Bravery in the Face of Hatred

It is no secret that Judaism is filled with irony. Throughout their history, Jews have had to cultivate a strong sense of humor, often needing to find laughter within their tears. So it is not surprising that we might need to read this Shabbat’s Torah portion, Va-yetze, with a sense of irony. Va-yetze is one of the most hopeful portions we read each year. In it, Jacob falls asleep on a rock (“Jacob’s Pillow”) and has a dream in which God tells him, “I will give to you and your seed the land where you are sleeping. And your seed will be as dust of the earth and spread in all directions, and through you will all the families on earth be blessed. I am with you and will guard you. I will not leave you until I have accomplished what I have promised." The narrative for this week also deals with Jacob’s marriages and the birth of his 12 sons, who will become the namesakes of the tribes of Israel. All positive stuff, you have to admit.

But this Shabbat also marks the 75^th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” when Hitler’s “brownshirts” broke windows in and set fire to synagogues throughout Germany. German Jews living through that night (and sadly many did not) probably began to doubt the positive message God had given Jacob in Va-yetze; they began to wonder if God was indeed on guard. And it took a special kind of bravery for German Jews (and really all of us) to put aside their doubt and to go forward after that evening.



The inside of a German synagogue the morning after

So it is bravery that I want to write about.

On November 10, 1938, my mother-in-law, Frances Malzer, was 23 years old and living in London. She had left home all alone the year before, following her family’s urging that she leave Hitler’s Germany, and was eking out an existence as a domestic helper for a German Jewish family living in England. She once laughingly told us that she was not a very good housemaid, and she didn’t get along very well with the woman of the house. My mother-in-law was always very neat, but I don’t think she ever enjoyed cleaning—and certainly not for other people. She also spoke very little English at the time. She was a little nervous that she might get fired and be left even more alone in a strange country.

Frances Malzer, probably around 1938

So imagine how she must have felt when she received an urgent telegram from her parents on November 10, 1938. Her parents were living in a small town in Bavaria, almost too small to make an impact on a German map but filled with enough Jews to arouse the anger and attention of the brownshirts. I am not sure just what the telegram said, but the message was loud and clear: GET US OUT OF HERE!

And this singular woman set about doing just that. With her limited English and even more limited resources, she began looking for someone who could help sponsor her parents to leave Germany and come to England or even America. Now, my mother-in-law seldom talked about these events, so I can only guess at them. Somehow she communicated with cousins in Germany or German Jews in England who let her know that a distant cousin living in New Orleans, of all places, was wealthy enough and family-centered enough to provide the financial help and documentation to get her parents and brother out of Germany. So she set the wheels in motion, finding a way to contact Edgar Stern (whose wife was the daughter of one of the founders of Sears & Roebuck) and appeal to him to rescue her family.

(Here I must digress with another ironic twist. Edgar Stern and his wife had a daughter named Audrey. It was not a common name, but my mother-in-law really liked it. So perhaps as a way to thank her cousin or simply because she liked the name, my mother-in-law named her only child— my wife—Audrey. All to the good. But somehow the Malzers and Sterns had very little to do with each other once the Malzers arrived in New York. My wife’s family never cultivated a relationship with their REALLY RICH cousins! Sadly ironic, and enough to make you laugh and cry at the same time.)

More on bravery. My wife’s uncle Harold, her mother’s younger brother, was never a very warm or engaging person. We have several family anecdotes that back that up. He was also not a very lucky person. On November 10, 1938, he was 18 years old and on an outing for Orthodox Jewish youth being held far away from his family home in Bavaria. So he was a Jewish kid all alone in a country in which Jews like him were being set upon in the streets by Nazis or their sympathizers. He once told us a little of what happened to him then. Over the next several days, he hid out during the days and managed to slip onto trains at night, until he could finally rejoin his parents. It must have been a harrowing experience. He did get to England with his parents soon afterwards, but then his unluckiness resurfaced. He found himself unwittingly enlisting into the British army to fight the Germans. It would be several years before he too would make it to New York.

