THE MIDDLE KINGDOMS

“Expect the unexpected,” trilled, Jorgen our second-in-command on board the Viking Legend. Every night, during the cocktail hour, all 180 passengers would gather in the lounge to hear his enthusiastic reports of what we were going to see next on our 12-day riverboat cruise through Central Europe. “Did you know, ve can now travel from za Black Zea to za Baltic,” he cooed, marveling at the technology that made this possible. “Ve vill visit 5 countries und 4 capitals: Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna und Amsterdam. Ve vill miss za German capital because it is clozer to za Elbe,” he said with a thin smile, as if the German government had purposely switched its capital from Bonn to Berlin just to thwart his sales pitch.

“Every day you vill zee vunderful sings,” he spoke in an accent, which we thought was German, but could have been anything. “One day you might zee a medieval willage, und za next, a Baroque Abbey. Each day, I promise, you vill zee such amazing zights.” We all glowed in eager expectation. Of course we each had expectations, based on the colorful brochure that led us to embark on this trip. But these expectations never hinted at one of the most intriguing stories that we stumbled upon during the trip: the Jews of the Middle Kingdoms of Europe.

The first night in Budapest found us at the State Opera House, a small but exquisite building, patterned on the Opera Garnier in Paris. Although it was not much bigger than a high school auditorium, it was beautifully appointed and brilliantly lit. The evening’s performance was an early Verdi, called NABUCCO. The score was unfamiliar yet engaging, in spite of the lurid plot about the virgin daughter of the King of Babylon and her evil sister held captive by some hairy brute of a tenor. There was a lot of caterwauling about slavery and such, but in spite of all the Biblical silliness, it came to a thrilling conclusion with the famously rousing Hebrew Chorus. Little did I realize that this story of Jewish anguish would be a harbinger of things to come.

One of the architectural highlights of Budapest is St. Stephen’s Cathedral, a largely reconstructed Baroque edifice in the middle of town. Further away, and rivaling it in importance, rises the largest synagogue in Europe. The architectural style is vaguely Moorish, with twin towers that look oddly like minarets. The dazzling exterior is only eclipsed by the sumptuous interior. It is my understanding that most temple interiors are rather modest affairs, but this one was gilded to within an inch of its life…perhaps because as a rule, Hungarians tend to over-decorate, or one wonders, to rival its Catholic counterpart across town.

Contrary to Jewish tradition, a graveyard was located adjacent to the Temple. But this one, we were told, contained a mass grave. As a marker, a silver weeping willow has been erected over the site. On each leaf of the tree was written the name of a deceased individual or family. The surprisingly vulgar, yet oddly touching, monument had been recently donated to the synagogue by that famous Hungarian Jew: Tony Curtis! (Who knew?)

But why a mass grave we asked? We were then introduced to a piece of long forgotten or barely remembered European history. Apparently Budapest had been home to some 250,000 Jews before WW2. It had (and still has) one of the largest per capita Jewish populations in Europe. Alas, half of them of them were exterminated during the Holocaust. Hungary, to its everlasting shame, had collaborated with the Germans in WW2 sending many of its own citizens off to death camps. Every Hungarian had been urged, under onerous penalty I should add, to collaborate in the round up.

Further up the Danube, we disembarked at the town of Melk, which features a World Heritage Site: the magnificent Benedict Abbey. It once housed hundreds of monks, but now with Catholicism on the wane (either because of disillusionment with the current papacy, the malefactions of the predatory priests, or the rise of European secularism), the abbey now has a population of 30. And 20 of them are farmed out to neighboring parishes. Leaving 10 bald men rattling around in a building the size of Leavenworth. The crowning glory of the abbey is billed as “The Private Chapel,” which is the very apogee of baroque vulgarity. Even Maria Theresa, on a royal visit, was overheard to say (in a loose translation) “Nice work, boys, but I think you could cut back a little on the gilt.”

A day later, we found ourselves in the town of Regensburg, Austria. One word: adorable! Even more adorable was the guide. With dreamy grey/blue eyes and coal black hair, he looked like a cross between Alain Delon and Horst Buchholtz. I hung on his every word, nodding in agreement with every syllable he uttered. I must have looked to him like one of those toy dogs in the back of a car, one that nods with each movement of the vehicle. Later, I asked my sister if he was any good: she thought not. But I was enthralled to hear him say that he was sociology major at the local university. (I even found myself humming the score of THE STUDENT PRINCE.)

I was somewhat disappointed to learn that he was not remotely interested in architecture. So we raced by Gothic arches and Renaissance frescoes, high-tailing it to the town square, where, to my surprise, he delivered a lecture on the systematic elimination of Jews in his town. Each and every synagogue had been torn down, he said, pointing out where one had stood. In its ruins, a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary had been erected, which was considered by the Catholics to be the ultimate slap in the face to Jews. Finally none were left: no Jews; no synagogues. “Mission accomplished.” Fortunately, today many were returning, said the delectable docent, and soon he hoped the population would more closely resemble its earlier and happier heritage. And had I been Jewish, I would have volunteered to return myself.

