Adventures Continued

Here I sit, at my desk, back in the US of A, in the twilight zone of jetlag, caught between cultures, and on top of it, preparing for yet another adventure.  At the beginning of June I am off to Southwest, and Southern Africa!

My last week in Germany and Israel was super intense.  On the morning of Holocaust Memorial Day I took the train to the Grunewald Station, and went to Track 17.  This is in an elegant area of Berlin - beautiful homes and embassies are situated here.  It is from Track 17 that the Jews and other undesirables; Gypsies, homosexuals, were rounded up and put in cattle cars and sent to their final destination.  I find it difficult to put into words the feelings I experienced there. I met an Israeli couple, and we both just looked at each other and shrugged. She said a word in Hebrew to me 'hallucination.' That says it all.

Then I went to my nephew and his family. His daughters are in a "Wald Kindergarten." A forest kindergarten. That Friday night Spring was celebrated.  We all went to the lush and glowing green forest where the men brought in a maypole, and the women collected wildflowers and there was a symbolic wedding, and we danced around the maypole, all singing to the earth mother.  Another hallucination - I felt I was in a Midsummer Night's Dream.  Magical.

Then back to Israel to Memorial Day.  On the eve of Memorial Day we attended a collective ceremony in Hayarkon Garden in Tel Aviv.  Collective - the shared experience of Jews and Palestinians all caught in this web of sadness and pain, yet still daring to hope.

And the next day - on the kibbutz - our shared sorrow.  After the ceremony we (kibbutz members and friends) went to the home of a member. We sat outside on the balcony, under the shade of a plane tree, overlooking the Jezreel Valley.  A patchwork of greens, gold, platinum.  Mt. Tabor always there, always present.  And we spoke, each one of us, of how we first heard the news of our loved ones' deaths. We all remember each and every detail - and as we all said, the passage of time never eases our pain.  Somehow it seems to be more diffcult with each passing year, a bottomless pit of grief. But it felt very good to talk about it, and laugh, and to bask in the warmth of caring and love.

And life goes on - new adventures await.

note

Please note, the previous entry, although written on my first day in Berlin, was only published on May 11, as for some reason I could not publish it in Berlin.  My trip is now complete and I am back in the States. Soon I will publish further impressions of my trip in general.

Adventures

This morning I arrived in Berlin. This is my first visit here and I am now sitting in a Hotel room in the Hackescher Markt.

My Israeli nephew is doing a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, in East Germany.  I had planned to visit him and his family during my trip to Israel. When we discussed dates, the best time for him is for me to come this Thursday, the 2nd of May. I looked at my calendar and saw it is Holocaust Memorial Day.

‘Nothing like coming directly to the source,” I said to him, rather grimly. It certainly has not escaped my attention that on this day I will be taking a train from Berlin to East Germany. On top of it I have to change trains in Erfurt, which is where the ovens for the gas chambers were made.

So here I sit in a cafe looking at the constant parade of people. It all feels so familiar. Why I wonder? Is it from the many movies and documentaries I have seen, or the fact that bauhaus architecture is very prevalent in Tel Aviv.  I walked around the area after I arrived because I always do that in a new city. I love to walk around feeling the energy of a city that is new to me.  The area in which I am situated was apparently a largely Jewish area before the war.  I am enjoying a Berliner Pilsener and digesting the sites I came across in my wanderings.

I walk into an interesting looking lane and there I find OttoWeidt's brush factory.  Otto Weidt, a non Jewish  man, employed Jews who were blind and deaf during the war. Of course this was forbidden. This incredible man and his wife and a few friends employed Jews and hid them during raids. They managed to do this for at least two years, until someone gave them away.  The factory is now a modest memorial. Everything is exactly as it was, the rooms, the workbenches, and the hiding places.

 I exit quite overwhelmed and stumble across the Anne Frank Centre in the very same alley.  It is a nonprofit association headquartered in Berlin and the German Partner of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.  The work they do there is really admirable. getting young people involved and countering anti-Semitism and racism.  I wish I could say, and so do they, I am sure, that their work is done.  Unfortunately it is not, and may never be.

Enough for a day, back to my hotel to rest and to contemplate.