“From a to ä”
by Sarah Trager
Wellesley College
This a piece I wrote after traveling the world visiting Jewish communities. This experience, in particular, took place in the Berlin Jewish Cemetery in Germany and it details the discovery of myself and my heritage through the historic site I visited that day.
It turns out I have been misspelling my last name all my life. It’s Träger. My dad always told me it was a German name even though he doesn’t know of any family we had from Germany. I suppose my last name could have been modified to fit the English alphabet, but it never occurred to me that my ancestors could have changed a few letters around when they arrived in Boston to avoid the torment of ignorant Americans mispronouncing their name simply because they didn’t know what an umlaut was. And to save you from feeling like an ignorant American, an umlaut is a pair of dots usually located above a vowel letter, indicating a sound change. In this case, the umlaut above the a in Träger makes a “ue” sound. I have seen all sorts of misspellings of my name over the years—Traeger, Traiger, Tragger—but never with an umlaut; that is until I visited Berlin’s Weißensee Cemetery in May 2009.
I came to the Weißensee Cemetery as part of a program called Germany Close Up. Established in October 2007, this governmental organization uses World War II reparations—German government money distributed to victims of the Holocaust in an attempt to appease their wrongdoing—to fund educational Holocaust tours in and around Berlin for American Jewish youth. As the organization’s website describes, “the purpose of the program is to allow participants to gain their own perspective on Germany through individual experience.”
After a long morning of touring what has become of Nazi Germany, I walk off the bus drained, distracted, and completely bored out of my mind from listening to the monotonous tour guide. I decide to ditch the group and head over to Weißensee’s archives office. I figure since I have a German last name and I am at a Jewish cemetery, I might as well look it up for kicks. I walk up the stairs to a little brick building. Inside, behind a high counter, is a balding man who cannot be older than 40. His frumpy clothes hang loosely on his bony shoulders and his scruffy facial hair proves that he was too lazy to shave this morning. “I would like to see if you have anyone named Trager in your records”.
“Trager?” he repeats tentatively. I can tell English is not a language he knows very well and I know no German so the two of us resort to a game of charades for the remainder of our conversation. He hands me a pen and a piece of paper and then draws in the air as he points to me—his way of saying please write your name. He glances at my scrawl and begins to file through his records using this machine that looks like an ancient overhead projector. He presses his face up against the glass of the device and carefully scans through the “T”s.
“No Trager, Träger” he mumbles. “One”. He hands me a copy of the record. There are all sorts of German words I do not recognize. Luckily, he knows the English translation of each line to help me out. It reads:
Name: Träger No. 33189
Gender: Little Girl Address: Prenzlauer Allee 36
Born on: 26 March 1906 Died on: 13 March 1908 Buried on: 13 March 1908
Field: Z 2 Row: 10
Reason of death: Unknown Hospital: She died at home.
I am surprised, baffled even. I smile nervously, confused by how one should emotionally respond to this piece of news; I never imagined what it would feel like to find a Träger buried here. Dozens of questions flood my thoughts. Are we related? Where is the rest of her family now? What if I never checked the archives? What made me check them anyways if I knew my family never came from Germany? I have a sudden yearning to know everything about this girl’s life and her whereabouts; yet I already feel helpless because intuitively, I realize that all I would ever know about this little girl is sitting on the cold laminate countertop before me.
I take a deep breath. Emotionally numb to the recent news, I behave as if I were making a cash transaction, outwardly calm and collected. “So where can I find her grave?” I ask.
The man at the desk gives me a map of the cemetery and highlights my route. “Z 2” he says as he points to one of the boxes on the map. Smiling, I nod in gratitude and walk out of the office.