In yet another quaint little town we got the back-story as to what created the Jewish Situation in the first place. According to the docent, Christians (because of some edict in the Bible) were not allowed to collect interest on loans. And as a result no one was encouraged to lend money. Needless to say, that put a real crimp in the town’s economy. The Jews had no such strictures in their Holy Texts. And as the civil courts did not permit Jews to carry on a trade, they found that one of their few options was to lend money.

Thus if you were a merchant in the Middle Ages and you wanted to finance a new business and you had search for venture capital, your only choice was a Jewish Moneylender (Think: Shylock, in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE). Since these ventures were exceedingly risky, the moneylender was forced to charge high interest rates. Life in those days was fraught with peril: pirates, mutiny and inclement weather, all of which conspired to make the loan exceedingly risky. And to add insult to injury, if a Christian borrower were to default on his loan, the Courts would likely take his side over the Jew.

As an aside, the docent added her own conjecture: “The Jews didn’t do themselves any favors either. In these close-knit medieval towns, the community was keenly aware of internal and external differences. A vigilant eye would keep you safe from harm. But the Jews did not integrate well: dressing differently, adopting their own patois, and calling themselves The Chosen People. The locals, of course, saw them as The Other, while the church demonized them as ‘Christ killers.’ It took very little effort to condemn and ostracize the Semitic population. “

Thus you get the beginnings of anti-Semitism, which, mercifully is on the wane today. Or if not on the wane, at least on the back burner, simmering away perhaps, but not at the moment on the boil. The same could be said for Homophobia. However, no such constraint limits the scorn expressed towards Gypsies. Of course, a case could be made against the Gypsies. They neither pay taxes nor vote. They don’t abide by national laws and ignore international borders. They only steal or beg, or so the accusations go. Whatever the case, they are openly loathed throughout Europe, particularly in countries with a large Gypsy population. Romania for example has a population reaching 25%.

At this pointing in the trip we had arrived at the fabled city of Nuremberg. Today, Nuremberg thinks of itself the toy capital of the world, a giddy claim that has existed since the medieval times. It does however have one thornier bit of history. Nuremberg was the site of the infamous Nazi Rallies! We visited the parade grounds where Hitler watched 250,000 black and brown shirt troops, masses of Hitler youths and detachments of women (chosen apparently for their fecundity) paraded in rigid Teutonic formation below a giant gold Swastika that surmounted the viewing stands. Simply everyone was invited….marching in formation for the Fuhrer and for the glory of the German People. Everyone, that is, but the gypsies, the homosexuals and the Jews. They were being rounded up and shunted off to camps, with names that make me shudder even now: Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald.

In an impressive, albeit somewhat belated gesture, many city streets in Nuremberg have now been given names of prominent Jewish leaders, like: Ben Gurion or Yitzhak Rabin. We even saw a street called “Jesse Owens” in honor of the black athlete in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin who trounced Hitler’s Aryan best.

The Jews, who had arrived in Europe as a religious minority, were now considered a race. And as such Hitler insisted they were inferior interlopers and needed to be eliminated to keep the Aryan strain pure. The more likely reason was that he needed money to fund his grand demonstrations in Nuremberg. And even more money to send invading troops into Belgium, Holland and France. And who controlled much of the money? The Jews. They had long ago been forced into this sector of the economy because of that wacky Christian edict not to engage in usury, which, as everyone knows, is the basis of the banking industry. If you doubt it, check the back of your VISA bill.

Our final stop was Amsterdam. Amsterdam has had a long history of supporting the integration of Jews into their community. The city’s economy has always been based on a robust capitalism and the Jews because of their financial acumen were uniquely poised to participate in this. As our boat glided through the canals of the city, we slowed down in homage at the house of Ann Frank. The building is not a museum. It’s a shrine. We saw long line-ups of young people willing to stand in the pouring rain waiting for the chance to inch up the claustrophobic steps leading up to the Frank’s hidden back room. It was here that a young girl wrote a diary that is one of the great testaments to the yearning for hope and life and possibility. It has been translated into dozens of languages, turned into movies, and altered forever the hearts and minds of people everywhere. For her efforts, Ann was sent to the gas chambers. Although Nazi forces attempted to destroy her, this one little girl remains more vividly alive today than all of her oppressors.

The images of Gothic Spires, Baroque Facades, and crenellated towers have already begun to fade from my memory. They remain more somewhat more vividly in a photo collection on my “Screen Saver”. But the saga of the European Jew will remain forever etched in my mind’s eye. When I shared this experience on my return to LA, several friends confessed that their ancestry was indeed not only Hungarian but also Jewish as well. For them and for myself I have put these random thoughts on paper. Not an accurate history by any means, but the recollection of stories I heard on a recent voyage to a world I had never known.

© Bruce Gray 2010