Reader Responses to Through the Iron Curtain

I was in Rostock for the summer right after Debby (Wilson) Pattiz, together with Anne Stauffer ’89, Gillian Silverman ’89, and about four other Americans among 141 students for a summer course in German. Most of the students were from the Eastern Bloc: Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, but also from Italy, Spain, and even two from Austria. It was a great time to see and experience “real socialism” in all its decency and inhumanity. I’m still friends with some of the people I met there.

I was delighted to read this article about the little known exchange program. I, too, went on this exchange, but while in medical school. I elected to take two clerkships in pediatrics and ob/gyn while there. What a fascinating time, not just from a medical viewpoint. So many of her observations brought up many memories. It was truly a unique opportunity and experience. Could we have known that the wall would come down just a few years later? Looking forward to reading her book.

I read with great interest Debby Pattiz’s article about her experience in Rostock, East Germany. I also spent a semester in Rostock in the spring of 1986. Many details of Pattiz’s account raised fond memories for me. I did have different experiences in regards to how the East Germans related to the Jews; I did not find that official East Germany history “stripped [Jews] of the justice of remembrance.” When I first spoke to a historian at the university about finding out what happened to my family members who had lived in Rostock, he assumed that I, coming from a capitalist country, would not know about the Holocaust. He showed me the small Jewish cemetery in Rostock that was saved when the non-Jewish part of the cemetery was cleared to make room for a large park. I remember when the stern professor of our Scientific Communism course stunned the entire class by bursting into tears after a student objected to having to hear yet again about the genocide of the Jews. And I visited the state-supported Jewish communities in both Berlin and Dresden, which is where I decided to become a rabbi. And yes, it was very complicated. Still, to this day I am in frequent touch with some of my classmates from Rostock and I am so grateful that I got to participate in this unique program.