My Trip to Eastern Europe - Part 6

I have finished my year of running which included running in four different countries and various states here in the US.  I covered 1,890.1 miles this year and can honestly say that every mile was meaningful to me for many different reasons.  I am looking forward to seeing what 2019 will bring me out there on the roads.

I am continuing my posts about my trip to Eastern Europe with my second day in Berlin.  It was another day that brought us back into the horrors of the Holocaust.  I can honestly say that despite the constant reminders of how hate can devolve into barbarism there were many stories we learned about that made me realize that there were still individuals who were willing to risk everything to help save others.  These people are known as Righteous Among the Nations.  This designation is an honorific given to non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis by the State of Israel.  These people should never be forgotten and I am honored to know their stories and be able to share them with others.

Sunday October 14, 2018 – Berlin, Germany

Our first stop today was at Checkpoint Charlie probably the most famous crossing points between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.  It was named Checkpoint Charlie because “Charlie” is the NATO phonetic designation for the letter “C”.  The barrier and checkpoint booth, the flag and the sandbags are all based on the original site but are simply replicas.  The original is now on display at the Allied Museum in Berlin.  The checkpoint was opened in August 1961 only one month before I was born.  It was active until it closed in June 1990. 

The last time I saw this checkpoint was in 1978 when I visited East Berlin as part of a European tour I was on with my high school.  When we got to the checkpoint the East German police pulled us all off the bus so that they could search the bus before letting us through.  Then they checked each person’s passport before letting them back on the bus.  I had grown a scruffy beard while on the trip.  So when I got to the front of the line, they pushed me off to the side and kept my passport.  They then came over and spoke to me only in German.  I kept trying to explain that I didn’t understand.  It wasn’t until my teacher came over and spoke to them that they finally returned my passport and let me on the bus.  My teacher told me they pulled me aside because my face didn’t exactly match my passport.  It was a scary situation and proved to me that they were not fooling around.

We then boarded the bus and drove over to the Rosenstrasse to see where the very first synagogue was built in Berlin.  Jews had come back to Berlin in 1671.   The synagogue was built between 1712-1714.  It was the main synagogue for Berlin’s Jews until it was superseded by the New Synagogue in 1866.  The building was not destroyed during Kristalnacht because it was no longer being used by Jews for religious services. The Nazis had no reason to damage it.  However it was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945.  The building is no longer there and a park has replaced it.

The park where the Old Synagogue (Alte Synagogue) was located is also the location of the Women’s Protest monument.  This street protest was made up of Aryan women who were married to Jewish Men and was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews.  What triggered the protest was the Fabrikaktion (Factory Action) which was the roundup of the last 6,000 Jews to be deported from Berlin starting February 27, 1943. Most of these remaining Jews were working in Berlin plants or they were working for the Jewish welfare organization.  But 1,800 Jewish men were pulled out of the group.  This was because  they were "privileged Jews", a category exempt from deportation and other anti-Jewish measures by reason of being married to German women or employed as officials of the Jewish organization officially recognized by the German government for the purpose of controlling the Jewish population.  These men were housed temporarily at the site of this park in a welfare office for the Jewish community here in central Berlin.

The women of these men got word of what was happening.  There was no way this action wouldn’t have been heard of throughout in Berlin.   So they gathered outside of the welfare office saying that they would not leave until their husbands had been released.  They were even able to get 25 of the men who had already been deported to Auschwitz sent back to Berlin.  On March 5, 1943, the SS trying to intimidate the women sent in trucks with machine guns to threaten the women on the Rosenstrasse. Despite the menace of the machine guns aimed at them and the threat to be gunned down, the women remained.  Finally on March 6, 1943, Goebbels relented and ordered all of the people imprisoned be released.  What an amazing story.

The monument is called the Block of Women and was created by Ingeborg Hunzinger.  It serves as a monument to the courage of the women who put their lives at risk to secure the freedom of their husbands.  Also in the park is another sculpture of a person seated on a park bench, a poignant reminder that Jews were forbidden to sit on benches at the time.  Both are very powerful images that I won’t forget.