Frances (Franzi) and her brother Harold (Hans)
 as children in Germany

I think Audrey’s family may have one more connection to Kristallnacht. In the days following that terrible night, thousands of Jewish men (as many as 30,000 according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum) were thrown into concentration camps in Germany, accused of the crime of being Jewish. I know that Audrey’s father was sent to Dachau, the camp in southern Germany, at around that time and long before he met my mother-in-law in New York. How did he get there? What was his experience like? How did he get out? He never talked about any of that. So many European Jews, it seems, never wanted to tell their children about the ways they suffered. I think they wanted to spare their children any painful memories. So we are left wondering and filling in the blanks ourselves.

For my own ancestors, safely in America long before 1938, Kristallnacht was a news event, painful to read about or view in newsreels but not very threatening. For Audrey’s family, the event was harrowing and called for fast action, quick wits, and great bravery. It took all of that for them to be able to be in a position to experience God’s promise to Jacob that they would be blessed. That seems ironic to me, but it also makes me proud.

The Cinque Terre Challenge

Ever since we watched Rick Steves explore the Cinque Terre on public television about 10 years ago, Audrey and I have wanted to go there to visit the five villages that Steves calls “one of God’s great gifts to tourism.” (Amanda has also lobbied to go with us should we ever decide to make the trip, but we couldn’t bring her this time.) On our screen, Rick lithely loped along the path between two of the five hillside villages, stopping to share a succulent cactus fruit with a local farmer and smell the lemon blossoms. Then he boarded a local train that literally hopped between two other villages. His short-sleeve summer-color shirt remained neatly tucked in the entire time. There was not a drop of sweat in sight, not a hair out of place. After Audrey, Phyllis, Harvey, and I slowly and tortuously (at times) traversed, climbed, dipped, slid, and even crawled along the rocky path between villages for more than three hours, we wondered, “Just where had Rick Steves actually been in that video?” And we had hiked between only two of the five villages; we couldn’t imagine having the stamina to walk the entire pathway.

This was day 2 of our Italian biking adventure. We were going on a leisurely stroll that we hoped wouldn’t tire us out too much before the actual biking would begin the following day. Oh, how misguided we were!

Please don’t get me wrong. I do not mean to disparage the Cinque Terre, which is spectacularly beautiful. And I don’t really mean to put down Rick Steves, whose tour videos I really enjoy. It’s just that we were not prepared for the real Cinque Terre. The pathway between towns five and four —Monterossa and Vernazza—is only about three kilometers in length, and Steves estimates that it will take a “fit hiker” less than 2 hours to complete. It took us more than 3½. And by the end I was breathing hard and really sweaty, and my shirt was untucked (as usual). Now, admittedly, Steves does call that part of the trail “the most challenging,” so we should have been warned. We also should have been warned when a young couple we met at the start of the trail (who had just completed the trip from the other direction) offered to give us their trail passes for the next day for free (“No way we’ll be using them,” they shared).

But we were in the Cinque Terre at last. And on vacation! So we set off on the first leg of our tour of the “five lands.” I won’t provide a full play-by-play, but here is a little of the flavor of our “stroll.” We started on the beach in Monterosso and began a slow but steady climb up the hillside, heading southeast. The path quickly turned from dirt trail to stone steps (some fairly steep), then to narrower steps, leading to an even narrower trail that looked out over a hillside vineyard and many fruit trees. On some of the trees were lemons as large as etrogs, the Israeli citrus fruit that is part of the Sukkot celebration. Even as we held tightly onto the rock walls, we were enticed to take photo after photo, looking back toward Monterosso and forward toward what we hoped would soon be Vernazza. How beautiful was this!

A view of Monterosso where we began our climb

Being 60-somethings, we often found ourselves moving aside on the trail as much as we comfortably could to let younger tourists pass us by. “They must be the fit hikers Rick Steves mentioned,” I thought. I also wondered just why they weren’t sweating or huffing and puffing.

