By Scott Brinton
After all, the Nazis had imprisoned his mother, Rivka, at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, reducing her to a number tattooed on her arm and nearly starving her to death.
Taub's mother survived Auschwitz, but the rabbi said, "She never really recuperated from the camps. I never remember her as a well woman." Taub's father, Rabbi Aron Taub, spent the war in a forced labor camp in Czechoslovakia.
So, when David Taub recently found himself chatting with a group of about 40 teenagers and munching on kosher food in the former chalet of a Schutzstaffel (SS) officer in Oranienburg, Germany, he experienced a range of emotions. He felt at once uncomfortable, guilty, angry and elated.
Rabbi Ronald Brown, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Merrick and founder of Bridge of Tolerance and Understanding, brought the 46-year-old Taub and nine other Long Island rabbis to Germany in early December. They were on a BTU mission to bring Jews and Germans together to talk -- just talk.
BTU's German counterpart organization, Bridge of Understanding, funded the rabbis' lodging and meals; the rabbis paid their own airfare. In recent years, the 60-year-old Brown, who grew up hearing only horror stories of Germany, has taken a number of trips there in the interest of rebuilding the ties that were severed during Adolf Hitler's reign.
"The goal of [BTU] is to promote dialogue and understanding between people," Brown said.
The SS officer's former residence is now a youth hostel. Over lunch, the 11 American rabbis each shared a personal artifact with the German teenagers, such as a shofar (a ram's horn blown ceremonially during the High Holy Days). Taub told his parents' story and spoke of the prayer book that he always carries with him.
"I said I have this prayer book because it gives me peace in hard times," Taub recalled. Then he broke down in tears.
Rabbi Avraham Rabinowich, spiritual leader of the Bellmore Jewish Center, who also made the trip to Germany, said, "Everyone cried with him. They gave him a five-minute ovation."
Jewish prisoners of war built the chalet, which the Germans preserved. It was opened to the public only months before BTU's arrival in Germany. "This was the home of the leader of the SS ..." said Rabinowich. "And here it was used for a function to talk about humanity and peace. That, to me, was fascinating. That, to me, was a very special feeling."
One teenager asked Rabinowich how Americans perceived Germans. The rabbi knew what the question implied. The teen wondered whether Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, still thought of Germans as Nazis. "I said to him, 'You don't have to feel guilty for something you didn't do. Americans are very upset about what was done, especially the Jewish people. But you didn't have anything to do with that,'" Rabinowich said.
In all, the BTU rabbis met with roughly 80 German teenagers during their stay. In addition to the lunch, German students took the rabbis on tours of local neighborhoods. Stops included a church, a mosque and a Hindu temple.
The teenagers, ages 17 to 19, were intelligent and curious, Brown said. All spoke English fluently, so communicating was no problem. "They wanted to know about everything," Brown said. "They had questions about everything. They asked me about heaven and hell. Who goes there? Then they asked me what do you do for the Fourth of July."
For Taub, the most trying -- terrifying, really -- leg of the journey was a tour of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. Before that, he had never been to a death camp -- or to Germany, for that matter. His mother had said little about her experiences at Auschwitz, so he was unsure what to expect beyond what he had read and learned in school.
The guide, Taub said, "spoke about how people were tortured." Then the rabbi stepped away from the group to reflect on his own. "There was a beautiful meadow, very clean, very neat," he said. "All I could hear was the stomping of the German soldiers marching and the horror of the prisoners. That's what filled my ears. I tried to picture my mom. She was 17, 18, 19 years old at the time. I felt guilty for being there, so comfortable in the camp. I knew the stench, the horror."
Hatred would have filled him, but the kindness that Germans showered on him during the trip overcame his ire. "To see the friendliness of the people was extraordinary," Taub said. "From the moment I arrived, there was no need to protect myself, to protect my Jewish identity."
He added, "Growing up in my house, the word Germany was never said without cursing. The German people were the most evil people. That's all there was about Germany."
After the recent trip, Taub said, he realized that "the German nation is doing its best, more than any other nation, to repent, to look into what they've done and try to rectify it as best they can. They're trying to prevent the nation from ever doing it again."
Rabinowich said, "I would like to go back again. Kids are writing us, sending us e-mails. We created a bond. I made a lot of friends in that one-week trip."
When the rabbi returned, many of his congregants asked, "How did they treat you, those Germans?"
Rabinowich replied simply, "They were nice to me."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
