The city is gorgeous. The ride to the hotel displayed a wonderful fusion of historic and modern metropolis, which for me, is a completely unique and new experience. After settling in, we explored Schoeneberg, seeing the first of many Holocaust memorials. We examined a series of signs, each exhibiting a law passed during the Third Reich, limiting the activities in which Jews could participate. The signs were placed in a manner almost reminiscent of harmless street signs, making their messages even more powerful and shocking. I often found it difficult to distinguish between one of these signs and a common advertisement, which displayed the manner in which these memorials have assimilated themselves into the cityscape of Berlin. The effect of these signs on the viewer conveyed the sense that the Holocaust was not an instantaneous event, but rather a slow process, sinking into the legislature and consciousness of the German people.
Day 2- March 10, 2008
Our next memorial was rather surprising in that it honored the Russian liberators of Berlin. The monument boasts a tremendously powerful looking Russian soldier, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a vein-covered hand extended down towards the onlooker. Obviously coming from a Western perspective I was intrigued to see a memorial that honors the Soviets, as it a subject not often discussed in American history classes. If I were to ask a Russian student who liberated Berlin, the answer would surely be Russia. Ask an American, and the answer could very well differ.
The Reichstag was a very interesting experience, offering the paradigm of the synthesis of modern and traditional architecture. Worn stone is met with stainless steel and glass windows, presenting a completely unique piece of architecture. The glass structure on the roof is the epitome of post-war German architecture, presenting pure transparency and openness. I found it very impressive in conjunction with the awe-inspiring view of the city. It was very difficult to imagine the decisions made in the building in the past, considering its current modernist architecture.
Our next stop was the Brandenburg gate, which I found interesting, not necessarily because of the visual aspects of the gate, but rather because of the history associated with it. Now a bustling area of tourists, mimes, and costume performers, I found it rather difficult to imagine the place covered in armed guards and soldiers in the pre-unification days.
We continued to the Neue Wache, which consisted of a single sculpture in an empty concrete room, with a long beam of light illuminating the huddled tragic figure. The memorial is highly criticized for only generally acknowledging “victims of war and tyranny”, as the inscription reads. The memorial fails to acknowledge the Holocaust in a direct manner, and includes virtually all German casualties and otherwise, under the same roof. Although I find the inscription to be passive, evasive and appalling, the initial visual impression of the memorial is unforgettable and powerful. I found it unfortunate that such a well-constructed memorial could miss its point so entirely.
The final stop for the day was the Jewish Museum in Berlin, an experience to which I have mixed feelings. Our initial activity at the Museum was an architectural tour, and considering the significance and uniqueness of the buildings architecture, I found this appropriate. The memorialized section of the building consists of three axes: Exile, Continuity and Holocaust. These axes intersect at disorientating angles, with hallways bearing physical qualities reminiscent of the words and concepts they represent. For example, the axis of Death (or Holocaust) is an increasingly cramped hallway leading to a black door. Upon entering the door, the viewer find his/herself in the Tower of Death, which is a cold and empty tower with a blackened ceiling, the emptiness of the room is supposed to represent death—a void. Spatially, the museum is set up to use the void as a structure rather than something to be filled. Although I did find it powerful, I could also imagine an insensitive or uninformed viewer to perceive these axes as something of fun house. The garden of Exile, for example, was a steep and difficult grid of concrete pillars, with uneven ground. The experience of the room was definitely unsettling, but a loud group of teenage Italian students, found it entertaining, running and yelling through the pillars. Although this added to the effect of confusion and isolation that was the Garden of Exile’s goal, I’m still unsure about whether these goals are realized in all visitors, or only those who look for them.
I thought the main building of the museum was problematic, as the museum tried to present itself as a museum of Jewish History, not of the Holocaust, yet the museums architecture was itself a massive Holocaust memorial. The museum tried to establish a Jewish identity outside the Holocaust, yet this is a difficult goal to accomplish when one is standing inside a Holocaust memorial.
