Another day in Berlin

Another day in Berlin

Yoav meets us early today because we are walking through the Jewish sector of Berlin’s Mitte.

The plaza in front of Humboldt University is the very spot that Hitler’s propaganda Minister Herman Goebbels staged the first book burning. He filmed the burning of nay books written by Jews or that might contain information contrary to the regimes’. The film was sent out all over Germany as a teaching tool for book burnings in every city. It is perhaps ironical that the building from where the books were thrown to be burned is now the offices of the faculty of the Humboldt Law School. I trust the faculty is teaching this subject to their young protégés.    

Past the University, we pass the museum district adjacent upon Museum Island. The island is formed when two channels of the Spey River split to create a spit of land. If you remember seeing a grainy newsreel on the history channel, you have seen this structure with massive steps in front and large Roman columns behind. Hitler addressed crowds of over 100,000 people from a podium on the steps. Large vertical flags with swastikas lined both sides of the audience looking up admiringly at Hitler.

To the East of the open area facing the steps and overlooking the crowd is a cathedral with spires taller than anything in the neighborhood. No comment from me is required to point out this travesty of human behavior under the shadow of a religious structure that should represent the good of mankind.

Only a few blocks from this scene of debacle, we enter the Jewish sector. Today it is a thriving neighborhood of shops, restaurants, galleries and apartments. Perhaps it was not much different in 1940’s? From these quiet streets Jews were rounded up and sent to camps.

A sculpture of a table and two chairs, with one chair turned on its back, symbolizes a family abruptly taken away. Their vacated apartments were given to others after they departed. What must the new inhabitants thought or felt about the situation? Fortunate, worthy, guilty, ashamed? I suppose it depended upon their viewpoint and opinion of Jews?

Yoav leads us up a flight of stairs into the Blind Person’s Broom Company. In this small factory, blind people made brooms and brushes. The owner also hid Jews, some sighted, some blind from the Nazis. Only five people survived. One young woman is still alive at age 94 and lives in Israel. She wrote a book about their ordeal. On display are Nazi documents detailing orders, inventories and passenger manifests for those being shipped to camps. One document catches Susan’s eye and we hear a catch in her breath.  It orders the Jews about to be captured to kill their pets in preparation.   

The Jewish cemetery was established in the 1650 by a wealthy family. It was bombed in 1943 and most of the grave markers were destroyed. No records remain of who was buried there except the larger gravestones that were too large to haul are still there, but probably not in place. Another of the war’s ironies, during the final battle for Berlin in 1945, 150,000 German soldiers and 80,000 Russian soldiers were killed. The need to quickly bury the bodies resulted in three mass graves dug in the Jewish Cemetery. So, it is very likely that some fervent Nazi soldiers found themselves buried in a Jewish Cemetery.

Last stop is the remains of the Synagogue.  This building was bombed in the war and has been partially restored. The 3,200 seat sanctuary did not survive, but the exterior of the front side has been restored. It is a Moorish styled building with ornate gold domes and a gold Star of David on the peak dome.  It is no longer an operating synagogue, but is used for small meetings and other ceremonies.

We had a goodbye lunch with Yoav, our guide, and learned more about his life in Israel, Vienna and Berlin.

On the way back to or hotel, we made the expedited tour of the Berlin Museum, which is housed in the old armory building. It was worth 30 minutes, but not much more unless you are into suits of armor. Their history stops in 1918. Hmmm.