Journal Entries

 

 

 

Sunday, March 9, 2008

     Today was our first real day here. It is so nice to be back in Germany. There are so many subtle things about the culture that I’d forgotten about. Leaving the airport this morning, the group piled into a bunch of Mercedes taxis. The weather was beautiful and the group seemed to have a delirious sort of energy that can only be inspired by a mixture of excitement, exhaustion and anticipation. We strolled (or rather power walked to keep up with the Fraus) the streets of our new neighborhood. I began to fall in love with Berlin. The residential streets we found ourselves in were quiet and peaceful. The Fraus pointed out interesting things along the way.

     We stopped often to look at signs, which are part of a memorial, spread throughout the neighborhood of Schönberg. On one side of the sign there would be a simple image; on the other side there would be one of the anti-semetic laws, which were instated sometime during or after 1933. All of these signs were in German, so I could understand most of the words, but I couldn’t articulate the whole of idea most of the time.

     We all were getting hungry from all our strolling and chatting, so we found a nice little café. Our large group overwhelmed the little place, which kind of made me feel some sense of ownership, as if we were its most important patrons. After picking out a sandwich and counting out Euros we all settled in to enjoy our first real German meal. Our walk inspired in me such affection for the group. We were relative strangers who came together for the first time at the airport twenty hours earlier.

     I felt very European and specifically very German, eating my little brötchen and sipping on delicious coffee at an outside café table. I spent the walk back to our hotel thinking about how charming the whole day had been. I felt overwhelmingly content. Walking up the many flights of stairs to our hotel, I was tired but satisfied, ready for an afternoon nap.

     But now, writing this after sleeping for a few hours, I am finding all the events of today to be quite startling. I was so wrapped up in my own experience, my own satisfaction, and my own euphoria that I failed to really process the information presented to me. The signs through Schönberg are now sinking in. I wrote down a few of the laws, either because they struck me or because they contained a new German vocabulary word. “Aryan and non-Aryan children are forbidden to play together. 1938” or “Jews may no longer keep pets. 15.2.1942”. This memorial is made up of street signs, that, to the average passerby, would go unnoticed.

     The subtly of the memorial is a huge part of its message. There was no one morning when all Germans, Jewish and non-Jewish, woke up to find their nation suddenly rampant with anti-Semitism. These signs speak to the gradual nature of the transformation of society. Slowly and systematically these laws were introduced. The designer of this memorial, Renata Stih, desired it to have the “aesthetics of normality”, allowing the memorial to “blend into the iconography of today’s urban text in the same way that anti-Semitic sentiments and decrees had blended into public consciousness fifty years earlier” (Wiedmer 1999).

     This concept is a compelling concept for a memorial. It suggests that the Holocaust was a process rather than a singular occurrence. This idea is not new to me. Today, during our little walk, I felt such intense feelings of warmth and contentment. I felt an attachment to the group. Had any of these feelings somehow come under threat, I would have tried desperately to preserve them. I imagine that Germans living in this same neighborhood during the 1930s and 1940s could feel a similar contentment. I imagine a German non-Jewish family going for an afternoon stroll, like our group did, but rather than being confronted with street signs, they would come across other more obvious instances of anti-Semitism. Perhaps they would notice that a new law was instated so that Jewish children could no longer play in public playgrounds, but their children could still play there. Or perhaps Jewish neighbors slowly begin disappearing. But I imagine their reactions would be similar to mine today. When I saw the signs I was affected, so I wrote a few things in my notebook and read closely, but I was perfectly happy to move quickly past the street sign to return my strong feelings of camaraderie and leisure. Any sort of German protest against anti-Semitic actions would have put this leisure in jeopardy.

     My initial outrage at hearing of everyday German citizens inactivity in reaction to anti-Semitism is now more complicated. At first I was in disbelief that a whole nation of  But now my thoughts are inconsistent and tangled. I am beginning to understand how passivity could be a very real, and terrifyingly logical, possibility.

 

 

 

 

Monday, March 10, 2008

    We went to some amazing places today. First this morning we went to the Soviet war memorial. It had two tanks and was extremely clean looking. Maria was saying that the Germans have to pay taxes to fund the upkeep of this memorial. This memorial is for those Soviets who died, but many of those Soviet soldiers were responsible for German deaths. Now, just as for years before, the Germans are responsible for paying for the memorial’s upkeep. I thought this memorial was interesting. The architectural style very much reflects the culture of the Soviets. It is very grand, but harsh. It is a very impressive, but uninspiring. This type of memorial reminds me of some of the war memorials in Washington, D.C. These memorials place an emphasis on grandeur and are meant to inspire in visitors an intense admiration.