Day 3 March 11, 2008
Our first stop of the day was the Berlin Holocaust Memorial and Museum, which I found, by far, to be the most powerful and effective museum yet. The memorial consists of a giant grid of concrete pillars, set at varying heights and angles. The viewer gradually goes deeper and the pillars grow taller as one nears the center of the memorial. While it is a similar concept to the Garden of Exile, its size makes it far more powerful. A sense of disorientation ensues, as the pillars seem to be encroaching looming dark figures. The alteration of angles instills this sense of falling and a sort unsafe yet static energy. I heard the voices of other viewers, but often could not see them until they surprisingly pop out from around one of the innumerable grey corners. I lost all sense of location, until I looked up and remembered the world outside these pillars. Although the memorial is abstract, it avoids any of the funhouse feeling that the Jewish Museum toys with. I find it to be very effective and well conceived.
The museum itself exists underneath the memorial, and also highly effective. The museum functions on a very deliberate transition from the historical to the personal, beginning with a basic timeline of the Holocaust, complete with shocking statistics and photographs. The timeline is terrifying in its magnitude. The next step in the transition is a room full of testimonies, where one can hear audio renderings of survivors’ accounts. These accounts are highly emotional and tragic. I found myself choking down tears when listening to a recording of a girl discussing how she was forced to feign death as she lay in a mass grave and was buried alive with hundreds of others. These accounts are even more effective, because they are rendered aurally, as opposed to textually. I could hear the sadness in their voices. They take the shock of the statistics in the previous room and apply them to actual sensory human experience. The next room discussed specific families lost to the Holocaust, presenting family photos and a family history for each. This room put names to the many faces I saw in the timeline room. Each room in the museum becomes more personal, completing the transition from basic historical understanding to emotional sympathy. The last, and by far most heart wrenching room contained copies of letters from camp victims to family members, most of them saying goodbye. One letter in particular, from a twelve-year child to her father, was extremely powerful. She stated that she was going to die but didn’t understand why, and bid her father farewell. This room not only showed individual names and faces, but interactions between family members. It was emotionally exhausting and extraordinarily effective in its goal of remembrance.
We took a walking tour of the Hackescher Markt, stopping at many significant Jewish and residential landmarks in the area. This was my first experience walking through East Berlin, and I was surprised to see the number of bullet holes still remaining in buildings’ walls. These reminders of the war are simultaneously intriguing and terrifying. Walking down a residential street I looked up at a window to find it was covered in bullet holes. I thought to myself, “A sniper was in that window.” It was difficult to picture such a lively and cultural area as a pockmarked battlefield.
I found the Neue Synagogue to be highly fascinating. The Synagogue, in its church-like style, showed a synthesis of German and Jewish identity. For example, inside the synagogue, I saw tapestries, written in Hebrew but translating into German, which show how integrating the Jewish identity was with their identity as Germans. The fragmented alters and windows show the lasting effects of damage, serving as a stark reminder of past struggles. I found the high level of Security guarding the entrance to the Neue Synagogue to be very surprising. In fact, one of our students was even reprimanded for attempting to photograph the rear, where the alter once stood.
Day 4, March 12, 2008
On the train ride to Potsdam we stopped at the Grunewald train station memorial.
Numbers and dates printed on metal grates coincide with the number of people deported to concentration camps and death camps. It’s truly shocking to stand on that ground and imagine the fear and terror that spot has witnessed. It is unimaginable.
Day 5, March 13, 2008
Our studies of Holocaust remembrance were a bit lighter today, as we visited the lovely village of Halberstadt. Our visits to a number of the Jewish cemeteries revealed a historical perspective dating back far before the Second World War. Jewish cemeteries within the mainly Christian town show a degree of tolerance, and the manner in which Jews and Christians historically coexisted. The use of German on the back of certain graves, and Hebrew on the front, also displays the split identity between Jewishness and Germanness. Given that having German on a tombstone was a requirement, the fact that many stones only showed the bare minimum of information in German, and placed on the rear of the tombstone, shows a distinct Jewish identity and pride within the residents of Halberstadt.
