The following are entries from my journal that i wrote during our class trip to Berlin in March 2008.

The journal includes random thoughts, reflections, notes on things we learned that i found particularly interesting, questions, concerns,

 and generally anything i felt i wanted to write down as the trip went on.

It is scattered and incomplete as well as raw rather than overly edited. I feel that my earnest thoughts are a

better reflection on the process of thought and contemplation than a constructed narrative could be and thus i edited

 only slightly, mainly recording the things i had written down in the moment. I welcome any comments or concerns, reactions or questions.

 

Berlin 2008

3/09

-got settled in hotel (Hotel Pension Elite) beautiful old building, smells good like earth and wood

-walked around Schöneberg (old Jewish section of town, mostly post-modern architecture now)

Sign memorial

-really reveals details and strategy of slow alienation through the smallest and biggest of things (no singing club to deportation)

3-10-08

Beautiful Day!

We did: -cab to Russian monument, Reichstag tour, walk on Unter den Linden, Brandenburg Gate, monument to fallen victims, book burning memorial, east German memorial to people who fought communism, lunch (döner!), Jewish museum (architecture tour)

Russian memorial

What does it mean to have a memorial to your conquerors?

Memorial to all Victims of Suffering

We learned that the memorial was heavily criticized for how generic it is but I think it is important to have a memorial that can have universal application and meaning. To remember specifics only and always is to inevitably forget others. To remind us there are always victims on all sides and there is suffering everywhere is absolutely necessary; humanity took a blow as a whole from the Holocaust and this site grieves that general loss.

Jewish Museum

Architecture tour: Daniel Liebeskind- functional architecture

-originally an extension to history museum

-have to go through basement

-shape open to interpretation (jagged but a line goes through)

-space taken out –voids that you must feel and confront

    -how to model space and not fill (space left after holocaust in Berlin life and culture)

-3 different axes: exile, continuation, holocaust

Garden of Exile

-disconcerting, dizzying, looking up is crazy, people disappear

-12 degrees highest degree without falling over

-7x7 right angles-normality shifting-floor throws off

-garden above (hope?)

This building looks like a prison.

It seems the whole building is designed to give a feeling of insecurity but about the incredible perseverance and solidarity Jews have always experienced/exhibited?

It is a holocaust museum with a section on Jewish history. (at least from the message in the architecture)

Even the displays in the hallways are reflective of the Holocaust framework of the building: the windows have a fade effect in a circle, as if we can only glimpse relics of Jewish life through the lens of the holocaust.  (circular, surrounded by darkness)

Cross windows on the continuity hallway- continuity through Christ??

“These aren’t crosses, they’re geographical shapes”- the intention was lost and the message totally inappropriate- the cross is a universally recognized figure whose meaning is well known and understood- the connotations are obvious and bound to be made- bad call on the museums part.

Memory void- shalechet

It feels weird to walk on the faces.

Exhibit on life encased in Holocaust building.

Memorial to Europe’s Murdered Jews

People running around playing/laughing reflects how it was then – some people’s lives went on, ignorant of or ignoring their surroundings

The towers feel like they are caving in on you; I am scared when I hear footsteps, I don’t know what will happen around each corner; I hear laughing somewhere-confused and isolated but know there are others

Museum center at Memorial

I can see piles of corpses and read of atrocities and know intellectually of horrors and keep my cool but to see these pictures of people being humiliated and see those standing on the side smiling twists my stomach and brings tears. How can hatred bring a smile to someone’s face? How can someone do this. Over and over again I just want to know how and why, how and why, how? Why? What brings someone to see another human and feel hate, to the point that they smile when someone is being humiliated? Where does it come from? I want to know but I fear knowing involves hating myself. I see the smiling face and I want to spit and slap. I hate them for their hate and that is the dangerous road.

The map frightens me. So big. How could this disease spread so far? The second great plague of Europe-hatred.

I like the excerpts from diaries and postcards as well the room on families and the one with individual stories. I think it is important to see the names, recognize the people, so as to defy the attempt of the Nazi’s, as one diary read, to erase their atrocities. They live on in memory and recognition. It is also easy to lose the fact that real people with personal histories were lost with such numbers as “6 million” being thrown around when discussing the event.

-room with families talked about how family is center of Jewish life thus even individual survivors have been stripped of a lot of their Jewish identity.

3/11 Hackescher Markt tour

Jewish synagogue

-assimilation through design of building (church like), sermons in German, tapestries with Hebrew spelling German words- you wouldn’t know it was German unless you could read Hebrew

At the catholic hospital they would wrap people from head to toe in bandages to hide them from the Nazis and also made sure children would stay with Jewish families. Hope.

