“Herr Bürgermeister, you Nazi son of a Bavarian B…h.   You mean to tell me that we can’t sit on that f’ing bench?  Really?  My friends and I have been sitting there for years.  And now you and your comrades are telling us that your German rear end is better than ours?  So go ahead, sit on down. We won’t.  We won’t because we fear that you and your fellow anti-Semitic thugs will take us away, as you did so many of the men in our city.  But believe me, when and if this movement of yours is long gone, I’m going to come back to this city and let you know what I think.  And if I can, I’m going to take your German back side, strap it to that bench, and let you spend a long, cold night outdoors in the park.” Those words were actually never spoken, and my mother, Margot Storch Bamberger, was so proper that she never swore or spoke like that.  But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have thoughts; and a long memory.  

Now the back story.  My mother was born in Leipzig, Germany.  There sits in Leipzig a beautiful, forested public recreational area, the Rosental (not Rosenthal) Park. It is an expansive area covering 280 acres areas of lawns and trees, with ponds and a zoo.  And it was a frequent afternoon destination for my mother and her school friends, whose homes and school were nearby. 

In the late 1930’s, the Bürgermeister of Leipzig led a movement to ban Jews from sitting on the benches in the park. He accomplished that goal, eventually forbidding Jews from using benches not only in the park but in public areas throughout the city.  My mother never forgot.

Life went on.  My mother and her family were able to flee Germany, ultimately ending up in Los Angeles, where she lived her life as an American.  But she never forgot.

For 45 years Leipzig was behind the Iron Curtain, under Soviet control. It was difficult for an American to visit. But that all changed in 1990 with the opening of the border and German Re-Unification.  My mother went back.  When she did she searched the phone book (it was before the internet) and found the name of the Bürgermeister’s wife. She learned that the Bürgermeister himself had passed.  She picked up the phone, dialed the number and lo and behold a woman answered the phone.  “Are you the wife of the former Burgermeister?”   she asked.  “Ya, sie sagt.”  “The Bürgermeister who served in 1938?”  “Ya, auch,” sie sagt.  So what did my mother, charged up with over 50 years of anger do?  She hung up the phone.   She could never say out loud what she felt.  But she did hope that the call was haunting to Frau Bürgermeister.

Mark G. Bamberger, MD

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