Sunday 9 March

-After arriving in Berlin we hopped into a cab, which took us to our hotel.

-The cab ride was great! I was very anxious to see Berlin, and I loved what I saw from the first few minutes during the ride to the hotel. I was surprised, however, to not see anyone walking the streets on Sunday morning.

-I thought our hotel was so quaint and cute. I fell in love with Berlin as soon as I saw the wonderful view of the city streets and the beautiful courtyard below from my hotel room window.

 

Monday 10 March

-Waking up early wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, since most of us only got a few hours of sleep due to jet lag.

-The cab ride was wonderful. I enjoyed taking in the amazing architecture and the early morning city life of Berlin on the way to the Soviet Memorial Site.

-I was amazed at statue of the soviet solider on top of the Soviet Memorial Site that “greeted” us as we walked under him towards the framed pictures. I was mildly frightened by his God-like presence and his finger pointing down at us.

-The walk to the Reichstag was awesome. The tree-lined pathway to the capital building was both very beautiful and impressive. The building itself was impressive as well. I found myself wondering how many historic figures have walked this path to this capital building and if I was standing in the same spot as them. Laura explained to me that the Nazis held office in this building and all of a sudden I felt embarrassed/concerned that I did not know as much history as I would like to know or should have known about Nazi power and their government.

-Taking my coat/hat/purse off for security was just the beginning of many, many security processes.

-The dome was amazing! I was so impressed with the architecture that I did not get to read as much as I wanted to on the famed pictures and their captions.

-One thing that struck me, however, was the tourist taking ridiculous pictures of themselves and their friends at the top floor of the Reichstag. I thought it was very weird that people took “joke” pictures when such serious history happened here. I realized that this was also just the beginning of witnessing many “joke” pictures that tourists took of themselves and their friends.

-The Den Opern Von Krieg Und Genwaltherrschaft- Neue Wache. (Wow, I tried to make sure I wrote that down correctly in my journal) was beautiful. It was a memorial for all victims. The woman who made it, made it for all victims after her son died in WWII. She is holding her son. I thought this memorial was very vague and generic, but I don’t think that was a bad thing. It’s supposed to be a memorial for all victims. How can you capture the suffering and the emotions that all victims have faced and still face with just one statue? I think this memorial showed warmth and comforting from a mother, and that is something that maybe all victims wanted at the time of their suffering.

-The Jewish Memorial Museum in West Berlin

-I thought it was weird that 99% of people who come to the Jewish Memorial Museum come only for the architecture. However, after the personal tour of the architecture I realized that maybe it wasn’t so weird.

-“The Jewish history belonged to general history”. The architecture wanted to give emptiness a form without filling it- he wanted everything to be empty. I think he accomplished this.

- I felt that this museum was not a welcoming space. It was disorienting, hard, cold, had no right angles- thus it was not normal.

-I liked the continuity theme that ran throughout the museum. The tour guide reminded us that the Jewish people’s lives were basically interrupted, but it still continued and continues today.

-The Germans isolated Jews until October 1951, thus one of the themes in this museum was expulsion.

-The Outdoor Stone at the JMM- the first thing I noticed was the barbed wire lining the tops of the stone pillars. I was scared. Then I looked down and saw the slanted cobble stone pathways. I was eager to walk all throughout this short maze of pillars. It was extremely difficult to walk or see in this maze. I started to feel a bit dizzy and disoriented. I had this urge to just run though this maze and get it over with- but why would I want to do that? There was another class in the maze with us, and whenever you walked past a pillar you had to go slow and look around the corner. People popped out at me constantly and I felt my heart racing. I became anxious. I realized that I received a very strong physical reaction from this exhibit. I felt exiled- persecuted from what you are. You had to be cautious in an environment that you might have, at one time, felt very safe in. However, you could still see the sky above and hear the sounds of city life in the near distance. Then I noticed that there were plants growing where the barbed wire lay, on top of the pillar.

-I thought that the Axis of exile and the Isle of Holocaust were very interesting. How one isle has a window and was long (the Axis of exile), and the other isle became darker and darker, more narrow, and felt as though the ceiling was falling down as you proceeded to the end.

-The Holocaust Tower was dreadful. I stayed in that room for a short while when we received free time at the museum. I felt like I was in a tomb- a vast cold, empty, chilly, death ridden tomb. The little specs of light that hit the ceiling did not show me any comfort, nor did the random and distorted sounds of the outside environment. Despite the fact that this tower was the same temperature as the outside, it felt colder. I felt very empty. I was confused as to what this Tower was meant to do for the tourists. 

-The Jewish Life Wing- it had 18 stairs for the Jewish Alphabet. It equaled life (the 18 stairs). There were two windows that were in the form of a cross. However, the cross-windows symbolized intersection of life, not a Christian symbol that I first thought of.