   

    Religion as good? Always bad? w/ about Jews? People as good.

3/12 Potsdam

Very exciting to meet the German students, all are smart and enthusiastic. We are doing our project on the miniseries so it’ll be something entirely new for me. As we walked around Potsdam I talked with Anne about the study of the holocaust in Germany. She said that the study is forced on them so much it gets frustrating and often she feels like she’s being made to feel guilty. “I am not guilty, I am 21 years old.” And that is true, she is not guilty. She is not even a part of then generation that could confront their parents as I think most of them would’ve been born in the 50’s. Perhaps some grandparents have some memory and I hope these students ask about it but it is interesting that in the next decade the living memory will be gone. And of course this fact is one reason there has been such a rush to gather survivor testimony and build memories and make movies etc… But as all of this has been done I wonder if a new danger arises aside from the current debate about forgetting through remembering but rather resentment from remembering from a generation who feels blamed for something they had nothing to do with. I wonder if there are youth movements involved with holocaust commemoration or if it is always/usually the older generations who focus on it. Also, is there a certain point at which letting go (not forgetting) is more positive so as to allow for growth and rebirth of a proud, thriving German culture? Where/what is the reconciliation between the modern culture and the past?

On youth: everywhere we’ve been, the people in charge are older. But then, there is us.

Thoughts: is there documentation of the American perspective on what was going on in the war? That living memory is almost gone as well. I should email my grandparents and parents asking what did they know, think, feel about the holocaust? What did my parents hear about it?

3/13  Halberstadt

Old Jewish cemetery- where death has come to mean life (representative of surviving culture; cemetery as status symbol –often refused by Nazis)

Road between market and church representative of status of Jewish community in town (between church and state)

3/14 Ravensbrück

-5 layers of history: topography, camp, memorial of GDR, memorial after reunification, now

-critical of how it was under GDR, critical of how it was done now

-survivors want X, they don’t all agree, they cannot speak for those who died here

-living in houses of former guards- we are here they are not. Their buildings are here.

-risk of repetition on bystander and perpetrator side thus lives of female guards portrayed

-presentations outside of context

-photos: women not asked if they want these pictures up –human dignity –they’re mug shots

-the book looks like a guest book

There is always the tendency to imagine oneself into a place whether it be as a princess on palace grounds or a prisoner in a camp. Of course one is easier than another. Going through the cold rain I think if I was in one of those coarse cloth robes how shaken to the bone I’d be. I don’t think I ever would have made it. I would have gotten sick and given in.

I think about the degrading circumstances. We came into the cafeteria and the trays like prison ones filled with bland food. We were somewhat bothered, is this it? Think of what those women must have thought when they were served their first meal- the indignity. Do you soon come to expect it? Even crave it? Am I being insensitive? Ridiculous?

Children- didn’t know how to play with dolls- sometimes recreated the camps

Organizing Christmas Eve- giving up jam etc…  does this equal resistance? Staying human through keeping a grip on normality.

-Identifying the people who were sent to camp (“who? Jews, gays…) perpetuates those categories.

3rd and 4th generation confronting the complexity of memory.

Those who complain the most know the least (“we don’t want to hear it anymore”-sound like grandparents)

What about those who know and learn but are still accused?

We wonder about bystanders and how people could let such things go on with a smile on their face. Then we think oh maybe we understand-passivity in politics today, all those psychological experiments where people abuse power, etc… we intellectualize tragedy and grasp it academically but does that not enable passivity as well? Like the argument over building monuments, forgetting through remembering—bystanding through understanding? It is like our talk with Theo- we all nod and agree and even grasp our own stagnant intellectuality and yet what do we do? What are we doing? It is so good that this trip has action built into it. We meet with the German students, we have a dialogue, we challenge and reflect and record it. Perhaps a first step?

Keeping it all in tact keeps the perpetrators memory alive.

Here ends the journal I kept while on our trip. The second week in Berlin was ours to schedule and I spent my time in museums and walking around the city. I will admit I kept it to art and culture, not seeking out anymore holocaust study. And so I proceeded to experience some of what I journaled about- a young, thriving, cosmopolitan, modern german culture full of people who impressed me with their patience, friendliness and sophistication. Berlin is a city full of history and life, one which inspired and taught me about how people go through the hardest of life’s lessons and come back strongly. I will come back to this place, hopefully for an even longer time, and continue to engage and talk about the past and present and hopefully more and more, the future.