The Halberstadt Jewish museum is fascinating; in that it has a far more personal touch than any other museum we’ve seen. Our guide was able to tell us the names and personalities of all those in pictured on the wall, even offering amusing anecdotes. Among the items on display, I saw old cookbooks and personal effects that were quite touching. The overall message of this museum was one of healing and recovery. The museum had a sense of personal remembrance, and honoring individuals, not just a generic group of people. It shows a completely different mode of remembrance, one focused in family and interpersonal connection rather than the abstract concrete memorialization found in Berlin. While both can be effective, it was a nice change to see something so personal and optimistic.
Day 6, March 14, 2008
Ravensbrook
Death and beauty. The first thing you see upon arrival to Ravensbrook is a quaint village and a picturesque lake, contrasted sharply with the bleak, beige, colorless walls of the concentration camp. One forgets if one doesn’t actively remember.
My overall experience at the camp was one of mixed feelings. The tour left a lot to be desired, and almost took away from the power of the location itself. The tour began with brief history of the camp, which was interesting and essential to understanding the physical space of a concentration camp. Our guide discussed five layers in the camps history: precamp, active camp, liberation, military post-war camp, smaller memorializations after 1959, and the larger memorialization of the camp in 1989. He continued by discussing how the surrounding guards houses are now used as hostiles. This provided some useful background information, offering some context for the buildings themselves.
Apparently, more survivors are coming to stay near the camp. This mindset, according to our guide can by surmised in the phrase, “It’s my triumph”. I found this bit of information very interesting. I was at first troubled to learn that the guard’s houses are now hostiles, but after I heard this statement, it seemed to make a lot more sense. The use of the guards’ houses represents the need to confront and deal with the issue of the perpetrators. It displays a remembrance of not only the survivors but also of the crime and exhibits how confronting the crime itself is not only disturbing, but necessary. By staying in the hostiles, survivors are able to master (or at least confront) the memory of the perpetrators.
I did not find the museum part of the camp to be incredibly well done. A glass case houses a prisoner’s uniform and some personal effects. The items are moving, but are not given any personal context, so they lose some of their power. I continued to grow frustrated as we spent a great deal of time in a small room containing photographs of prisoners and a large book documenting the names of the prisoners. The point of this memorial was obviously personal remembrance, yet our tour guide had us looking at laminated photographs while I was actually at the site where the atrocity took place. The book is placed in the main guard tower, which obscures the actual significance on that room. Additionally, the overwhelming number of names seems to remove personal context and makes the names feel numb. Faces and names cannot be connected as the photographs are placed separately and without the means of connecting visual and textual recognition. The time we spent in that room could have been better spent actually experiencing the campgrounds, instead of sitting in a stifling concrete room. Because of this lagging part of the tour, my time so simply wander about the camp and absorb its significance felt hurried and rushed. However, the following lecture delivered by our guide was far more interesting. He raised many significant questions, and talked deeply about the roles and motivations of the perpetrators, a subject that is often neglected in remembrance.
The camp itself is remarkably unpowerful. The atrocities committed there are so unimaginable that I see the buildings and recognize the crimes that took place, yet I am unable to better understand them having seen the camp itself. Part of me feels that this is the point of using camps for memorialization purposes. I understand now that I will never fully understand, and although the camp is a significant tool in remembrance, it alone is not sufficient.
Day 7, March 15, 2008
Topography of Terror
The Topography of Terror is a long stretch of photos and documents, placed chronologically to depict the progression of the Holocaust. The fact that it’s established in the remains of the SS headquarters elicits feelings of conflicted remembrance. It’s difficult to think of the torture and pain that took place in the location, with nothing but a strip of concrete remaining. The photos, however, are extremely powerful, and serve their purposes in spurring and furthering this remembrance. A photo of Hitler in plain clothing reminds me that he was only a man. He seems frighteningly human and banal. The fact that he looks like everyone else is terrifying. Contrast of terrifying and violent photos next to political documents brings up mixed emotions. It really shows bureaucracy of death and terror. The officials seem so often removed from
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