Hanging on as we get closer to Vernazza

I kept telling myself that once we reached the highest point in the trail and began heading downhill, it would go easier for us. But I hadn’t figured on the effect of heavy rains that had fallen in the region in the days before our visit. The downhill rocks and steps were better gravity-wise, but they were somewhat slick and tough on the knees. Still, everywhere we looked there was something unusual and picturesque, demanding to be photographed. There were the cactus covered with fruit, just like the ones Rick Steves had shared with the farmer. There were flowering bushes literally springing out of the rocks. There was even a workman incongruously blocking our path with a cart filled with more stones. Where could he be taking them?

And there at last were the pastel-colored houses of Vernazza, crowding a small harbor on the coast of the Ligurian Sea. And we were being welcomed by a singular saxophone player, whose notes bounced off the hillside. I think he had his case open for tips, but most of us were too busy wiping the sweat from our eyes to notice.

One last picture before we enter Vernazza

We had made it to Vernazza. Whew!

We explored the town and decided to pick out a restaurant for lunch. Characteristically, Phyllis wanted us to go to the one that sat atop a steep wall of steps. (Phyllis is part mountain goat, I am convinced.) And she wasn’t satisfied with our climbing just one set of steps. “The ones on the next level will have an even better view,” she insisted. We talked her down, literally, and she agreed to let us be seated at tables on the second terrace. Our waiter was gracious and oh-so-Italian. “My name is Andrea, like-a Bocelli,” were his first words. He proceeded to flirt with all of the women at our table and the ones nearby too. He brought us wine and pasta and never stopped charming us until we were rested and stuffed and happy. We had friendly thoughts about Rick Steves again.

As we climbed down from the restaurant, Phyllis came up with a new idea. “Let’s walk off lunch by hiking to Corniglia (the next town),” she suggested. Audrey and I shook our heads, stamped our feet, and pointed to the train instead. It took a few minutes of convincing, but the train it was. Of course, when we got to Corniglia after a two-minute train ride, we read Rick Steves’s description and noted that the town center was some 33 flights and 382 steps above the train station. 382 steps! Up! So we climbed, even though we realized that we would eventually have to descend 382 steps to get back to the train.

And it was worth it. If we go back to the Cinque Terre, we plan to find a room in one of the narrow alleyways in Corniglia and bask in its atmosphere for 2-3 days. Now that would be a “great gift to tourism.”



In Corniglia, the alleyways are so narrow
 you can almost touch the walls on both sides.

Day 2 of our Italian adventure was filled with a crazy bus and train ride, a death-defying hike, and way too much exercise. After this, the biking was bound to be easy. Right? R-i-g-h-t!

You CAN Get There from Here, but It Won’t Be Easy

We started off our biking adventure in Italy with a walking adventure in the Cinque Terre. The Cinque Terre, which is located on the northwestern coast of Italy along the Ligurian Sea, was a hidden treasure until Rick Steves started singing its praises about 20 years ago in his tour books and public television broadcasts. Now its narrow footpaths and quaint villages tucked into steep cliffs are filled with tourists eager to follow Steves’s advice to “take it slow . . . smell the cactus flowers and herbs, notice the lizards, listen to birds singing in the olive groves, and enjoy vistas on all sides.”

Cactus in flower above the Cinque Terre town of Vernazza

From our recent experience visiting the region, Steves has not understated its beauty or charm, but he surely has underestimated how challenging a hike through the Cinque Terre can be. And, for us, just getting to the five tiny towns presented its own challenge!

