Eating cake in Hitler’s house
The rumblings of debate between Jews who will not step foot into the horrors of anything to do with death camps, World War II, or historical sites that recall the unspeakable tragedies of the Shoah are certainly controversial. Many understandably shudder, with gaping holes in their family trees as reminders, the pain too palatable to conceive of such an idea. They have already paid the deepest price, and their stories are the annals of truth for others. However, as an educator and Jewish homeschool mother, and with both my husband and my family lines arriving in America centuries prior to the Holocaust, I feel these sites are not pilgrimages by any means; they are for reflection, education, and to “Never Forget.” When, as a Jew, you lack a personal familial connection to the Holocaust, you are in danger of dangling between worlds. One world is the lack of connection, which can cause apathy, assimilation: a lackadaisical Jewish life. The other is a world that collectively understands the pattern through the ages and weaves you personally into all the antisemitic suffering from antiquity to the present time.
On our first journey to Israel, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum wouldn’t let us take the children in. The ticket agent said, “They are babies. They cannot see this.” The memorial’s policy was 10 and older. Since they were “babies,” barely 9 and 10 at the time, my husband and I took turns going through by ourselves. Such an emotionally overwhelming parental decision: exposure to truth, with the knowledge that understanding the depravity of other humans does tear at the fabric of innocence.
Years later, in a Zoom meeting with a Holocaust survivor, she emphatically instructed, “Teach your children!” She implored us not “shield” the children from the truth. My children, a bit older, had been taught, shown, and exposed to the horrific truth of Holocaust education, as all my older children had. But after the plea of this survivor, I felt obligated, connected to her suffering, I inwardly resolved and silently gave my word, “I will show them, I will do this for you… I will do this for my future generations.”
The following summer of that Zoom meeting, we headed to Europe. My husband’s job required him to be in Belgium for a week, but the “road schooling-homeschooling” mom in me always finds a way to use any experience for education. I did what I do best and turned a one-week work trip I was supposed to accompany my husband on into a month-long family “field trip” covering nine European countries. The goal: To combine the tragic with the beautiful. All for the sake of their education. After all, this is how I have homeschooled for almost 25 years: Teach, then experience it.
I mapped out our travel and the places we would visit, carefully balancing the sensitive nature of our experiences each day. We enjoyed orchestras in Vienna, seeing the royal family in Belgium, a countryside picnic in France, witnessing the grandeur of the Astronomical Clock in Prague, and castles in Luxembourg. We also experienced Munich, where, as we were walking, three unrelated groups yelled “white power” and gave Nazi salutes just a block away from where Hitler gave his first speech on the “Final Solution” in the infamous beer hall. We went to Dachau, where the tour guide strangely kept underemphasizing that the camp was also for Jews. He kept repeating, “This camp was for political prisoners, gypsies (insert strange pause with a sing-song indifference tone) and Jews.” Yet, also letting us know, “The Nazis have returned.” We experienced the heaviness and emotional exhaustion of Auschwitz and trampled around Warsaw in pouring rain, trying to find the remains of the ghetto wall. So many experiences, but one stood out for being a true mix of the beautiful and the tragic: Kelhsteinhaus, Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.
Nestled high in the Bavarian Alps is the representation of extreme contradictions. The beauty, breathtaking views, and majesty of all that God created in this world, yet with a house of evil built to devise wicked plans against His people. Perched like a bird of prey in the German mountains, ominously overlooking Austria as his food to devour, he schemed with all the top leaders on the annihilation of the Jews and the takeover of Europe.
As we ended our hiking, we went into Hitler’s house and went to the snack area. The kids wanted cake (no, it wasn’t kosher — that’s not the point of this story). And as they joyfully ate cake and we discussed the history and this experience, I asked them on video, “What are you doing?” The child-like mocking answer of my daughter was, “Eating cake in Hitler’s house… because we are Jews and still alive… and he is dead.”
In this week’s parsha, we read, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these, My signs, among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them — in order that you may know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 10:1-2).
The antisemitic powers that be, whether through Pharaoh, Haman, Hitler, or Hamas, will all meet their demise in God’s timing. But how will our children hear if we become embittered and deny our Jewishness, or if we become fearful and hide or compromise who we are? How will they stand in courage and pride of who they are without the recounting? When we do not falter, when we faithfully, courageously live as Jews, we are teaching them, so that we can hear from the children’s mouths. We will hear how He made a mockery of them by our living. We become His very “signs among them,” and the humiliation of our historical enemies, so that all will know that He is the Lord. In the parsha, God completely dismantles Pharaoh’s power, revealing his false divinity. He lays to waste the arrogant and proud. But let us not forget that it is for His name’s sake.
The message my child delivered in her derision of Hitler was a powerful observation against antisemitism. As Megillah 25b comments: “All mockery and obscenity is forbidden except for mockery of idol worship, which is permitted.” Hitler’s idolatry of himself in the delusion of being a divine-like “führer” tried to exalt himself above God, just as Pharaoh did. She aptly understood that we are still here, while he tried to exterminate us all, but failed, and died in his idol worship, when we, as a people, still live. Just as we always have historically, just as we are doing now in the face of horrific evil. The same miraculous power that brought us from Egypt is the same power that has miraculously sustained us. For His name’s sake, we must laugh, we must live, we must make aliyah, we must dance, and we eat cake… I’ll make it kosher this time.