-The Fallen Leaves exhibit in the Jewish Memorial Museum was my favorite. I think this exhibit was most impressive. I noticed how silent this room was until you started walking on the iron faces. You start out walking in the light and then as you get towards the end of the room you walk into total darkness. You can’t see the faces that you are stepping on anymore when you walk all the way in the back. Also, the more you walk on these faces, the more they all begin to mesh together into one generic face- they are not unique anymore- you can’t tell one face from the other- it is a blur of faces and you don’t care anymore at this point. You just want to get back on the smooth surface of the Museum. The clinking of the faces under your shoes sound like bones cracking. Its harder to walk back, you think you’re going to fall or trip, you have to be extra careful for your own sake, not for the sake of the faces. You are concentrating on your feet as you walk, but can you see every face clearly? No. When I first started walking, I looked at every face and saw that they were all different, all unique, in little detailed ways. They were not, as I expected, a cookie cutter of the same face. However, as I walked to the end and back again I realized I didn’t care anymore about the details of the faces, about the uniqueness of that face, or about the faces in general- I just wanted to get back to the smooth floor. I felt selfish and horrible as the echo, machine like sounds of the faces clanked under my sneakers.

 

Tuesday 11 March

 

-Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe

-When we arrived at the Memorial I was very eager to explore the outside maze of the memorial. However, as I entered the stone pillars I began to feel petrified. The pillars were rising higher and higher as I walked deeper into the exhibit. I couldn’t see anyone and I could barley hear our class. The outdoor memorial was huge compared to the one like it at the Jewish Memorial Museum. I felt lost and isolated- I could hear traffic noise, but I could not see anything except the ground and the dark stone pillars that towered over me. The paths were all different, some were flat, some were hilly, and I didn’t know which ones to take. There was another class of German kids playing tag and hide and go seek that I was afraid of bumping into. I felt sick of having to check to see if the coast was clear after passing each pillar. I couldn’t decide whether to go fast or slow through the exhibit- I felt like I lost track of time as well. I also felt as though the students playing in the Memorial were almost ignoring what was going on- it was as if they were turning their heads to the purpose of this exhibit. Even at the Jewish Memorial Museum and the Book Burning site people waved a hand in disgust or “I don’t care” towards the site. It was as if they were dismissing the Holocaust as being significant to any serious contemplation or place in history.

-Inside the Museum for Murdered Jews I listened to testimonies on the telephones. There were different buttons for different camps. Each camp had a survivor’s personal story/testimony of his or her experience. One woman from the Auschwitz camp, Holga, had a very moving story. Her story was about how she thought she had spared her oldest son from hard labor at Auschwitz camp. However, in sparing her son, she condemned him to the gas chambers. She didn’t know that the line for young children and elders were doomed for the gas chambers. A guard told her, “don’t worry, in two weeks you’ll all be reunited.”  This story stuck out to me because it was about a mother trying to help her children. Holga said she still lives with the guilt of placing her oldest son in the children’s line. Most of these stories were sensational, picked apart from the many survivor stories just to play on the horrific, terrible sites and circumstances that the Jews saw or partook in. It reminded me of a Hollywood version of the Holocaust- only focusing on the sensationalist aspects. However, weren’t all aspects of a concentration camp horrific and terrible?

 

Wednesday 12 March

 

-We started the morning out by visiting Track 17 where the Holocaust victims waiting to board the train going to the concentration camps. I found this memorial interesting because it was different- it was not ‘in your face’ obvious. I appreciated the fact that they put the numbers of Holocaust victims that boarded the trains on specific dates. It was interesting to see how the numbers diminished or expanded depending on what year it was during WWII.

-We then went to Potsdam University. The train ride was wonderful. I enjoyed the country scenery we passed through- it was amazing to see what was outside of the city of Berlin.

-I enjoyed the class we had with the Potsdam students and the tour they took us on around their town and their campus. It was such a beautiful campus with beautiful architecture. The town was also wonderful and fun. I was amazed when I saw their History building.

 

13 Thursday March

Mosses Academy Jewish Synagogue

 

- Building was saved by non-Jewish housekeeper from being burned. In the 12^th or 13^th century Jews settled in this town. They had to pay Bishops to live there- for security. In the 15^th century it was a Jewish community. Around 1700, 200 houses were sold to Jewish families. The Protestants wanted to stop selling houses to the Jewish peoples, thus there was a conflict between the Protestants and the Jews.

- I thought that the Jewish and Catholic graveyards were amazing. I love cemeteries, especially ones rich in history. The first Jewish grave site we visited dated back to the 17^th century. The graves were still erect and covered in rare flowers and moss. I thought it was interesting that there were layers of graves below the ground. Also, not all Jews were allowed to bury their dead in this cemetery- their was a hierarchy. I also thought it was interesting that the graveyard was near an execution site and that both were on the outskirts of town. I always had the impression that the town council wanted to hang the criminals in the middle of the town to show the consequences that committing a crime came with.

