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.
2 comments:
Wow Nesta! Your experience reminds me of the time I visited the slave quarters at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. It was a very eerie feeling. I had a similar experience last year when I visited the area in North Carolina that my grandfather and his ancestors where from. I attended an Episcopal church that the slaves attended on the Mills plantation. He was the grandfather of the man that owned my great grandfather and great-great grandmother.
I can just imagine how you must have felt. I found it to be disorienting and extremely moving. The reverberations are still very powerful. I look forward to discussing this with you.
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