     German memorials are all about innovation and trying new things. There is this interesting balance between tradition and rejection of the collective German past. Because German history is so flawed it is much easier to look forward to the future that to reflect on past events.

     We visited the Book Burning memorial at Bebel Platz. It is a memorial in negative space. It is down in the ground. You have to look through a thick piece of glass to see it. It is many empty white shelves. This is supposed to represent the void in knowledge that the burning of the books left. Stazi burned books by Jews, communists, socialists or any books expressing any anti-Nazi sentiment.

     This memorial could easily have gone unnoticed. Because it is inverted you can tread over it and not realize. It is in the middle of a Platz and there is only small plaque on the ground in with the stones to tell you that it is a memorial site. This seems to be the exact opposite from the Soviet memorial. Visiting this small inverted, hidden memorial the same day as the Soviet War memorial highlighted the differences in style and concept. I found the Book Burning Memorial conceptually very compelling. The story, ideas and histories behind the memorial are interesting, but the memorial itself seems lacking (and not just in books to fill the shelves). But I suppose the whole memorial created to make the visitor feel that something was “lacking”. The lack of knowledge.

     We also went to the Jewish Museum today. I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. I thought the tour was interesting. The architect designed the museum very thoughtfully. The actual shape of the new part of the museum (the Libeskind building) was based on a both the Jewish star and lines connecting on a map the homes of influential Jews in Berlin. Our guide emphasized the voids in the museum. There are five spaces which cut across all the floors. These voids are meant to symbolize the Jewish history that cannot be expressed through museum exhibits. The guide told us that these voids are not heated or air-conditioned and have no artificial lighting.

     Another interesting aspect of the museum was the axes. There were three intersecting hallways. The first of these was the “axis of continuity”. This connects the new building to the old building. It is supposed to be about the continuation of Berlin’s history. The second is the “axis of emigration”. The walls are slanted and our guide told us this was intentional to make us feel uncomfortable in the space. This hallway leads to the Garden of Exile.

     This garden seemed strange. It was a bunch of square stone pillars with enough space to walk between them. The ground was slanted to the exact degree that a person can handle without falling over. This was supposed to speak to the discomfort and struggle of Jews in adjusting to a new culture and country. I found the garden ineffective. I was unsure how to interact with the space. It was not a space of mourning, or a place that necessarily warranted respect. It was a weird physical feeling, but I am not sure if I could equate that to immigrating to a new country. The third hallway was the “axis of the Holocaust”. This lead to one of the five voids I mentioned earlier. This one is referred to the Holocaust tower. Inside it was cold and dark. You couldn’t see the exit, but you could see a small window at the top of the tower. You could hear noises from the city, but you still felt completely disconnected from that outside activity. The group reconvened after the Holocaust Tower.

     The guide asked our to share our reactions and feelings about the Holocaust Tower. I felt like she was our teacher and we were a class. That feeling was somewhat foreign to me at the time, because this whole experience has been about equal dialogue. Though class discussions have been guided by the professors, it is much more about individual’s comments and questions. There is no sense of hierarchy. We are all there to learn from each other. The way the guide posed this question, it seemed as if she already knew the answer and was waiting to see if we could get it right. I am realizing how differently this class has been conducted.

     I loved walking around today. I feel like I am really beginning to know the city better. I am still unsure of what neighborhoods we have been to. Another one of today’s highlights was eating enormous döners for lunch. Incredible.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

    Today we visited the Reichstag. The name of the governing body used to be Reichstag. Now the parliament is called the Bundestag and Reichstag is used to refer to the actual building. The history of the building is rich. During the Third Reich, the Reichstag was set on fire. This fire served as justification for passing legislation restricting human rights. Graffiti from the Red Army can still be seen on the roof. It has been preserved as part of history. The Reichstag was a special target for the Red Army because it was such a representation of Germany and German “Volk”. The Reichstag was in West Berlin, but the wall ran right by it. We walked around the building after going inside and there was a line on the pavement where the wall once stood. This line crossed streets, blocked sidewalks and zigzagged around. The Reichstag was also the place where reunification actually happened. The terms of reunification were negotiated in the Reichstag.

