An Incident at the Wannsee, Berlin

I have been lucky enough to chaperon five groups of students for the AATG, American Association of Teachers of German, summer PAD program. Although students now stay with host families for three weeks, it used to be a four week program. They attend classes during the week. There are sometimes planned excursions even on weekdays, but most often they are on weekends. The chaperon stays with a partner teacher, who administers the program from the German end and with whom the chaperon team teaches and cooperates in other ways to make sure the students are happy and that the program runs smoothly. I used the word, “luck,” above, because each time I have done it, the program has run more or less smoothly. There has been a mini-crisis here or there, but the students have all been wonderful, and the headaches for me were few and far between. It’s a working vacation.

In the summer of 2001 when the program was still a month long one, I chaperoned a group of students in the city of Erlangen. My partner teacher was Peter Ott, and I had a delightful time staying with him and his charming wife,Toni, who was also very helpful in making sure that the program ran smoothly.

Since the experience was a month long at that time, we had the luxury of taking one week off from school and going to one of the most exciting cities in Europe, Berlin. One afternoon, Peter and Toni took us all out for a picnic to the Wannsee, a lake about a half hour's train ride outside of Berlin. In January of 1942, in a beautiful mansion on that very lake, the Wannsee Conference took place. At this conference the "final solution" to the "Jewish question," genocide, was reached by Rheinhardt Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, and fifteen top Nazi bureaucrats.

Years ago, my high school German teacher, Frau Marion Cote, gave me a National Geographic from 1936 with a pictorial essay on the "New Berlin." It is remarkable to read. Just three years before Germany invaded Poland, the reporting is more than straight forward. It's downright glowing! I guess the American press got caught up in Olympic fever, too, but it is rather shameful when you think about it. One of the photos is of people frolicking on the beach of the Wannsee, but the Nuremberg Laws were adopted in 1935, so there were no Jews frolicking on that beach or enjoying the afternoon sun on any of the lovely park benches featured in the article.

The day was hot and muggy. The kids and Peter and I left the train right away for the beach while Toni, along with some of the students‘ German host brothers and sisters, went shopping for food and drink. By the time they arrived about an hour later, we were all starving. Peter, the kids and I had killed time by sitting in the shade of a stately elm, talking, reading, listening to music and taking pictures, including several of one kid who got up that tree with the skill and speed of Boy from the Tarzan series. I used to be able to do it just that fast! All I could do was marvel at him as he climbed all the way up that tree with maneuvers I had long since forgotten and skills which have long since atrophied.

When Toni and the German kids finally arrived with the food and drink, we found a nice spot and started to devour the food. After we were done, the kids all wandered off to go bathing. I kept putting off a decision to join them, talking to Peter and Toni, not sure if I would go in or not. Even though the kids had come out of the water a couple of time to urge me to go in, I still hesitated. What had happened there in January of 1942 loomed heavy on my mind. Finally, I decided that my reservations were simply silly, that this was my chance to swim in the (in)famous lake and that I was not going to miss the opportunity. It may sound strange, but I always think at times like this about how fleeting and transitory life is, how I may never get back to a particular place, never get another chance to do what is then mine for the doing, and I almost always wind up following the admonition, carpe diem. Still, ever present just on the other side of the lake was that beautiful mansion, now a museum, where evil happened.

We were about a several yards down from the main beach area. I walked over to the water, and toward a dock off in the distance with a wonderful looking slide that slinked its way with lots of curves into the water. I walked as far as I could go, never losing sight of the dock with its slide or of the mansion on the other where the Wannsee Conference took place. It was a strange mix of emotion, the childlike anticipation of sliding down that great looking board just ahead of me on the dock and the almost frightening feeling that came over me when I looked off onto that mansion, the venue for the Wannsee Conference, on the other side of the shore.

Just before I left home, I had watched an HBO film recreating from the original transcripts that infamous meeting in all its chilling detail. Until the Wannesee Conference, the Nazis were determined to make Europe “judenrein,” cleansed of Jews, but there were several possible solutions to the “Jewish Question.” After the conference, genocide became the “final solution.”

I walked as far I could and then swam the little ways to the dock. I climbed the ladder, and after reading the suggestions for taking the slide, decided that I would go down flat on my back. The slide had more spirals and was longer than it seemed. I felt anxious from the very moment I began to descend. One problem was that the surface was not all that wet or slippery. Another problem was that the slide curved in as if forming a tube and, lying flat, my vision was obstructed.

When I finally landed in the lake, I took in one big gulp of water. It startled me so much that it took my breath away. I didn't panic because I was just on the other side of the dock, and I knew could reach the ladder to hold on and to rest before I swam back to the shore. But by this time, I was feeling very anxious, and I wanted so badly to get out of that water that I didn't stay long enough at the ladder to rest before I started to swim, backstroke, toward the shore. Suddenly, I felt as if I had absolutely no stamina left, none at all. I couldn't catch my breath, and I panicked. There in the water, which I have always loved and where I have always been comfortable, I found myself right in the middle of the one and only panic attack I have ever had in my life.

There was a life guard way off in the distance, and there was no one immediately around me. For the first time in my life, I understood the expression, “paralyzed by fear," because I was! I couldn't move, and I couldn't speak. I tried with all my might to raise my hand and immediately realized that the lameness of the gesture. I couldn't even get my hand an inch above the water, let alone wave my arm and yell out for help. With peripheral vision, I could see off in the distance a few people here and there whose attention I could not attract. I was scared to death. It all seems so silly now, even funny, but the thought crossed my mind that this is how I was going to die, drowning in that lake with a beautiful blue sky the last thing I saw and the din of people pursuing leisure and birds' chirping that last thing I heard. Seriously, I really thought I might drown, nothing even remotely like that had ever happened to me before. As I said, I have always been at home in the water.After all, I am a Pisces. :-)

Just in the nick of time, I got hold of my senses enough to realize that I might be able to touch the bottom. Somehow, my body was willing to cooperate and let my legs move downward. Thank God, my feet soon met the bottom. To me now, the funniest part of the story is the entire time I thought I might be on the verge of drowning, I could touch the bottom!! However, such is the nature of panic. It took me several minutes to regain my breath and too shake off the feeling of panic. I kept loudly heaving over and over again until I didn't need to do it anymore. I was making a huge racket, but I was isolated, and I did not even care about possible embarrassment. At any rate, I don't think anyone was paying any attention to me at all. Then I walked over to Peter who was lying on a blanket by himself after everyone else had gotten on the train for the ride back to Berlin. He and I made small talk for about twenty minutes until we left. I did not tell him what had just happened. I was too embarrassed by it.

I know what happened that day happened because of a random series of circumstances and decisions, but in retrospect, I think it is very strange that I should have the only panic attack I have ever had in my life in that very lake. I am at the same time angry that I wasn't able go down that slide at least two or three more times. I would have spent hours doing just that as a kid, but I don't think I will ever set foot in that lake again.

To imagine that the Wannsee is somehow evil is silly. To imagine that the mansion, where the Wannsee Conference took place, is evil is also silly. But in January of 1942 evil did take place in that very mansion on the other end of the shore of the Wannsee. It is hard for me to dismiss the notion that the otherwise lovely summer day with Peter, Toni, and our student charges was somehow marred by my own emotional associations, much deeper than I had realized, with that mansion and that lake.