In 1957, as part of the reparation to the new Jewish nation of Israel, the German government donated money to help build three merchant ships for the Israeli United Kibbutzim Association. The shipyard was in Keil, about an hour drive away from Hamburg.

At age thirty-four, my father was already an experienced sea captain. He was a handsome man with curly silver hair and an easy smile, always dressed well, and spoke several languages; he was witty, and charming. But, he also had a darker side. He could be extremely opinionated and easily enraged. That probably resulted from growing up in Jerusalem in poverty, neglect and having been mistreated by his abusive parents who were, themselves, struggling refugees from the Russian pogroms. 

My father seemed to be the most suitable person in our kibbutz to supervise the building of the kibbutzim ships. We were a family of five. I was nine, the oldest, my brother Noam was six, and my little brother Assa, was three. We moved for a year to Hamburg. A wealthy old businessman offered us the use of his apartment on Isestrasse Neunundseibzig, in one of the ritziest neighborhoods.

The apartment had many old glass-encased cabinets filled with porcelain figurines, plush sofas, and paintings by German masters. There was also one painting of the dignified owner of the flat looking down at us from above the fireplace. For us kids, the soft decorative carpets were the best place to roughhouse and play-wrestle. Inevitably, somethings broke here and there. 

For my parents, it was the first time they could enjoy a bit of luxury for themselves. They loved sitting in the living room on the soft velvety sofas with a drink in hand, while Biba, the German maid who seemed to come with the apartment, cooked and cleaned up after us.

My mother was born in Germany. She and her parents escaped Konigsberg (now the Russian Kaliningrad) just before the Nazis rounded up all the Jews and put them on the trains to the camps. Before the war, Konigsberg was the center of German intellectual life. By the age of twelve my mother could sing all of Schubert’s lieders, Beethoven’s Fidelio and a host of German folk songs. She could also recite poetry by Goethe. She was, for sure, immersed in German culture and never dwelled too much on the horrors the Germans committed against the Jews. 

My father, on the other hand, had worked on the boats that smuggled refugees from Europe to Palestine and had fought in the Israeli war of Independence. He despised the German people and suspected every one he met to be a former Natzi collaborator. He saw them as rigid, overly serious and devoid of any real sense of humor. Nevertheless, he did accept the job, which came with endless invitations to parties, restaurants, concerts and ceremonies like ships launchings.

I was the designated baby sitter to my two devilish brothers. I brought them with me everywhere I went. We walked together through the fresh food market under the U-Bhan train to school; I took them to visit Ingrid, my new girlfriend from class, or to roller-skate in the playground at the end of the block. I often stayed at home with them in the evenings while my parents went out.

One evening, as soon as my parents closed the door behind them on their way to a concert, we started to chase each other around the apartment, screaming, laughing and sliding on the floor. We even had more fun jumping up and down on the spring beds, higher and higher. Assa, our three-year old little roly-poly bundle of cuteness, bounced like a ball so high, he landed head first on the iron radiator. Blood spurt everywhere. I knew immediately what to do. I filled the bathtub with warm water and put him in it. The blood gushed faster and the water in the tub turned red. I ran to the neighbors across the hall and frantically banged on their door and rang the doorbell. The young couple living there rushed into our apartment and pulled my poor baby brother out of the tub, wrapped him in a towel and took him to a nearby hospital. A doctor there stitched up his head and more than likely saved his life.

One other story that always remained clear in my mind was the time that my parents sent us, one late afternoon, to the playground. We played there for a little while but decided that the larger playground near the Hochhausen would be so much more fun. At first, we walked with confidence because we knew the way, but we soon realized that we did not really know where we were.! We continued to walk in the direction that I believed was the way to the playground, but something did not feel quite right.  

We walked and walked. The sun was setting and the city lights turned on. I became increasingly scared that we were lost. I grabbed my two brothers’ hands, and started running in panic from one deserted street to the next. On one corner, under a street light, we saw a little old lady, dressed in a tailored dark blue suit, a round rimless hat, and white gloves, with a small handbag. She had red lipstick and pointed glasses. I asked her with broken German “Entschuldigung bitte, Wo ist Isestrasse neunundseibzig?” (“Excuse me, please, where is 79 Isestrasse?”)

The lady pointed to the right direction, but suddenly stopped and asked “Wo bist du?” (“Where are you from?”) and I said “Israel.” The lady clasped her hands then spread them wide and shrieked with excitement: “Oh! Wunderbar, unglaublich!!” (“Oh! Wonderful, incredible!”) She grabbed Noam’s hand and led us as fast as her old legs could muster into a confectionary shop and began ordering boxes and bars of chocolates, more and more, piling them high in our out stretched hands until we could barely see over them. By now it was nighttime and dark outside. The little old lady walked us all the way to the front door of our building. She kissed us one by one on each side of our faces and left.

We climbed up to the third floor and stormed into the living room. My parents were sitting there on the sofa drinking tea and listening to classical music on the radio, seemingly unconcerned by our absence. My father looked up from his book, surprised, and asked in an angry voice “What in hell are you carrying? Who gave you all this?” We told him about the nice old lady and how we lost our way and she got us home. He jumped from the couch, grabbed the boxes from our hands and said, “We don’t need the apologies and remorse of those bloody Nazis.” Leaving us in shock, he ran downstairs and threw all the beautiful chocolate boxes into the trash bins in the back of the building.

 

After all these years I have continued to be puzzled by my father’s reaction. How could he accept all the largess from the Germans just a few years after the Holocaust, but this old lady freaked him out? Many people I have met who suffered unbearable trauma during the second world war in Europe, and even the people who didn’t live there at the time, like my father, carried lingering emotions of hurt and anger against the Germans. Despite the fact that many Germans tried to compensate and show real remorse, it was not easy for my father, and others like him to forgive and move on.

I don’t feel that way. When I visited Germany many years later, I was very aware of the past. I met some wonderful people there and accepted them for who they were and not as products of Nazism. I always told my kids never to accept candy from strangers, but hopefully, they will not carry this resentment toward every German they meet. Instead, they would learn about our Jewish history and our own family’s ancestors, without this general distrust, but with interest and understanding.

 

Liora Codor grew up in a  kibbutz on the shores of the Mediterranean. She was the first woman commercial photographer with her own studio in Israel. She moved to NYC and worked as a senior catalog photographer for Macy’s. In retirement she focuses on writing creative  nonfiction stories, drawing  from memories of her life. She lives in Brooklyn with her cartoonist husband and her dog Benny.