It is an incredibly impressive building. It is daunting and powerful in its architectural design. The most interesting part of the whole thing was the new part of the building. It was designed to convey the concept of transparency. You are supposed to be able to look in from above the dome to see the political body below making decisions that affect the country. With all the glass, secrecy is supposed to be an impossibility. The other buildings near the Reichstag are similarly designed. Glass seems to be the most commonly used material.

     This dome sits sort of on top of the building, so you have to go outside on the roof. There is the most amazing view of Berlin from the Reichstag. Since the wall ran so close to the Reichstag, essentially you can look to one side and see everything that used to be the DDR and then look to the other side and see everything that used to be the BRD. I was imagining what it must have looked like from that spot right after the war or right before reunification. I couldn’t imagine looking out over absolute devastation. And I wonder what kind of differences you could see between East and West Germany before unification.

    I find the idea of transparency through architecture fascinating. The Reichstag itself and all of the buildings surrounding it that are built in the same style as the cupola are symbols of political transparency. They are constructed for functionality, but also to express a political message. It seems as if architecture is almost always a political statement here in Berlin. I am thinking about our government buildings and what their political message is supposed to be. It certainly is not transparency.

     We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I am intrigued by this memorial, but I still haven’t decided exactly how I feel about it. It was an impressive place. Rectangular stones, varying in heights are set about three feet apart. Some visitors think that these stones represent gravestones, but that was not the artist’s intention. I was unsure how exactly to interact with this space. Groups of school kids were laughing and running through the space, peeking out at each other behind the stones. A group of American students were taking picture. Their teachers had all the cameras and was instructing the students to look out from the behind the stones, with their heads at different levels, like some sort of Brady Bunch picture. I was amazed that the teacher was encouraging this kind of behavior in the memorial. I assumed that visitors were meant to walk through thoughtfully, paying attention to the space and their interaction with it.

     I thought the best part of the memorial was the museum part underneath. This exhibit was very well done. There were different rooms, each conveying a different kind of message. One room was set up like a graveyard. There were white rectangles with written pieces on them on the floor. These rectangles were the same shape and size as the stones in the memorial above. The writings were by all different people. There were some pieces written by children. There were letters to family members, journal entries, and poetry. The room had very little light, except the white rectangles were illuminated. The writing was on the floor, making the visitor look down, so all the visitors were bowing their heads.

Another room was dedicated to different families. This exhibit used the same rectangular shape as the stones in the memorial. These rectangles extended down from above, but didn’t touch the floor. So visitors could walk around each suspended block. There were families from all over Europe but no German Jewish families. The next room was empty. The visitors sat on benches and listened to audio. There were audio accounts of victims. The room was dark. It was easy to forget that there were other people. I think the point of this exhibit was to allow the visitor to connect with the victim. It was isolating. The next exhibit had a lot of maps. This room showed where all the concentration camps were. The last room had resources for visitors to look up other Holocaust memorial sites. This was a really interesting idea. This one memorial was promoting the general idea of memorialization by providing information. This information could encourage the visitors to go to these other sites.

    I though this museum was the most effective part of the memorial. I love the way it does not force memory. You can either walk through the exhibits slowly, reading everything. You can approach the room with the writings as a graveyard and act accordingly. Or equally, as many visitors did, you can skip the exhibits that aren’t particularly moving. The way this museum is set up the visitor has agency; nothing is forced. It was small, not overwhelming or overdone. It was tasteful, with no over the top and unnecessary interactive exhibits. It was obviously very well though out and each decision was a consciously made. There is something powerful about a place created with such thoughtfulness.

 

 

•    “You didn’t have to be a revolutionary to put yourself in deadly peril. It was enough to simply be oneself. It was sufficient to take one single step and one ran into the traps maliciously set for Jews” –Gusta Davidson-Draenger (Quotation from the museum below the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe)

 

•    “It happened, therefore it can happen again: This is the core of what we have to say” –Primo Levi (Quotation from the museum below the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe)

 

•    “Under conditions of increasing poverty and violence, ghetto inhabitants tried to maintain a strategy of self-assertion: they organized schools for their children, cultural events and their own press”.