We then walked through the area that was once the center of Berlin Jewry.  We walked by the Sophienkirche which was the church in East Berlin that Martin Luther King spoke at in September 1964.  The buildings in front of the church are pockmarked by all of the bullets that were being fired during the battle for Berlin.  While looking at the church’s exterior, Yael pointed out a “stumbling stone”.  They are known here as a Stolperstein which are a concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.  These stones were created by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992.  They are placed at the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror.  They are very controversial but despite this controversy, the artist and his co-workers have installed about 60,000 stones in more than 1,200 towns and cities throughout Europe.

From here we walked over to the Museum of Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind.  This was a haven for Jews during WWII.  Otto Weidt fought to protect his Jewish workers against deportation and he has been recognized for his work as one of the Righteous Men of the World's Nations.  While his sight was decreasing, Otto learned the business of brush making and broom binding.  In 1936, Weidt established a workshop to manufacture brooms and brushes and hired 30 blind and deaf Jews who worked for him from 1941 to 1943.  During this period, Weidt helped Jews find hiding places throughout Berlin.  He also falsified documents, bribed Gestapo officers and even hid them in the back of his shop.  Though Weidt, being forewarned, kept his shop closed on the day of the Fabrikaktion in February 1943, many of his employees were still rounded up and deported to Theresienstadt.  They are not sure how many Jews he saved but they know it was more than 50 Jews.

After we had lunch, we headed over to the Neue (New) Synagoge in Berlin.  It was built between 1859 and 1866.  It is built in a Moorish architectural style inspired by the buildings in Alhambra Spain.  We could see the gilded cupola from far off as we walked to the building.  The New Synagogue was consecrated on Rosh Hashanah in 1866 and was the largest synagogue in Europe, with 3,200 seats.

The building was damaged on Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), when Nazi looters rampaged across Germany, burning synagogues and smashing the few Jewish shops and homes left in the country.  It was desecrated and set on fire, but avoided major damage thanks to the efforts of Wilhelm Krützfeld, the local police chief who brought the fire department and who told the Nazis that this building was a major historical building in Berlin and should be left alone.  The synagogue was later heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1943 and then torched by Berliners in 1944.  The building was finally demolished by the Communist East Germans in the 1950s.  In the mid-1980s the East German government restored this great landmark, but the bulk of the synagogue was never rebuilt.  In its place is an empty plot of land on which is marked the original layout of the building, providing a disturbing insight into the destruction of a way of life that used to be.  It is a sad reminder of what we Jews lost during the war.

We then boarded the bus to drive over to the “Places of Remembrance” which was located in the Bavarian Quarter.  It is a former Jewish neighborhood which was once home to artists and intellectuals such as Billy Wilder and Albert Einstein.  Eventually the area became an unofficial ghetto where many of Berlin's Jews were forcibly confined before deportation.  We walked around the Schöneberg's Bayerischer Platz where we saw brightly colored signs that are printed with simple graphics and a short summary of some of the Nazis' most disturbing anti-Semitic legislation.  This art was created in 1993 by Berlin-based artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock.  The controversial public art installation consists of 80 placards.  These placards are truly heart-breaking as they simply put forth the regulations which systematically deprived Jews (and other 'non-aryans'), of their jobs, rights and, eventually, lives.

We did not have a chance to visit all 80 placards.  The ones we did see were tough enough to view. The last one we looked at really hit home since it is located in front of a park surrounded by red benches.  The picture was of a red bench.  On the back of the placard it stated “Jews may only use those benches at the Bavarian Square that are marked in yellow. Eyewitness report 1939.”  It must have been humiliating for the Jews who had lived their whole lives as Germans to be visibility separated and not allow to sit next to their German neighbors like they had in the past.  Truly unbelievable.

Our last stop of the day was on Grunewald where the Berlin-Grunewald railway station is located.  This is the place where the Gleis 17 (Track 17) platform was located.  Starting in October 1941 until February 1945 this was one of the major sites of deportation for the Berlin Jews. Originally the trains left mainly for the ghettos of Litzmannstadt and Warsaw.  But in 1942 they led directly to the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps.  There are actually 3 different monuments here.  The original monument was a cross section of railroad ties in front of the entrance to the train station, established by a local group of Lutheran women in 1987, with a plaque commemorating the beginning of the deportations.  But since it was prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall it only says that people gathered here and were deported.  It doesn’t say who these people were or where they were sent or what happened to them.  In 2011 a Polish artist brought birch trees from around Auschwitz planting several here at Grunewald train station as part of this memorial.

