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Lessons and Legacies:
Interview with Dr. Joanne Intrator
By Adeline J. Wells
Dr. Joanne Intrator is a New York psychiatrist who knows that the stories we are told often have more beneath the initial language.
The daughter of Jewish refugees, Dr. Intrator went face-to-face with history when she took it upon herself to seek restitution for 16 Wallstrasse, a family property in Germany that was seized by Nazis near the beginning of World War II.
This decade-long quest in her family name is detailed in her new memoir, Summons to Berlin.
Though faced with bureaucratic challenges, Dr. Intrator learned powerful lessons about trauma, language, and facing one’s demons, all of which she now shares with others through her practice and written words.
Can you tell me a bit about your background prior to the starting of this journey?
I was raised in New York, the daughter of refugees from Nazi Germany. In college I was a European History major with an emphasis in German History. After spending some time working in film, I went back to school to study medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Having always been interested in emotions and their impact on how people live their lives, it was not surprising that I became a psychiatrist after graduating Columbia in 1981. After working in a criminal court clinic in the Bronx, I became particularly interested in psychopaths, people who are cold and ruthless, who lacked empathy.
I joint ventured a research project at the Bronx VA and Mount Sinai School of Medicine with the world’s expert on psychopaths, Dr. Robert Hare. Together we did the first nuclear brain imagining in the world on clearly defined psychopaths. The work was published in 1997.
My involvement in the restitution case began because of my father’s deathbed questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?” The year before he learned that our family name was recorded as the owner of a large manufacturing building in German Mitte the true historic center of Berlin.
The Berlin Wall had just fallen and all of East Berlin instantly became the largest real estate parcel in the world. Many buildings prior to World War 2 that had been owned by Jews were now available to be claimed. My father knew me well: He knew I would be intensely curious about the case but also frightened to pursue it.
In 1967 he rescued me from a trip I had taken to Berlin by allowing me to cut my visit short and come home due to my panic about being in Germany.
Your book Summons to Berlin details your quest to gain restitution for 16 Wallstrasse. How would you describe this journey?
It began at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City when a distinguished German attorney, representing my brother and myself, informed us that there was a competing claim for the family’s large manufacturing building at 16 Wallstrasse.
The opposing claimant stated my grandfather had lost the building in a forced auction because he was an incompetent businessman not because he was Jewish.
This auction occurred five years into the Nazi regime. By then the family resources were depleted. I found this comment about my grandfather insulting and absurd but according to the lawyer, there were no documents to prove our case as the Gestapo had burned all the relevant papers pertaining to the building.
He advised us to join with our other relatives to negotiate with the opposition and split the profits once the building was acquired and sold. I was certain that anyone who was able to buy a large building in the center of Berlin in late 1938, was a Nazi or had had such connections.
The lawyer however said that information would also be hard to find. He confirmed we would win the initial round in court but added it would be appealed and the costs would be enormous and most of our family members would be dead.
The impact of this insensitive and rather cruel statement took a while for me to process. Nonetheless we refused. Since I was going to Germany in a few months to present a research paper, I decided to get more information. That one trip led to many more. All in all, the case took nine years.
And it was a brutal experience. My opposition can best be described as a faceless bureaucracy. I had virtually no assistance from the lawyer. The pressure urging me to negotiate continued ad nauseum.
I was repeatedly told there were thousands less difficult cases than ours. And the agency assigned to adjudicate our case was woefully understaffed. Mindless deadlines materialized but I dug my feet in.
Six years into this quest, I hired an international investigator. He discovered that the people who took the building were our opposing claimants and shockingly had been renting space there since 1931.
The investigator found their Nazi party memberships which years before I was told were impossible to secure. Clearly they were waiting to pounce on my grandfather when he could no longer pay the mortgage.
Following the takeover, the Nazi flag and other Nazi paraphernalia were produced there. Worse yet, the first million Jewish Stars of David used for identification of Jews for so-called resettlement and ultimately murder were fabricated there using slave laborers. It is likely two of those stars were for my own grandparents who hadn’t yet escaped.
What prompted you to share this story through writing a book?
The German word “wiedergutmachen,” “to make good again,” is one popular way of talking about restitution. Our own lawyer used that very expression.
For my family it referred to a pension received from the West German government in 1953 as a result of the Nazis ending my father’s civil service job as a Judge in 1933. As a little girl whose father was physically very ill, it gave me a feeling of optimism when I would overhear that word spoken.
After I began the Wallstrasse case, I realized that the word “wiedergutmachen” was empty, hollow of meaning. How can one make good again after the Nazis?
I asked myself what did “make good again” mean to me? It no longer meant getting the building back but finding out the facts of what occurred .When I realized the emptiness of the word, it became extremely important to listen more closely; ask better questions, and not settle for anything less than the facts,
I wrote the book because I felt my story was unique, because as a psychiatrist interested in the uses of words, with a background in German history, I was able to provide a commentary on how I was treated and how information that was supposedly unavailable materialized. How rumors turned out to be true and bureaucracies move into action when the people involved are shamed.
What would you like for your readers to take away from this book?
I would like for my readers to dig deep within themselves, to have more courage, to ask questions. We are bombarded with new information and events every single day that affect our lives forever.
It is important for us to pause, to stop and assess where we are, and to think more carefully about our choices.
The history of 16 Wallstrasse has been featured in various publications and museum exhibits. What has seeing your story being portrayed in those ways been like for you?
I am proud of myself. I am grateful to my dying father for challenging me with his prescient words.
What has been the biggest learning point for you over the course of this journey?
I had lots of fears as a child that I still carry with me and of course accompanied me to Berlin. I accept my fears as hard wired but have newly developed courage to accompany them.
Human beings, when motivated can develop novel resources due to the brain’s plasticity. This is important in my work with my patients.
Do you have any other future books or projects on the horizon?
A recent article of mine, Harry Lime, the Archetypal Psychopath will be featured in a German literary magazine this summer. I am also turning a screenplay I wrote many years back into a novel. It also taken place in Berlin.
For more information on Dr. Intrator’s work, please visit JoanneIntrator.com.
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