 

 

 

We also visited the Neue Synagogue today. This was in the old Jewish neighborhood. We had an interesting tour. The whole thing was set up as a formal museum. I thought the actual building itself and the stories about it were the most interesting parts. The guide pointed out that there were lots of similarities between the synagogue and a cathedral. I thought this was interesting, how different architectural styles influence each other. another interesting thing I learned on the tour: The torah curtains which are on display are in German but written in Hebrew letters. This speaks to the duality of the identity that German Jews experiences. They are neither fully German, nor fully Jewish. The two make up different parts of their identity. It took many years to restore this space. The restoration did not intend to simply rebuild what had been destroyed, instead it intended to rebuild only parts of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

     We met with our German counterparts in Potsdam today. Of course, in the true spirit of this trip, we stopped at a memorial along the way. We got off the train at the Grünewald stop. This is a fully functioning train station, but is also home to the Gleis 17 memorial. This memorial is understated. You walk up some steps, like all the other steps leading the platform. Along the platform there are metal plaques with dates, number and destinations. Each metal plaque tells you the number of people deported from this train station on which date and where they went. Then, just like now, life went on around this platform. There was a wall to keep the village separate from the masses of people waiting on the platform to be deported. But Frau Höhn was telling us that there was no way the people living in the surrounding area could have possibly been oblivious. The smells and noises couldn’t have gone unnoticed.

     The Potsdam students are great. We met most of them today, but some couldn’t make it. Right now they are on break, so this group of students was willing to start their semester early in order to take this class. We picked groups and topics. We then walked through Potsdam. It is such an old city. It is really quaint and stereotypically German, in complete contrast to Berlin, which is modern and, at time, harsh.

 

 

 

 

Thursday, March 13, 2008

     We traveled to Halberstadt today. There is a research center there, which is part of Potsdam University. The center is located in what used to be a synagogue. Our guide explained about the history of the place as we took a walking tour. In 1648, under the Treaty of Westphalia, Halberstadt became part of Brandenburg, Prussia. Foreigners were asked to settle there so as to improve the economy. Many of these foreigners were Jews from Austria. In 1700, there were 1,000 Jews in Halberstadt, when the whole population was 10,000. Though they made up about a tenth of the populations, Jews still had limited rights. They could not buy land, but they could buy houses. When the main religious power in the area changed from Catholic to Protestant, more and more houses were sold to Jews. The Protestant church sold many houses because the church was very poor at the time.

     This town is exactly what most people would picture when they think of what Germany would look like. The architecture is traditional (whatever that means). It is so interesting to hear specifically what Jewish life was like in such a place. One aspect of this trip that I am coming to appreciate more and more is that we learn about Jewish life in Germany before the Shoah. We are shown that a rich Jewish culture existing within German society; Jews were not outsiders, instead they were often essential to the communities where they were present. We can see this in Halberstadt, the Protestant power needed the Jews to buy houses in order for the church to be financially supported.

 

 

 

 

Friday, March 14, 2008

     Ravensbrück, itself as a place, did not affect me the way I thought it would. I thought the tour was interesting. Our guide was obviously very knowledgeable. Some of the things he told us where chilling and terrifying, but it was these words that inspired such feelings, rather than the place itself. It was bitterly cold and it sprinkled rain the whole  day. We saw on display some of the clothes prisoners were given to wear and I thought about how cold I would be on a day like today wearing only a dress.

     I was most interested by the question and answer session with our guide afterwards. He brought up some ideas that I hadn’t thought of. One thing I found fascinating was his discussion of sexuality in connection to Ravenbrück. He told us that often people are intrigued by the idea of female guards, who are feminine, but powerful and cruel. Some visitors to the camp, he said, were obsessed with the sexuality of the female prisoners. When he would tell groups of young adults, high-school aged kids, about how the women were forced to strip and line up naked, they picture something completely different from how it must have been. It was not hundreds of beautiful women lining up without any clothes; it was no sexual fantasy. Instead these people stood, cold, wet, starving, stripped of the little dignity they had managed to maintain.

     Female prisoners had everything taken from them, including their sexual identity. In such circumstances, one cannot have any sense of sexuality or sexual agency. This is a place so devoid of remotely sexual. Our lecturer told us that there were rapes; sometimes women were taken to be used by guards or in the men’s camp. But this has nothing really to do with my idea of sexuality; these events were just another painful way to suffer.

     I am trying to look at Ravensbrück as a sort of memorial. It is maintained as a place of historical significance. There is a visitors center and museum-like exhibit to encourage people to come there to learn and remember. But can we memoralize a place created by the perpetrators? At first, my complete detachment from the place was disconcerting to say the least. I couldn’t imagine why I felt so unmoved by seeing the site where human suffering occurred. I began to worry that I was becoming immune to human suffering, that I could only approach this experience academically and not emotionally.

     But now that it is later on in the day, I can examine the experience from a distance. The place itself is powerful, but only because the people who created it were at the time powerful. This place represents destruction, pain, exploitation and death.