The second memorial is a wall designed in 1991 by Polish artist Karol Bronaitowski.  The hollow human figures represent the individuals who had to walk along the same path so that they could board a train for deportation during the Nazi regime.  As you look at it the figures are of different shapes and sizes you notice that they are meant to represent the people who were deported as individuals in their own right; they were not the same; they had their own unique story which sadly had taken a tragic turn.  The figures in the wall can be seen as disappearing.  But despite their disappearance, they have still left their impressions on this place.  Some interpret it as depicting the train and freight cars as they depart the station.  No matter how you see it, the memorial is a very stark and moving tribute to these victims.

The third memorial established by the Deutsche Bahn (German) Railroad in January 1998.  The memorial consists of two train platforms lined by plaques which represented each deportation train from Grunewald, listing the date, the number of Jews and the destination of the train, including Theresienstadt, Lodz, Riga and Auschwitz.  We were given some time to walk along the tracks looking at the plaques.  The first plaque was dated October 18, 1941 when the first transport carried 1,251 Jews to Lodz and the last one dated December 10, 1944 carried 31 Jews to Auschwitz.  The total number of Jews deported from this platform adds up to 50,282.  The largest transport was 1,758 Jews and the smallest was 13 Jews.  The saddest part of this story is that all of the Jews deported had to buy their tickets to ride the trains to their ultimate demise.  This is probably why Deutsche Bahn ultimately decided to create this memorial.

After having a chance to walk the platforms, we gathered at the steps in front of the memorial plaque.  We then held a service of remembrance to honor those Jews who were deported out of Germany.  It was a very moving service.  After we said Kaddish, we all joined together to sing Hatikva.  Our journey had started in Auschwitz which was  at the end of these tracks.  Today our journey ended at the beginning of the tracks.  We had made the journey of our mishpocha in reverse.  I believe that this was the best way to travel because it symbolized for me the return to life.  The Jewish people survived and are now thriving again and in all of the places where the Nazis tried to eradicate them.  This provides me hope that this type of tyranny and hatred can never happen again.

After a short rest in the hotel, we all gathered for dinner.  It was our last chance to spend time with our guide Hillel.  We all took time to reflect and share just what we have learned or taken from the trip so far.  There were so many great insights and feelings shared that there was not a dry eye in the place.  It is amazing how in such a short period of time we have grown together as a family.  Best of all is that we will all remember this trip forever and when we see each other in Temple it will be extra special because we have shared this experience.

It is hard to believe that the year has come to a close.  Looking back at my reflections of the trip I took to Eastern Europe and my various running experiences is truly humbling.  I take time to look back so that I can learn to appreciate the wide spectrum of experiences I had this year both positive and negative. Without looking back and reflecting on what has been, it is easy to repeat some of the mistakes I made this year and in the past.  I feel strongly that reflection is an important part of being self-aware, which is at the heart of self-improvement.  I hope that anyone who reads my posts will take some time to reflect on the last year so that they too can improve in the new year ahead.

Dec 18 – 6.50 miles (53:33, 8:14 pace) – Mile Repeats
Dec 20 – 6.20 miles (52:31, 8:28 pace) – Tempo Run
Dec 21 – 5.10 miles (47:53, 9:23 pace)
Dec 22 – 10.10 miles (1:40:33, 9:57 pace)
Dec 23 – 20.10 miles (3:29:02, 10:24 pace)
Dec 25 – 5.10 miles (45:17, 8:53 pace)
Dec 27 – 4.10 miles (34:47, 8:29 pace) – Tempo Run
Dec 29 – 12.10 miles (1:55:21, 9:32 pace)

Total Miles:  69.3 miles
2018 Total Miles:  1,890.1 miles

My Trip to Eastern Europe - Part 5

Because the fifth day was mostly a travel day from Warsaw to Berlin, I have decided to include both the fifth and 6th day of the trip in this post.  This was the part of the trip I was looking forward to for very different reasons than why I wanted to go to Poland.  Poland was a trip I took to fulfill my desire to become a witness for the witnesses.  It was meant to clarify for me the why.  Berlin was a chance to go back to a city in Europe I had experienced in a very different time in its history.  I would have a chance to see how the city had changed after shrugging off its Communist rulers.  Little did I know as we rode to Berlin just how much of the city I would barely recognize.

