Being Jewish in a German Airport

I don’t usually like to put disclaimers at the start of blog posts. I actually don’t really like putting disclaimers before any sort of comment because it seems like no matter how clearly I’m able to explain the reasoning or intent behind what I’m about to say, someone will end up interpreting it in the opposite way. Whether that happens because they think my disclaimer is insincere or because the disclaimer includes the opposite idea and I’ve just put it into their head is sort of irrelevant. The point is that I think disclaimers usually create a bias or a tension before the actual discussion can even start. And yet, even with all of that said, I still feel like I need a preface of some sort here because the subject matter feels a bit uncomfortable.

Ugh, never mind. I’ll just come out and say it and I’ll explain afterwards:

I felt really weird at the airport in Germany because I’m Jewish.

Here’s the disclaimer part: none of my feelings had anything to do with the individuals we met there. Every person we encountered – the airline staff at the check-in desk, the employees at the information desk, the clerks in the stores and the airport restaurants,¹ the janitorial staff cleaning the bathrooms and the other passengers finding other flights – was congenial and seemed genuinely invested in making sure that our questions were answered and that we were taken care of. Even the airport security crew – which, by the way, were the most thorough of any airport we saw, including the U.S. – smiled and guided us through the queues as conveniently as they could. No one ever made any comments about Judaism or about Israel or Hebrew. The staff who saw our passports never seemed to think twice about my last name, which is usually a dead giveaway.

And yet, even though everyone was respectful and helpful, I still felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up from the second we got off the plane. The layovers were pretty short – flying to Singapore it was only forty-five minutes and, on the way back, it was barely an hour and a half – but I still felt tense for every second we were there. I felt like people were looking at me as I walked around with my wife and son and thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about us because we are Jewish.

I should mention that there were no obvious signs revealing our religious affiliation. Neither E or I wore a kippah, T wasn’t wearing her chai necklace,² and we weren’t speaking Hebrew at all. In fact, unless someone were to recognize the origin of E’s name,³ the only real hint would have been my last name, and, as I said, no one who saw it even blinked. But still, even with all of those provisions, I felt like we stuck out. In my head, the three of us might as well have been wearing bright yellow six-pointed stars on our clothes.

I can’t emphasize the point enough that there were no visible triggers for these feelings in the moment. When we discussed the experience later, T and I agreed that we were treated just like everyone else and that there was nothing remarkable about anyone’s behavior toward us. We acknowledged that our unease stemmed from the concepts that had been ingrained in us since we were very young. For as long as I can remember, the Germans have been the “bad guys.” To be fair, every person or group that has tried to eradicate the Jews has been a “bad guy,” but the Germans have always represented the most clear and present danger because of Hitler’s role in orchestrating the Holocaust. He wasn’t the first to try to rid the world of the “Jewish problem,” and he won’t be the last, but he was the one who came the closest to succeeding.⁴In addition to getting the history lessons, though, T, some of my other friends and I also learned from our families that we should avoid using German products. It came up more with cars than anything else when we were young, such as families buying American or other imported cars, but not BMW or Mercedes-Benz. A few months ago, though, T and I bought a doll house for E. We felt uncomfortable buying him a German brand, even though it was a better product than the American one. Again, we had no reason to believe that there was anything “wrong” with the German product; in fact, we ended up buying the German-made house instead of the American one. The hesitation was merely due to the fact that the company is owned by German people.

We found ourselves asking why we continue to hold this bias against Germany. There does not seem to be any logical reason, especially as we have become farther removed from the Holocaust, since it would appear that Germany’s government has been standing by its commitment to create a safe environment for Jews. Germany has given millions of dollars in reparations to Holocaust survivors and recent incidents of anti-Semitism appear to be perpetrated by people who have immigrated to Germany, rather than ethnic Germans. But, even with all of that knowledge, I still felt like my head needed to be on a swivel in that airport.

This post was more about reflecting on my own values and sense of identity than anything else. I know I’ve been repeating myself, but I’ll say again that there was nothing inherently “wrong” about the airport. The staff was helpful, the stores had what we needed, the wifi was free and there were even a number of play-spaces that E really enjoyed. The concepts I’d learned as a child seemed to resurface without warning, though. If nothing else, I suppose it served as a reminder to me that I still have some work to do regarding being open-minded about my place in the world.

^{1. The only complaint we had about the Frankfurt airport was the McDonald’s. They had most of the usual food but their breakfast menu was sorely lacking. No pancakes, no hash browns. We were not pleased.↩}

^{2. That’s “chai,” as in the Hebrew word that means “life,” not the kind of latte you order at Starbucks.↩}

^{3. “E” is a Hebrew word that means “strong.”↩}

^{4. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust represented about two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.↩}