My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped

by Lev Raphael

Lev Raphael grew up loathing everything German. A son of Holocaust survivors, haunted by his parents’ suffering and traumatic losses under Nazi rule, he was certain that Germany was one place in the world he would never visit. Those feelings shaped his Jewish and gay identity, his life, and his career. Then the barriers of a lifetime began to come down, as revealed in this moving memoir. After his mother’s death, while researching her war years, Raphael found a distant relative living in the very city where she had been a slave laborer.
What would he learn if he actually traveled to the place where his mother had found freedom and met his father? Not long after that epochal trip, a German publisher bought several of his books for translation. Raphael was launched on book tours in Germany, discovering not so much a new Germany, but a new self: someone unafraid to face the past and transcend it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Holocaust, Jewish, Biography Memoir, Biography, Memoir, Germany

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2009

About the author

I've wanted to be an author since I was in second grade and fell in love with "The Three Musketeers", which I read to pieces. It hasn't been a swashbuckling life exactly, but one full of surprises, including recently selling my literary papers to Michigan State University's Libraries.

Since second grade, I've loved all sorts of books and have ended up writing nineteen books in many genres: memoir, mystery, short story collections, a children's book, and more. I've been an academic, a radio DJ, had my own talk show, and currently have three terrific giugs.

I write a monthly column for Bibliobuffet.com called Book Brunch. I blog at Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-rap...). And I do a monthly "Under the Radar" book review for WKAR 90.5 FM in East Lansing, MI. I'm always on the lookout for beautifully written books in any genre, but I more and more favor books from smaller presses, because they need more exposure.

I love reading my work and have done hundreds of readings on three different continents. Readings are performances, and I practice, practice, practice.

Reviews

[Leigh Ann Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, for a lot of people, the subject of the Holocaust is a hot button. It happened about seventy-five years ago and my closest personal connection to WWII was the fact that my grandfather served in the U.S. Navy, but that didn't matter. My emotional level regarding the Holocaust has always run about DEFCON 5.

Lev Raphael's connection is a lot more personal. His parents were Holocaust survivors. Which makes him a survivor, because what was visited on his parents didn't magically go away when the war ended. The horror of what they went through stayed with them for the rest of their lives. It impacted how they lived and how they related to the rest of the world; not least of all, how they related to their children.

"My Germany" is clearly and beautifully written. It is honest and revealing. It made me think.

Let me put it this way. A good writer tells a story and tells it well. A great writer opens a door, and then holds it open for the rest of us to walk through.

[Beth Arvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reviews on this book are all over the place, and I think it is because the book didn't live up to their expectations. I came to this book only with the expectation of hearing the author's story. It was not intended to be about everything his parents experienced as survivors of the Holocaust, although that is touched on, nor was it meant to be a travelogue, but still managed to pique my interest in visiting Germany. It is the story of his journey as the son of survivors, coming to terms with how that colored his life and perception of the world. Raphael does a great job of giving background to events leading up to Germany's persecution of the Jewish population and enough information of what his parents endured to give weight to how this affected his own life. I found this book interesting, informative, and insightful. I highly recommend it.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raphael was the child of Holocaust survivors, and for much of his life that identity shaped everything he knew about Germany and about Europe more generally: This was, in fact, Europe for me—a slaughterhouse as much as a continent (67). Some parts of his parents' stories he knew, while others were, decades later, still too painful to return to: they had escaped certain death so many times, and lost so many people dear to them, and faced a new kind of poverty as immigrants in the US.

It was only as an adult that Raphael went to Germany as part of a work trip and began to see Germany in a different light—as a country that had worked to recover from the atrocities it had committed during World War II, and with a young population knowing the history of their country. I don't have Raphael's background, of course, but my shifting perception of Germany is not altogether dissimilar to his; before I first visited Germany in my 20s, I had very little concept of its history (or present) outside the Holocaust. An aside, with spoiler tags for tangent length: Many of my friends in Europe find it hard to compute that I don't know of family directly affected by WWII—my grandmother served in the WAS as a secretary, but in Olso, where I expect she was pretty safe, and we have an incredibly grumpy-looking photo of my grandfather in hospital with diphtheria in Alexandria when he was in the Navy, but I never knew him and know little about his time in the Navy. And...surely family members were evacuated or served in the British army, etc., but it's not a part of family lore. In any case, like Raphael—but without any of his family's traumatic background—it was only once I visited Germany that I was able to understand it in a context other than that of WWII.

The book loses some momentum in the second half; stories of winging around a country for speaking engagements are never going to be as interesting to me as stories of finding one place and staying there for a while. Still, this at least somewhat satisfies my desire for contemporary memoirs set in Germany.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found My Germany great at some points and disappointing at others; uneven at best. The first section describes the life of a the author as a boy with parents who survived the holocaust and the stories of his parents. And how they all lived ” in the shadow of the holocaust. Wonderful. At an early age, he inherited his parents’ rejection of all things German. “We were different from other American children, with no grandparents and hardly any other relatives, no old furniture in the attic and no heirlooms from the past. There was, in effect, a personal Berlin Wall in our house, and what was on the other side was dangerous, rebarbative, perpetually off limits.” Lev knew he was Jewish but learned from his parents to dislike Jews and Judaism. His family did not attend synagogue or do family rituals. “His father felt contempt for these America Jews. My mother for the Yiddish spoken [in America:]. They lived in the shadow of both the Hoocaust and Germany. “We lived in their shadow far more than was typical for immigrant children. Therir lives were monumental and – because not entirely known – mysterious. Our lives were insignificant. Nothing we suffered or accomplished could match their having survived”

The second part deals with his interactions with other Jews and his coming to terms with being gay.”How to children of holocaust survivors find meaning in their parents’ lives? What is the role of gays and lesbians in American Jewish life? This section is also captivating.

It is part three when he goes to Germany to discover his roots while doing readings, that the memoir begins to drag. Some of what I disliked was the bragging; several times he writes how he was a pioneer in writing about children of holocaust survivors and gay Jews. He does come to terms with his roots: “Whatever Germany is today, it’s not the country that persecuted my parents — and I’m not them. Likewise, their Germany isn’t my Germany. I suppose it never was.”

I loved the photographs of his family. A good read but needs skimming.

[Rivka · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first section (of three) in this book was so very interesting. I was captivated by the fractured stories and memories of the author's parents' experiences as Holocaust victims. It was also wrenching to see that those experiences never stopped coloring all aspects of their lives and, consequently, their children's lives.
The other two thirds was disappointing. The bit in the middle about the author's college-age sexual experiences and embracing his Jewish heritage and homosexuality was so poorly connected I felt like it was an excerpt from another book. I skimmed and lost my momentum.
I trudged through the last section which was basically a short travelogue through Germany as he (briefly and seemingly shallowly) confronted ghosts and ideas that his parents had fostered in him. I'm sure there was more to it, but it's not in the book.
He wrapped it up with something like, "Surprise! Germans are people and I like them!" And when it comes to forgiveness, even though forgiveness didn't need to come from him (because it was his parents were really the victims and the evil ones were probably dead anyway) he wouldn't forgive. But it's all cool because he's shaken off the parentally inflicted hatred of Germany.
I don't know. Just a really big build up and then a sort of "so, whatever" at the end. Glad it didn't take up more than an afternoon of my time...

[Leslie Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

(child of holocaust survivors goes to Germany) Liked it, but wanted more about his experiences in Germany (the 2nd half of the book) and more depth on his changing feeligns.