Friday October 12, 2018 – Berlin, Germany

We got going early so we could grab sandwiches at the train station before boarding the train.  Today we were headed to Berlin.  I have not been in Europe since 1978 when I traveled there with my high school.  On that trip I visited a very different Berlin than the one we would be seeing over the next two day.  First because we would be staying and visiting sites in what was formerly East Berlin.  Second because Berlin was now a free and united city.  But I was sad to end my time in Poland because I found it an infinitely fascinating country.  However much I would miss Poland, I was excited to see what was next on our tour.

After a 6 hour train ride west through Poland and into Germany, we finally arrived at the Berlin Ostbahnhof train station in what was formerly East Berlin.  The last time I visited East Berlin was in 1978.  On that trip we took a bus tour from West Berlin into East Berlin.  On that day, we were only allowed off the tour bus at the Soviet War Memorial and a place for lunch.  Everything else we had to see through the windows of our bus.  What a different city Berlin is today.

After getting to our hotel (The Regent), we changed into better clothing to go to services at the Pessalozzie Synagogue.  The synagogue was founded in 1912 as an Orthodox synagogue.  The synagogue  was attacked on Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 according to a memorial sign inside the sanctuary.  Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938.  The pogrom was carried out by SA (Storm Detachment) paramilitary forces and civilians. The Nazis looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.  While the Pessalozzie Synagogue was set on fire, the fire was ultimately put out by the German firefighters to prevent the adjacent houses from burning as well. Until after the World War II, this synagogue couldn't be used for services.   It was renovated and reopened in September 1947 and was turned into a reform synagogue.

The services were very different than the Reform services I attend at Temple Kol Ami.  They have an organ and a choir.  Men and women have to sit separately but there is no mechitza.  According to our guide Ya’al, it has basically remained, until today, the most important synagogue of the established, well-integrated Jewish community of West Berlin.  According to Rabbi Schneider, we had a chance to experience what Reform Judaism was like when it was originally founded here in Germany back in the 1840s.  Although a lot of the service was in German, I could follow along.  The sermon was given by the Rabbi of Pessalozzi’s sister synagogue in London.  So we heard the sermon in English about the Torah portion this week regarding the Tower of Babel.  The sister synagogue was established 80 years ago after Pessalozzie was destroyed during Kristallnacht.  Jews from Berlin left and moved to London and safety but wanted to still have services in exile.   

After services we went to dinner at a very nice restaurant (Luther & Wagner).  At dinner we all shared moments from the trip that struck us as “ah ha” moments.  It was a really nice evening and wonderful to hear how this experience has impacted each of us so far.

Saturday October 13, 2018 – Berlin, Germany

After a great night’s sleep, I got up to get in my scheduled 8 mile run.  I headed out with a plan to run up the Unter den Linden street that would take me through the Brandenburg Gate and towards West Berlin.  The temperature was perfect and the trees in Tiergarten were changing with fall colors.  I cruised along feeling good the whole way.  I ended up running 8.1 miles in 1:12:39 (8:58 pace).  I was surprised at my pace since I never felt like I was pressing hard.  It was just a comfortable pace.  I am sure the cool temperatures and fall leaves helped. 

We met in the lobby to head out for our first day in Berlin.  Our first stop today was in Bebelplatz.  It is infamous as the site of one of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremonies held in the evening of May 10, 1933 in many German university cities. The book burnings were initiated and hosted by the nationalist German Student Association. The square is bounded to the east by the State Opera building, to the west by buildings of Humboldt University, and to the southeast by St. Hedwig's Cathedral, the first Catholic church built in Prussia after the Reformation.

The memorial in the square was created by Michel Ullman and is known as the underground “Bibliotek” memorial.  The memorial consists of a window on the surface of the plaza and is almost invisible.  When you look down into the window you see vacant bookshelves.  On the surface there is a  bronze plaque with the quote from Heinrich Heine from 1821: “That was only a prelude where books are burned in the end people will burn.”  What a prophetic statement.  The absence of the books makes you feel the loss of the soul of the authors who’s works were burned.  It was a very moving monument.

From there we headed over to the Reichstag which was built in the 1890s.  In February 1933 after Hitler had won a large portion of the seats, the building was burned under circumstances still not entirely known.  Although they said they found a 14 year old Communist boy drunk and in the basement where the fire started, it was more likely Hitler’s henchmen who started the fire.  The fire gave a pretext for the Nazis to suspend most rights provided for by the 1919 Weimar Constitution, allowing them to arrest Communists and increase police action throughout Germany.  No one believes that this boy started the fire as the only people who had the key to that portion of the Reichstag were the Nazis.

