The City That Wears Its Heart On Its Sleeve
On a place I can't stay away from, and don't want to.
October 7, 2022
Happy Friday, travelers!
This week, I finished Jennifer Chiaverini’s Resistance Women. If you’re wondering why the beginning of this week’s issue sounds more like it belongs in What’s On My Tray Table, that’s because it does. But Chiaverini’s book took over my week, so it belongs up here.
It absolutely wrecked me.
And not for lack of a happy ending—there is hope in its last few words. A hope that mirrors the kind of country Germany is today. I stayed up past midnight more than once to know how it ended, all 600 pages of it, heavy spine on my chest, tired eyes blinking rapidly to stay awake until the next chapter, at which point I would tell myself, One more chapter, and then I’ll go to bed.
Unlike most novels from this era, Resistance Women starts in 1929 when the Nazis were the fringe party that most Germans thought would never gain power. The Berlin of the resistance women was a beauty. Cosmopolitan. Clothed in centuries of history. Each building bore a story, each cobblestone street a well-worn path of the thousands that came before them. None of them could have dreamed of what their country would become in just a few short years.
The novel is about a few real people, whose resistance activity was some of the most dangerous, hopeless work known about the war. For years as Hitler rose to power, they tried to get outside democratic powers to listen. To see how dangerous he was, often putting their lives on the line to smuggle out key information about his plan to conquer Europe.
No one would listen. Many leaders instead bade their time, trying to give Hitler whatever he wanted to keep him satisfied enough not to cause trouble to them personally. He wanted the Rhineland, a contested area Germany was to stay firmly away from after World War I? He got it. He wanted Sudetenland, a piece of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking population? World leaders except for a representative from Czechoslovakia itself decided this was acceptable.1 Wehrmacht troops goose-stepped across the border within hours.
The world learned the hard way that he could not, would not, be appeased. That his hatred of Jews went past prejudice and became a genocide. That they should have done something sooner, and when they didn’t, ordinary Germans mobilized in secret, sabotaged, did whatever they could to take just one more day off the reign of the Third Reich. Many of them paid heavily for their convictions. I won’t spoil the end, but it was not the one I wanted or imagined. I was rooting for a different outcome, but my outcome simply was not realistic.
The truth was harder than I was ready for.
On a morning in Barcelona years ago, I woke at 3am and tiptoed around my host mom’s charming apartment on Avinguda Diagonal. At 3:30 sharp, I ever so slowly closed the front door, made my way downstairs, and emerged into the barely-cool night. Just a right then a left, and I’d find my stop. The airport bus came a few anxiety-ridden minutes later. I worried I’d miss my flight from a delayed bus, abduction from standing outside alone at half past 3, or both.
I was bound for a friend, not a city. The city came as a bonus.
Before March 2017, I could not have told you where Berlin was. The answer is farther north on the map than I expected. The spring cold was a dull, ever-present one that settles in your bones. I wrapped my plaid coat, more for looks than warmth, tighter around my torso. Just an hour more, and I’d be with familiar faces, every one of us thousands of miles from home.
In Unorthodox, Deborah Feldman says, “Berlin wears its heart on its sleeve.”2 On my first day in the city, I was a 21-year-old student with absolutely no knowledge of the place I’d just flown to. Everything I saw was unexpected, was completely new to me. In the past, I regretted knowing so little about World War II history before I studied in Europe. It would have informed so much of what I saw.
Now, I think my experience had a value that cannot be replaced. Even without the historical background, I knew that what I was seeing had scars. I knew Berlin had pain. You can walk past a building and see bullet holes marring the walls, cratered in with a finality that is set in for decades. You can see the erosion of the East Side Gallery, a symbol of pain now covered in art. I saw so many vital landmarks and accepted them for the experience in the moment, without even a touch of preconceived notions.
And still, I saw. I saw it for what it was. Bleeding heart and all.
Over two years later, I’m in Amsterdam with the same friend. Both of us more on the introverted side, we were walking down a crowded pedestrian street and ducked into the warm solace of a bookshop. When traveling, I rarely bought souvenirs. But before we re-emerged into the madness of the city center, I picked up my copy of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
My love for reading, for historical fiction and World War II grew back to life. And it just so happens I was a mere day or two from flying back to Berlin.
This time, I knew more about Berlin’s history. After dropping my friend off at a coffee shop so she could work, I walked exactly 30 seconds to Checkpoint Charlie. Cyrillic alphabet on one side, Latin on the other. People milled about, heads down and focused on their day as they walked past a sign saying, “You are entering the free zone.”
In the pitch-black night with November’s chill, I paced slowly down the East Side Gallery, alone this time. Just a few months after leaving Ukraine, this place had even more meaning to me now. How many East Berliners looked at this very wall and felt hopeless, shoulders slouched, missing family on the other side? Plotting to get out, even if it meant death? That crevice in the wall, did someone try to climb it?
Did they make it to the other side?
Each exhale blowing little clouds of warm air into the coolness, I stopped every few feet. This city was so much more than I ever knew, than I ever could have known. This convergence, this tension where old meets new, where past pain meets a hopeful future humble enough to see that we got things wrong before.
This is a place I will always admire. A place I’ll always return to.
When I stroll past pre-war buildings that did not make it to 1945 unscathed, I’ll think of Mildred and Greta. Of everyone who believed their country could be what we see today.
I’ll think of all the resistance women, past and present.3
What’s On My Tray Table
Since I finished Resistance Women, I started two new books:
The first is Crying in H Mart. You’ve likely heard of this one. It’s Michelle Zauner’s memoir, and people absolutely rave about it. I checked it out earlier this year, but couldn’t even open it before it was due back. There were hundreds of people on the waiting list, if that indicates how good it is.
I have high expectations, because I read amazing memoirs last year. Tara Westover’s Educated and Ly Tran’s House of Sticks are the top two that come to mind. Honestly, Tran’s memoir deserves much more hype than it has received from literary circles. It read like a fourth or fifth book, not a debut. I was rooting for her until the very last word.
The second is Book Lovers. I have a really hard time getting into contemporary fiction. Historical is my happy place, the first place I’ll gravitate with even five minutes of free time. Emily Henry is an exception. I liked Beach Read, and I *loved* People We Meet on Vacation. Apparently, Book Lovers is her best yet. I put myself on the very long waiting list earlier this year, then took myself off. After two or three people told me how amazing it is, I decided to read it anyway. I’ll let you know if I agree.
I hope your weekend is full of good books and even better company.
Be brave and stay that way,
Sarah
This blatantly wrong and condescending act is indicative of how many world powers treat Eastern Europeans, and is part of the reason Ukraine did not receive all of the assistance it asked for this year.
Feldman wrote a memoir about leaving the Hasidic community in Brooklyn after years of misogynistic oppression. Her story is the loose basis for the achingly beautiful Netflix series linked above.
This is a hat tip to Chiaverini’s dedication in Resistance Women.