Lucky Nuts In Berlin: Touring

Note: This blog was written quite a while ago and the events described took place in late September or early October.

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I have been doing a lot of touring lately. It has been really interesting but has also kept me out of the house a lot, so I’m pretty behind on household chores plus I haven’t had much time to write.

A couple of weeks ago I was scheduled to go with the American Women’s Club to Poland for a pottery shopping trip. We were to leave on a Friday morning and return late that afternoon, so I had arranged for the kids to attend “aftercare” at school and then I had a babysitter, a high school student at the school, set up to escort them home on the bus and watch them until I returned, in case there was bad traffic or something. Unfortunately, two days before the planned date I discovered that there was a miscommunication with my signup for the trip, and the trip had been cancelled but they had failed to let me know. I thought it was too late to cancel the babysitter, so I decided to make use of the time anyway with an outing by myself.

The modern addition to the Jewish Museum,
designed by Daniel Libeskind

I chose to go to the Jewish Museum, which I had heard a lot about. I splurged for the audio guide and spent several peaceful hours alone, walking through the museum at my own pace. I had expected to learn about the Jews during the Nazi persecution, but the museum is arranged chronologically beginning with antiquity. Their permanent exhibition is called “Two Millennia of German Jewish History”. So after several hours I had just finished the period of the Jewish Enlightenment in the late 1700’s! Clearly I need to find time for a few more visits.

The tour begins in the newest part of the museum, a building chock-full of symbolism designed by Daniel Libeskind. The gist of the design is that there are three axes in the building, symbolizing the three realities in the history of German Jews, and five voids - vertical spaces without temperature control or artificial light that go from the ground floor all the way to the roof. The voids represent all the German Jewish history that will never be, due to the exile and murder of the Jews. The longest axis is the Axis of Continuity - the continuation of the history of German Jews - which leads to the museum’s permanent exhibit. Then there is the Axis of Emigration, which leads outside to the Garden of Exile. Finally there is the Axis of the Holocaust, which leads to a dead end. Along the way there are artifacts on display from victims of the genocide: letters, dolls, books, etc. and the path gets ever narrower and darker before ending at the Holocaust Tower.

The Holocaust Tower has only a slit of natural
light at the top. It's a tall, dark and cold empty space.

The high stone walls of the Garden of Exile

At the end of the Axis of Emigration is the Garden of Exile, which attempts "to completely disorient the visitor. It represents a shipwreck of history." (Daniel Libeskind, 1999)

This garden was deliberately intended to be disorienting - sloping pathways, high stone walls. My understanding of the idea is that if you find yourself lost and stumbling then you have some idea of the experience of instability and lack of orientation experienced by the Jews who were driven out of Germany.

I found this art display particularly poignant. Entitled “Fallen Leaves”, more than 10,000 faces cover the floor of one of the Voids.

Empty vertical space with scattered metal
faces covering the floor

Close-up of some of the faces

I was interested in this fancy (and blunt-looking?) set of
circumcision tools. The jar is for catching and containing blood.

Upstairs in the historical exhibit, I learned about the history of Jews in Europe. Probably this is terribly naive but I was surprised to learn how long the Jews have been persecuted - basically since forever. I know the issue of the roots of anti-semitism is a much-debated topic and the museum didn’t address come out and say this directly, but I was led to believe that the root cause was that people blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. I was interested to learn that very early in their history the Jews were driven from their jobs so that the only jobs available to them were disrespectable. Many of these disrespectable jobs involved the handling of money, and so this was how the Jews got the stereotypical reputation of being good with money - they were forced into the role.

I was just learning about Kosher kitchens and Bar Mitzvahs when it was time to go. I will make another trip back soon to learn about the next few hundred years!

The following week was the first Berlin’s Best outing of the year. These are monthly excursions for parents of Berlin International School, organized by a helpful and motivated few parents. For our first event we did a guided walking tour about the Cold War. We covered a lot of ground, from the Berlin Wall memorial to the former US and Soviet embassies to June 17 street to Checkpoint Charlie. A lot of the information provided by our knowledgeable guide was review for me, since I have already toured most of the places he took us, but I have found that I need to hear things several times before they sink in and I start to really understand. So it was a good review and a beautiful day for a walk.

Mural on 17th June Street idolizing socialism. I love how happy everyone looks, singing and dancing and working with a smile. Ironically, this is the site of a workers' uprising in 1953 that was violently crushed by the East German government and the Soviet military.

We had parked at the Grunewald S-bahn station before the tour, and afterwards my companions took a few extra minutes to show us something most of us didn’t know was there - the Gleis (Track) 17 Memorial. It is a Jewish deportation memorial, erected by Deutsche Bahn (whose predecessor, Deutsche Reichsbahn, was responsible for the transport of the Jews). At this train station Berlin Jews used to wait outside those trains you see in the old photos and they would pile into the cattle cars bound for different dreadful destinations. This part of the track has been reconstructed to become a quiet memorial with 186 metal panels laid on the ground, each inscribed with a date, the number of people transported that day, and their destination.