Nathan Englander (3:06)
For those of you who are less than 100 years old, I want to tell you there used to be something called the Soviet Union. They were our arch enemy and we were locked in a perpetual state of cold war with them for, you know, my whole life, you know, until I was an adult, to contrast that to our perpetual war on terror that we're now in. You know, going around the city, we're all afraid something's going to blow up that might blow up. Well, back then we were afraid everything was going to blow up. We were going to melt the whole world into a tiny glass marble. The symbol of this, you know, spirit split between east and west was the Berlin Wall, which not only divided that city, it literally divided the planet. And, you know, I think about it now, it was, it's hard to, you know, go back to that, but it was really. People would die trying to cross. They were literally trapped. They would literally dream of freedom. They would hide in trunks of cars or dig or try to hang glide and they would be shot dead. That's how serious it was. So in 1989, I'm on my junior year in Jerusalem studying abroad, and suddenly word comes just out of nowhere. The wall has been breached. It's open. There's a crossing between east and West. People can move freely, you know, and it's not like today where, you know, Halliburton for $100 million, you know, plows the thing down. People are literally ripping it down with their bare hands with hammers and chisels. This is just unbelievable. And you know, the only thing I can think of it in terms of today, it literally, like I say to you, like I'm announcing right now on stage, but, you know, we have peace with Iran. The. There's peace in the Middle East. You can go take like an Al Qaeda bus tour of Kabul, you know, go see Osama bin Laden's coffee shop, you know, that kind of stuff. You know, it was just, it was just literally mind boggling. Well within like two seconds, people start showing up back in Jerusalem, friends and stuff start showing up with pieces of the wall. They're going to be part of history. They're going over there chipping at it. They're helping, you know, put the world back together. And this girl I have a crush on shows up and she gives me a piece of the wall. And I'm holding it. It's like holding Moon Rock. I mean, I'm holding it. It's got the graffiti on it. I just can't believe I'm holding it. It's such an amazing thing to be a part of, except I ain't. It's clear to me in an instant, like I need to go be a part of this. So I grabbed my buddy Joel, who dragged me to Jerusalem and we set the plan in order and we're going to do it sort of a Jewish boy style. We're going to do sort of like a Passover slavery to freedom route. So we fly into Warsaw and we do sort of like speaking of bus tours, we hit all the highlights, we do Auschwitz, Medanic, Treblinka, we hit all our favorite concentration camps and we end up in Prague where we're going to take a night train to Berlin. And that's, you know, the end of this sort of heroic journey for us, which is we're going to get to Berlin in the morning, we're going to chip at the Wall, cross to the west and you know, go home at the end of our year. It's all exciting. Well, no, we thought this was a grand plan. Nobody else seems to have thought this was the same kind of grand plan because we are alone on this platform at night, it is pitch dark, there's nobody else there. We're just waiting on this platform in Prague. You know, tourists are just, ain't nobody else. And basically, you know, here comes our train. We think it's our train. It starts rolling through the station, but it doesn't stop, it just keeps rolling, sort of clattering those tracks. And what it is, is an old freight train. Now can I tell you, I am, you know, Long island raised. Like for me, I've been raised on a full on diet of the Holocaust. You know, like this sets instant Holocaust PTSD in my head. You know what I'm saying? For those of you like, I'm yeshiva boy, like we didn't do the diary Van Frank. We went like Clockwork Orange style, you know, from honestly, you know, I have a friend here, she'll tell you like from a way too young age they would sit us there and flash images, no joke, like piles of bodies, piles of teeth, piles of hair, you know, just, you know, combs, you know, just these really unbelievably dark images. And there's no greater symbol of it. They always did the jackboots. All those old tapes played, big black jackboots. And then those trains, I mean, these are the trains that annihilated our people. They would stuff them full of Jews and when there was no more room, they would stuff babies in over the people's head. You know, there we are standing on the same platforms. It's not like it changed. We're on the same platform. Those are the same tracks. This could be the same train that destroyed our people. You know, we're just standing there dead silent. Well, the next train is our train. And you know, we get up on it and back to the Long island part. I know my trains, you know, Amityville, Copic, Lyndenhurst, Babylon. I know my roots. I can tell you, right, you know, sort of like on the G, went to switch cars. Like, I