Wandering through Berlin’s largest Jewish cemetery, there is ivy all around me. It is as if the landscapers tore a page right out of The Secret Garden; bright green foliage knows no bounds covering every surface. Rows upon rows of tombstones in a variety of heights and widths sit within this one hundred acre property. Towards the front of the lot are the graves of wealthy Jews. Their tombstones are tall, still beautifully intact and the marble glistens from the sun’s rays. The flowers and shrubbery are well maintained in this section of the cemetery. Towards the back are the poorer individuals who could not afford a lavish gravestone. These sections are unmarked and overgrown with ivy. The few tombstones visible only have five numbers carved onto each of its sides; no name just numbers. Although I am walking through a place of death and defeat, I feel euphoric. It is a balmy spring day and I am surrounded by nature’s serene beauty. The luxuriant green foliage and trim array of flowers give the cemetery character. The paths are endless. They branch off in all directions. Sometimes the dirt path leads to a rotary with three paths to choose from; the traffic structure—like a centerpiece in the middle of the road—is decorated with the most fragrant, overdone bouquet of yellow and pink flowers. It is majestic. Walking amongst this nature in bloom, I am grateful for earth’s wonders.
Section Z 2 is hidden deep within the Cemetery’s grounds. A short, rusty sign caked with dried earth is pitched in a mound of dirt on the edge of the path. Painted in faint gold lettering are the two symbols: Z 2. I approach what looks like a barren lot of unruly clumps of tangled ivy. But peeking out of the brush, I notice a small cement cube. These are the gravestones. Eager to find Träger, I frantically clear away the leaves to check every number. After what seems like thirty minutes of searching, I find hers: # 33189. I clear away the debris and dust off the stone. A small concrete block sits low to the ground.
I step back, humbled and overwhelmed. Those same questions that I had when I first read her record come rushing back. Who was this little girl? How had she died? What was her story? Were we related? Standing there, I realize I don’t even know her first name. It was hard to make out at the archives office as the ink from the thick cursive writing on the document caused the letters to congeal into one dark blob. I need to know her name. I hold the page tightly in my hand; it is my only connection to this cryptic cousin of mine. I recite the Jewish Mourner’s prayer, Kaddish Yatom, meditate a moment and try my best to be present. Left with more questions than answers, I make my way back to the archives.
“Hello. What is her first name?” I ask as I point to the ink blob on my sheet. The man behind the counter grabs the paper and writes four letters at the top: S-a-r-a. Her name was Sara Träger. The only person with a similar last name buried in this cemetery also shares my first name.
I start laughing. This has to be some twisted dream. How could the only Träger buried here have the first name of Sara too? I am not sure what to think or how to react. Life doesn’t train you to deal with situations like this. Nonetheless, I am foolishly happy; though I have no proof that Sara and I are related, seeing my name written on a historical document inspires me to learn more about my heritage. Where did I come from exactly and was Sara part of that historical family tree? I begin to reflect on my nineteen years on Earth and wonder if I knew about Sara earlier, would my life be different? Do I have German relatives that I am unaware of? As I stand at the counter, a weird tingling feeling shoots through my entire body. Finding Sara’s record, as the Turks often say, was kismet—fate.
It is ironic how I happened to check the archives today. I could have just as easily come and gone without ever knowing about Sara Träger. As history stared me in the face today, I realized I knew little about my roots.
Since finding Sara, I have spoken with my paternal grandma. She has explained that my father’s paternal grandparents originated in Bessarabia (formerly Romania). His grandfather and grandmother arrived in Boston in 1906 and 1908 respectively. In Europe, my father’s grandfather, Sam, had sold and manufactured caps. It was customary then for Jewish families to have last names that identified their occupation. Although there is no record of my ancestors ever living in Germany, Träger is known as a common, modern German word meaning “to carry” or “carrier”. My dad often jokes that with a name like Träger, we know that we have come from a long line of shleppers. German or not, I will always be a Trager, no matter how you spell it.
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Rudy Maxa and Allan Comport judged the RateYourStudyAbroad.com Fall 2010 Travel Writing & Photography Contest. Rudy Maxa is the host of PBS‘s RudyMaxa’s World, a former Washington Post reporter and the former host of NPR‘s The Savvy Traveler. Allan Comport is a professor of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
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