We were based for our first two nights in Italy in another tiny Ligurian coastal town, Portovenere. We Americans pronounced the name (port-oh-ven-AIR-ee), accenting the penultimate syllable (how literary does that sound!) until we discovered that real Italians put the accent on the third syllable from the end (port-oh-VEN-uh-ree). No matter how you pronounce it, Portovenere occupies only a small spot on the map and is not a transportation hub. To get the few kilometers northwest to the Cinque Terre, we would first need to travel northeast about 8 kilometers (5 miles) by public bus to the nearest city, La Spezia, a “blue-collar” metropolis filled with industry, traffic, and part of the Italian naval fleet. Once in La Spezia, we could walk a few blocks to the train station and board a Genova-bound train for a brief 18-minute ride to the first of the Cinque Terre towns, and a 27-minute ride to the fifth town, Monterosso del Mare, where we planned to begin leisurely hiking and exploring.



"Downtown" Portovenere close up and from a distance.
The structures in the water are mussel pots, where the tasty delicacies are farmed.

 Of course, traversing the five miles from Portovenere to La Spezia took about 45 minutes by bus. But I am getting ahead of myself. To board the bus, you needed to have purchased a ticket previously (you couldn’t just pay the driver). That meant using the ticket machine in the small bus stand, which noted that it accepted 10-euro and 5-euro notes (but really didn’t). So one of us (me) hiked back to the hotel to request some euro coins to feed the machine. The hotel staff was obviously hoarding those coins for better clients, and would change only one 5-euro note, enough to purchase 2 tickets, with 1-euro change, but not enough to help any of our fellow travelers to buy tickets. When all was said and done, one couple boarded without tickets, offering the driver paper notes, which he refused. So they rode for free, and no one seemed too upset by it.

We had a general idea of where to debark in La Spezia to be close to the train station and asked the driver to give us a heads-up when we were near. We debarked, walked through the middle of a packed market-day crowd, and followed street signs during a brisk 10-minute walk to the train station. Using hand signals, we managed to buy our tickets, which would include our trail pass for the Cinque Terre, and to determine on just which platform we should stand to await the train. The train station was bustling, which was all pretty invigorating. After all, we were going to the Cinque Terre! And despite the fact that we were carrying cameras, iPhones, hats to ward off the sun, and a backpack containing a Rick Steves guidebook, we imagined ourselves not as American tourists but as Italian natives, riding local buses and trains.

I plan to write about our actual hiking in Cinque Terre in my next posting (please stay tuned), but I still want to describe our adventure getting back to Portovenere later that same day.

We were pretty worn out, as you can imagine when we trained back to La Spezia (or you will be able to understand better after you read my next post). Now, we had to buy bus tickets and find our way from the train station to the nearest bus stop. This was not as easy as retracing our earlier steps, even if we could remember them exactly. The street on which he had debarked from the bus earlier that day had been one way; now we needed to go in the opposite direction. Audrey took the initiative to ask directions in the train station, and emerged with a marked up map. Of course, Phyllis, Harvey, and I questioned whether the directions she had been given were right. Somehow, we each thought we knew a better way to go. Inevitably, we got a little lost. Harvey needed something from a supermarket we passed, and Audrey went in to try to ask for more directions. A few seconds later, an animated young woman Audrey had approached behind the deli counter in the market emerged from the store with an older man, and the two of them began debating in rapid Italian just where to send us to get the bus. Finally, the woman threw up her hands (she WAS Italian after all), and shouted at us to follow her. She proceeded to race three blocks ahead, while we tried to keep up. We arrived at a main street, where she pointed out a bus stand less than a block away. I’m not sure we could ever have found it without her help. We turned to thank her, only to discover that she was already racing back to the store, probably to finish slicing salami for a customer who must have been wondering where she had gone.

Portovenere's busy marina

We boarded the P bus, and joined a rush-hour crowd already onboard. Some 30 minutes later, the bus pulled into Portovenere, but not the part of the town in which were staying. We had arrived at the end of the line, it seems. Luckily, the driver indicated that he would take us by our hotel a few minutes later, when he began that next part of his route. And he did. We had had quite a day, wending our way to and from La Spezia, with a hike through the Cinque Terre in between. We had been adventurers à la Rick Steves. And this was just our second day in Italy!