know when something doesn't feel right, when I step into a train car and this feels bad, it's sort of over hot and already over packed. And we're looking for our seats, you know, we got our numbers and we go over our compartment and we open it and we expect like two British people drinking tea. It's like the beds are open, it's six guys laid out like head to toe, like sardines. And honestly, it smells of piss, it smells of beer, and most of all, it just smells of sadness. These are refugees. You know, we're on some freedom adventure. People have been trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Like the wall has come down. People are on the move. And like a good American at that time, I don't think I could point, like Canada on a map. Like, I can't tell you today, are they Romani or. No idea, but just refugees on the move. Well, we don't want our seats anymore and they ain't giving them up. And we sort of look around in this packed car and this nice family, they make room for us, you know, we take off our packs, we sell, they slide their kids over and they let us in their compartment. And I could cry telling this to you right now. These people with nothing, they offer to share their food with us, you know, and we settle in and we're rolling and we're, you know, on our way to Berlin. And then the train stops and I don't speak anything. I don't know what's happening. I don't know how they understood it, what's getting screamed. But suddenly bedlam, you know, I'm saying they're grabbing their stuff in. You can feel it in the corridor. Everybody has to get off the train. Like, we suddenly. And there we are with those packs. We're like turtles getting jostled. We are out the train. We're not at a station. We're down the ladder. We're in the dirt in the night, running in these groups. It's going this way, and that's sort of like eddies and rivers. We're just flowing with these refugees. We don't know if there's a fire or what's going on. We are just terrified. And it seems to me I'm a coward at everything. It seems like a nightmare of a bad idea, what we have done. Like, I don't know what's going on. Eventually there seems like a dominant stream, it seems. What it does seem is that they're sending the whole front of the train to the back of the train. Like the train is being split in the night. We climb back up. Well, if it was packed before, there is no room. It's really panicky. I don't feel like a witness to anything now. I just feel part of it. Joel and I, we are in it. Like, I just want some space, somewhere to be. I want to get safely to Berlin, and I want to cross through that wall. Well, it's just we're pushing and. And you know, again, those. Those compartments are overflowing. We, like, make our way to the end of the car. And the last compartment in that car has the curtains drawn. So we give it a yank, and we give it a yank, and we hear someone scream, fuck. Now, I have to tell you, you cannot learn to curse like an American. You know what I'm saying? Like, I have an Israeli friend, Moti. I remember he always be like, natan, I give a shit. I'd be like, no, no, Moti, you don't give a shit. You know, like, he still can't learn it. Point is, that is a pitch perfect fuck that I get, you know. So we're like, fuck? Did you say fuck? We say fuck. It's like this chorus of joyous. And then the door flies open. We fly in, it slams shut. And back to me being a coward, I can tell you, you know, I don't know if I'm overreacting. There's two sort of American frat boy types there. Dudes have eyes like saucers. They are as scared and panicked as we are. Well, this is the embarrassing part of the story is just, this is any you my age who backpacked then we honestly all deeply believe that Europe was filled with small bands of like ninja robbers who were trained solely to rob 19 year old Americans. Like they wanted the bounty of, you know, half a joint and a cowboy junkies mixtape. This, this was on the black market. You could live feed a family off of such bounty. The more embarrassing part of the story is we honestly believed it. So stupid. We honestly believed. We tell each other that they would gas you, that they would have like tanks of sleep, they would knock you out and then take that stuff. So we all traveled with like ropes or bicycle chains. That's how you lock your door. Well, guess what? These guys had the bicycle chain. We were thankful for it. That's the door was chained and people are pulling. You know what, we're not the only ones who need a space. Like people are pulling and yanking and banging at that door and screaming. While the train starts moving, the banging sort of subsides. Every once in a while there's banging and screaming, but the door's not coming open and in the way you make home anywhere. The four of us are a team, we're a group, we're safe. The adrenaline drains out, we pass out. So we wake up in the morning. It is beautiful. I've never so enjoyed seeing in a morning like that. Like sun streaming and it is lovely, it's bucolic, it's dead silent. There's just trees out the train and we're waiting and we're not moving. So I go to check what's going on and I go out into the corridor