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 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. In 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.
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 |
No comments:
Post a Comment