The building was heavily damaged during the bombing of Berlin.  The Allies bombed Berlin on 363 days over the course of the war.  When the war ended the building was essentially in ruins.  The capital of West Germany had been moved to Bonn in 1949.  The building was reconstructed in the early 1960s but not to the way it looks today.  It wasn’t until after reunification that the German government moved their seat of government back to Berlin from Bonn.  This necessitated the need to rebuild what would now be known as the Bundestag.  It was rebuilt in the early 90s to what we see today.

One of the interesting things the German government has decided to do when building government buildings is to include a lot of glass to show the transparency of their actions.  In fact the new dome of the Reichstag is all glass.  You can go into the building and walk up into the dome.  When you are there, you are looking down on a glass ceiling where you can see the German Parliament in action.  It symbolizes that the people are over their government and that government should always act in the open.  It makes me wish that our government would adopt the same policy.

From there we walked over to the Brandenburg Gate.  On the way through Tiergarten we stopped at the Holocaust Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. The monument is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 – 500,000 people murdered in the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples who are more commonly referred to as gypsies.  This was a stark reminder that although we Jews lost 6,000,000, there were another 6,000,000 also murdered by the Nazis for similar reasons. 

When we reached the Brandenburg Gate, we learned that the gate after WWII was at the center of the separation of East and West  Berlin and be considered a “no man’s land”.  Up until August 1961, East and West Berliners could cross at the Brandenburg Gate.  That August it was closed when the Berlin Wall construction started.  West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's governing Mayor Willy Brandt, who had spontaneously returned from a federal election campaign tour in West Germany earlier on the same day.  It was closed throughout the Berlin Wall period until December 1989.

We then took a short walk from the gate to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe also known as the Holocaust Memorial.  It was built to memorialize the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  It was designed by architect Peter Eisenman.  It consists of a 200,000 square foot site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.  We had a chance to walk through the memorial.  It gives you a feeling of uneasiness and being trapped.  But at the same time you can see the exits.  Eisenman said that the whole sculpture was built to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.  Many of our group thought it looked like a graveyard.  They believed that it represented a graveyard for those who were unburied or thrown into unmarked pits.  Some felt that the uneasily tilting stones suggest an old, untended, or even desecrated cemetery.  I could see what they meant.

We then boarded to bus for a trip over to the Berlin Wall Memorial.  The memorial was built. To commemorate the division of Berlin by the Berlin Wall and the deaths that occurred there.  The section of wall was preserved in 1998 and is located on Bernauer Strasse at the corner of Ackerstasse.  Behind the wall is the former death strip which sat between the two concrete walls and spanned 160 yards that contained hundreds of watchtowers, miles of anti-vehicle trenches, guard dog runs, floodlights and trip-wire machine guns.  We climbed the tower at the Visitor Center to see a preserved portion of the death strip.   It looked just like what I saw when I crossed the border into East Berlin back in 1978.  It was so sterile that it didn’t look as threatening as I remembered.

Inside the wall in the parklike area there is The Window of Remembrance that commemorates all the people who were shot or died in an accident at the Wall while trying to escape or as a consequence of the border enforcement.  There are 140 pictures of the victims.  The first died in 1961 and the last in 1989 right before the wall fell.  Ya’al told us that over 4,000 people were able to cross the wall and border safely.  There is a marker with the words “In memory of the division of the city from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989 and in commemoration of the victims of Communist tyranny.”   I have to say that it just didn’t feel as intimidating as it did during the Cold War.  But it is a really well done memorial.

We headed over to the area near the Friedrichstrasse railway station to grab lunch and have some free time.  Before I grabbed a bite to eat, I went to the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears) which is a small museum that tells the story of what it was like to cross the border during the time of the wall.  The museum really showed what it was like leaving the GDR.  East Berliners had to check in at the hall at the Friedrichstrasse railway station.  There they had to go through luggage and passport control which could take hours.  To me it sounded bureaucratic but after visiting the displays I realized that it meant much more than that.  These people were leaving their friends and family behind.  So these tearful goodbyes is why the station became known as the Tränenpalast.

