Pleasant Dreams

30 years ago: The director of a Jewish Festival in Berlin uses my café (The Cornelia Street Café in the West Village) to scout talent for his Eleventh Annual Jewish Days of Culture; he buys a copy of my book (Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski . . . ) and invites me to come to Berlin to perform and give a lecture; on the way I stop in Amsterdam with my sister from London to unveil a stone at the grave of our uncle Georg, philanthropist, refugee advocate, Auschwitz survivor. In Berlin we discover the graves of our grandparents, whom we had never known: both our parents had managed to escape; both our grandfathers had died before Hitler; both our grandmothers had lived to die in concentration camps. On my last night I perform in the ruins of the synagogue at which my parents worshiped, in front of a backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, and invite the audience to follow me over the bridge for a nightcap at the Cornelia Street Café.