and I very much understand why it's so silent. There's nobody else in the car. Our car's completely empty. So I look into the next car and then I totally understand why it's empty because there is no next car. There's no locomotive, there's no train. You know, I look behind us, same difference. We're a car loan. We've been unhooked, like at some point in the night, we've lost our train. So I also then understand maybe one of those people banging and pulling and screaming was a friendly conductor trying to tell us there was a second switch. I can hear you all laughing, which means you understand what's happened. I understand what's happened. Well, going back into that compartment, honestly, we had a very bad night. They're not trying to. It's a very difficult information to sort of relay to them. You know, there's no train. What do you mean? There's no like sort of this idea like where, you know, where are we? Like I don't know. You don't know what station? I don't know what country, you know. So again, you know, it's not hard to do recon as a group. They come out and they see we. We've lost the train. Well, the one thing we have with us, you know. And again, it's, you know, it's like we don't have, you know, we don't have, like, our iPhones, there's no compass. Like, we know which way our bodies were hurtling through space. So we put on our packs, we open our door to the next compartment, but there is no train, next car. And we step down onto the tracks and we hike. We see a station in the distance, which is good, and we hike up towards the station. And there's another fact that I have not forgotten in the 20 years since, which is when you show up at the station without the train, the platform is so much higher than you would think. But they hop up. Joel pulls me up, because that's how it goes. And it's, you know, it's like six in the morning or something. It's just, you know, it's morning light and then. And then there's. There's just one drunken blonde dude with a bottle of vodka sort of stumbling around, not scary happy, like about our age, looking happy with a bottle of vodka on the platform. We go up to him to inquire, you know, do you speak English? And what country are we in anyway? He does speak English. He's been out partying. He's got, you know, one leg up on us. He's finished his degree. He's been celebrating drunkenly all night. We are in the German Democratic Republic of East Germany. We are in the city of Dresden. And guess where he's going home to? He is headed home to Berlin. So our group of four, we are now five strong. Our train is coming. It's joyous. I really just want to get through the wall at this point. And we get on the train, we take our seats in. Comes sort of out of central casting, this sort of big, strong East German woman in the very serious conductor uniforms. And she takes our tickets, and our tickets are no good. I mean, sort of try showing up at O'Hare with a ticket from LaGuardia. Like, our tickets aren't even from the same country. We have Czech tickets. We did not originate in East Germany, so the tickets are no good. So we pull out our Euro passes, which are good everywhere, and she looks at them and she doesn't know them, and they're no good. And this is when I understand. She makes it very clear we are being turned off at the next stop. Now, you know what? I held it together through Israel and the intifada, and I held together through the trip and the night. Like, you know what? Like, I'm actually terrified because, you know, I remember my mother talking about my grandparents saying, oh, yes, these relatives used to write them, you know, from across the. And then they stopped writing, you know what I'm saying? Then they were just gone. Like, this is a part of the world that swallows Jews. And you know what? Like, those refugees, like, dead serious. There's a reason they're racing. Like, that wall comes down in a day, it could go back up in a day. Half the world was already trapped behind it for all those years. Like, you know, I just think, like, what have we done? And I think back to that sort of Al Qaeda bus tour. As I tell you now. I think, like, do you have to be on the first bus? Like, what have we done? Anyway, so in the middle of my panic attack, Joel's trying to, like, keep me under control, and I see our German friend. He's up. He's up and he's talking to the conductor and he's gesticulating. He's sort of delivering the Gettysburg Address there. I mean, honestly, literally, with the light streaming through in the morning, he looks almost sober. It's beautiful. Whatever he's doing, it's beautiful. And when he's done, you know, out of nowhere, she reaches out this conductor with this hard face and it goes soft. And she punches our ural passes and she welcomes us on the train to Berlin. So we ask him, you know, what did you tell her? And he says, I told her this. These people have come from America to our country. They've come to see our country. Are you going to tell them that a ticket that is good in Madrid, that is good in Rome, that is good in Paris, is no good here? The great conflict is over. We are one world now. We are all of us brothers. Thank you.
