Gerda Guttfreund Part VI: Israel

Gerda now lives in Jerusalem but spends a good part of the year traveling to El Salvador and the US to visit her children, grandchildren, other family members, and friends. Here Gerda shares her feelings about her fifth home.

All questions in (....) are mine.

(You still live in Jerusalem?)

Yes.

(And you call Israel your home today?)

Yes. Very much.

(And it’s very much your emotional home as well.)

Yes, it is. I’m a person who is very connected always to the past, and with all the wonderful experiences that I partly had, not in Germany but in Brazil and in Salvador, I still did not feel Brazilian or Salvadoreña. I felt I was different, and I knew the others must have felt that I was different. And I felt it when the war with Honduras and Salvador was on. People were looking at me like, “You can’t understand us because you’re not Salvadoreña.” I was Salvadoreña, because I had become Salvadoreña and I’d been living here thirty-five years. But not even my daughter Noemi was considered Salvadoreña when she worked as a social worker in a finca in a coffee plantation. When the social workers were talking between them about the cases and she gave her opinion, they would say, “Oh, you can’t give an opinion. You are not Salvadoreña.”

So it is very important to me to live here, with all the negative things that any place has, and which hurts me maybe more because we were hoping we were different, but we are just like any other people. I meet so many people that are like me that I could have endless groups of friends, you cannot cope with so many people. But I always meet someone that I have a lot in common with.

(Wonderful. So Israel is really your home.)

Ja.

(There’s just one story I wonder if you would mind telling. It’s the story of your first trip back to Europe.)

That was very exciting. I felt with all what I was saying about Israel, the ones I feel the most in common with are the Europeans, the European Jews, of course. And I am very European in my mental makeup. There is no doubt about that. Because even if I left when I was twelve, I continued in the European culture until I was eighteen and a half, when I left the bookstore. It’s only then that I had a real encounter with Latin America, with Brazil. And they were—these youngsters knew French as well as Portuguese because they also were very much under the European influence. Even their parents were.

In Brazil, people that were well off and had big haciendas, how do you call, a big—?)

(Farm?)

Farms. They would spend six months in Brazil and six months in Paris, you know? It was very much part of Brazilian life. So when I came to Europe and I met the people, I saw the people, I went to the—

—concerts and I went to the museums. I was deeply, deeply touched, and I told you the story about when I saw the Michelangelo slave I almost fainted, because it’s one thing to see a photograph and another thing to see it really in front of you. Also, the paintings, to see the real, authentic paintings—everything was very moving.

(And you met one German girl. You told me a story about a German girl who lived—who was not Jewish and she lived in Germany during the war.)

Ah, that was part of the study group. The study group, one year I decided the theme would be—since we had so many nationalities, all ladies whose husbands were here professionally, either in embassies or United Nations, the medical profession, something. They also were very cultured and had nothing to do and were quite lost. So in the study group, they could give talks on their specialties and so on. And one year I decided I want the personal history of the different nationalities that were there between the two world wars, that is, the end of the First World War until the end of the Second World War.

Perla told about her experiences in Auschwitz. And a younger German woman said that when she was five, Berlin was bombarded and they lost their home and it was very difficult, of course. And then, when she was a teenager, she was on a trip with a friend in Scandinavia, and they met a teacher who was taking a group of young people to different countries, and he told her and her friend, “Come tonight to see a movie that I’m showing.” And the movie was about the Shoah. She was horrified. She had no idea. Nobody ever mentioned what had happened at that time. All she knew were the personal losses they had, but nothing else.

She came home and she confronted her parents. It was really a traumatic experience for her. I understand it must be very difficult. As a matter of fact, Laura (a member of the extended family) told me once, she went with a group of students studying to become teachers, Israelis, that went to Germany, and they visited the concentration camps. When she saw the sign “Gas chamber,” she stayed back while the others had gone on, and she started crying. A man came up to her (near tears) and said, “Can I get you something? Would you like to drink something?” Then he said, “You know, I am the son of a Nazi, and I come here regularly. And I feel maybe as sad as you do. One cannot measure sadness, but it is very, very hard on me.”

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(Thank you, Gerda, thank you.)

You’re welcome.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC