingly, the 2nd most popular party in Germany. They have even outdone the mainstream social democrats in polls, appealing to many with their staunch anti-immigrant rhetoric.
When I juxtapose this poignant couchsurfing story against these unsavory new developments, my brain feels stressed by the contrast. It can’t assimilate both pieces of information.
For the past 60 years Germany has worked very hard to foster a culture of tolerance, and the vast majority of the Germans I’ve met have exemplified this conditioning like champs. Yet on the other hand, a rapidly growing fascist right has emerged and exploded in what feels like the blink of an eye. The same thing is happening in other parts of Europe, as well — most notably in Italy, Britain, Hungary, Austria, Poland, France, and even Sweden.
Cultural memory seems not to last more than a couple of generations. How, then, are we are to avoid demonizing and de-humanizing yet another disadvantaged group?
