Crossing Borders

I was met by barely more than a handful, which was nearly the whole town. Yes, the whole of Diemerode had opened their hearts and their beloved hotel, to me – a descendant of the lost and tormented. Gone perhaps, but not forgotten.

The past and present reunited through hearty conversation, winter chills, and a tell-all tour with fingers pointing to the very house my great-grandfather grew up in. A Jude, banished from his home, his community and his country, by a dictator on Kristallnacht.

His elders still lie there, in the impeccably preserved cemetery. A tribute, an artwork, a labor of love by the resident gardener. Covered in a wash of white snow I stood tall next to the gravestones of my ancestors. My hands entwined and spirit proud.

The six-pointed stars upon the graves stand out like the bark of the only puppy in town. Piercing, pertinent, telling. They demand attention and care, but with such subtle grace in their carving.

Back along the winding road to the hotel, we dined on bread rolls with butter – a sign of wealth, of preserve, of sustenance.

I am amazed by the distance of time and space that are so suddenly reduced to nothing through community, respect, and resolve for reunification. Relationships were consecrated by memories, history and photographs.

Part way through my third cup of sweet, black tea an elderly man beckons me for a private conversation. Shaking with Parkinson's he sits down and breathes a heavy sigh. This man, the town's Pastor, shares the violent truth behind the cemetery’s present beautification.

Only months before my arrival, the locals had awoken to a sunny, dew-speckled morning. But as the gardener made his way through the deep roots of the shrubs and century old pines guarding the cemetery gates, he was shocked by headstones, defaced and broken. Vandals – in what was could only have been a targeted attack – had broken into the yard and desecrated the past in the darkness of night. Old tensions reawakened, the trauma reliving, the town, shaken again by its past, present, and now fearful of its future.

Yet Rolf’s tone shifted, and his eyes smiled with reassurance as I came to realise the efforts of revival and repair that Diemerode had made especially in time for my visit. The roots of pines standing when my great-grandfather lived there were only stronger and deeper upon my arrival. They still stood. My roots were intertwined with theirs. Our histories, aligned, through trauma and with hope.