We got onto the bus to head over to the Berlin Bunker.  The Bunker was used during WWII as an air-raid shelter.   It was designed by the architect Karl Bonatz and built in 1943 by the Nazis to shelter up to 3,000 train passengers.  The square building has an area of 10,764 square feet and is 59 feet high; its walls are up to 10 feet thick.  There are 120 rooms on five floors.  I
n May 1945, the Red Army took the building and turned it into a prisoner-of-war camp.   Then from 1949 to 1957, it was used to store textiles and after 1957, as storage for dry and tropical fruit because the building has very cool temperatures year round.  In the summer of 1992, it was turned into a hardcore techno club.

In 2003 the Bunker was bought by Christian Boros to house his private collection of contemporary art.  It is now known as the Boris Collection.  If you want to visit this museum there is a three month waiting period to get a chance to view the collection.  We were lucky enough to get into the museum.  We spent about 90 minutes touring through the museum with our museum provided guide.  You cannot view the collection on your own.  While some of the pieces were a little too out there for me, there were some really interesting an beautiful works.  I have never been a huge modern art fan.  But I was really glad to see something I wouldn’t normally go see on my own.

We had to change our plan to visit the Jewish Museum today because tens of thousands of people had taken to the streets of Berlin and at the Brandenburg Gate to protest racism and discrimination.  We heard that the demonstration came from rising concerns about Germany's increasingly confident far right and to face down the rise of populism in Germany and the rest of Europe. The protesters were demanding were more solidarity with marginalized groups and to bring light to the fact that racism and discrimination are becoming socially acceptable again in Germany.  It sounded a lot like what id happening in the U.S. with Trump in the White House.  According to what we heard there was a wide range of groups, including pro-refugee, gay rights, Jewish and Muslim organizations protesting under the slogan "solidarity instead of exclusion — for an open and free society."  While it changed our itinerary, I am happy that the German people are not going to put up with the things that lead to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. 

I had a chance to rest in my room before heading out to dinner with some of my friends. We went to Maximilin’s.  It is a Munich style German restaurant.  The food and beer was fantastic.  It reminded me of my time in Munich in 1978.  Before I left for dinner, I got a text from Nathan to call.  When I called him, he wanted to tell me that he had proposed to Hillary and they are now engaged.  What a fantastic way to end the day with good food and drink and some very happy and exciting news.

As I look back on my return visit to Berlin, it was hard to believe that it had been 40 years since I had last visited the city.  I was 17 years old at the time and on my very first trip to Europe.  I am not sure I fully comprehended the division of the city and what that did to the people on both sides of the wall.  At the time we could not have visited all of the sites that were tied to the Nazis rise to power or see the places where they started to build up the hatred for those who were not deemed worthy of continued life.  This time we could.  Today I feel my last visit was a more sanitized version of what had and was happening in Berlin at the time.

And now, four decades later, I realize that my first visit truly allowed me to see just how much the city has changed.  The city has truly shed itself of its Communist past and rebuilt itself into a truly welcoming and cosmopolitan city.  I felt very hopeful that the Jews of Germany can again live without fear of the past.  The protest we experienced showed that there truly was a change in the attitudes of the German people.  Yes, Berlin had certainly changed but my visit brought back all of my youthful memories allowing me to see not just how much Berlin had changed but how much I had changed.

Nov 27 – 8.60 miles (1:13:41, 8:34 pace) – Mile Repeats
Nov 28 – 8.20 miles (1:15:10, 9:10 pace)
Nov 30 – 8.30 miles (1:12:33, 8:44 pace) – Tempo Run
Dec 1 – 12.10 miles (1:55:25, 9:32 pace)
Dec 3 – 6.50 miles (53:41, 8:15 pace) – Mile Repeats
Dec 4 – 5.10 miles (46:11, 9:03 pace)
Dec 7 – 4.10 miles (44:50, 8:28 pace) – Tempo Run
Dec 8 – 9.10 miles (1:26:57, 9:33 pace)
Dec 9 – 19.50 miles (3:23:51, 10:27 pace)
Dec 11 – 6.50 miles (53:27, 8:13 pace) – Mile Repeats
Dec 12 – 8.10 miles (1:17:07, 9:31 pace)
Dec 13 – 8.40 miles (1:12:34, 8:38 pace) – Tempo Run
Dec 15 – 13.20 miles (2:05:32, 9:31 pace)

Total Miles:  117.7 miles
2018 Total Miles:  1,820.8 miles

Berlin Wall in 1978 and 2018