-We had a wonderful kosher meal at the Café in town. I was surprised when I saw the Easter decorations. However, I soon learned that the eggs did not represent Easter, the Christian Holiday, rather, they were symbolic of the coming of spring. I saw these decorations all over town and in other parts of Germany that were visited.

 

Friday 14 March

Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp

-I enjoyed the walk to the concentration camp. I’m glad we walked the same path that the Holocaust victims walked to the camp.  The Memorial for Children was interesting. The mother carrying a child in a stretcher-dead- child tugging on mother’s skirt- mother’s faces were expressionless – their heads were up- they were carrying the weight of sorrow. -When we approached the camp it was just as I imagined a concentration camp to look like- ‘just as I imagined’ meaning from what I have seen in movies and media sources. When we entered the visitor’s center, I was amazed at the gorgeous view of the lake. I wondered what it was like for the Holocaust victims to have to wake up every day and see this view that they could not fully enjoy.

- I found the tour guide for Ravensbrueck to be very helpful and insightful. I thought the points that he brought up were very interesting and I enjoyed listening to his lecture after the tour was over.

-How could you make a Nazi guardhouse into a youth hostel? – was one of the questions I thought to be interesting. However, I thought the tour guide’s answer was sufficient. He said that the survivors stated, “It’s my triumph. I’m here and they (the female guards) are not.”

-I agreed with the tour guide when he said that it is important to know the perpetrators’ side of history as well as the victims’ side. It quells repetition of the horrific past.

- I found it jarring to see the faces of the women from the camp on the wall. It was as if they were criminals from the profile and the headshots that were displayed. Also, all the women framed on the wall did not sign waivers of release for their photos. It was also jarring to see the actual clothing and personal items that were saved from the camp- as well as the documents and the wheelbarrows.

-The tour guide touched a little on the handicapped prisoners that were taken out of the camp to be executed or studied by Nazi doctors/ surgeons. I thought this was interesting. It was the first time I had heard about the studies done on prisoners who were mentally retarded or handicapped during the Holocaust.

-The story that the tour guide told us about the young delivery boy was extremely interesting. How the boy would ask what the camp was and how the Nazis told him that the camp was for sub-human women. The boy only saw the women after their heads have been shaved and their bodies and clothes ragged by hard work and food/water depravation. However, one day the boy came to the camp to deliver meat and he saw the women before they had been ‘checked in’ by the Nazi guards- before their heads were shaved and their own clothes taken away. The boy then knew that these women looked like any other women- not sub-human like- not what the Nazis and their camps have made the Holocaust victims into.

-Some of the female guards hesitated to inflict cruelty on the prisoners at first. However, it took them two weeks to act like SS members. The guards tried to see reason for punishing the Holocaust victims- they try and reason the cruelty and harsh treatment that they serve to them.

-The babies and the children did not receive food, the tour guide said. Thus, of the 600 children born at the camp, there were only a few handfuls that survived. The mothers were not allowed to spend much time with their babies/children- also, not a lot of mothers could produce milk. Thus, their children died within a few days of birth.

-It was interesting when the tour guide told us that, in Soviet Russia’s opinion, “all the good Soviets died”. In Soviet Union, if a communist survived a German concentration camp, then they were seen to have collaborated with the Germans, and thus, only the good Soviet Communists died.

-The story of the female guard that the tour guide met at the concentration camp a few years back was interesting. The tour guide and his colleagues interviewed this ex Nazi guard and found out that she did not know much about what was going on at Ravensbrueck at the time she worked there- she only focused on how great her life was at the time and how it was nice to have freedom and attractive SS men living nearby. However, after so many years they interviewed her again. This time she reflected more on the cruelty that was inflicted on the prisoners of the camp and how sorry she was. After a few years they interviewed her again, and this time she talked as though she was a victim herself. They could not separate her story from a victim’s story. I found this to coincide with our classes’ topic of memory and history. Maybe this woman did some research after the first interview and realized or remembered the horrors from WWII that the victims faced. And maybe she read testimonies from the victims and distorted her memory even more as to that of a victim’s memory. It is very interesting how people see themselves in times of war- as either a bystander, a perpetrator, or a victim- and how these lines can sometimes blur and how your memory can be mixed or tainted with that from which you’ve read about a certain historical event.

- The tour guide stated that the mission of the concentration camp monument was for a lot of self-reflections on part of the problem- not just the solution to the problem. I agree with him. I think that memorials, museums, and monuments are a key to understand the problem, showing the viewers different aspects of the atrocity, but yet not blatantly telling the viewer the solution.