Berlin Berlin wir fahren nach Berlin!! (Berlin Berlin we're driving to Berlin!) It's a song!

I got back from a week long trip in Berlin with Rotary on Sunday. I'm still pretty exhausted and sick. I always seem to come back with a cold, sniffling, and a sore throat. We barely sleep and since we've had trip after trip I've never really recovered. I have another Rotary weekend this weekend so I don't see more sleep in my future! Although, it is definetly worth it. I've seen a lot.

So I wanted to start off my blog entry with something that I noticed about Berlin. Berlin isn't a pretty city. For the most part it's pretty ugly, but it has a very interesting atmosphere. So although it's nothing much to look at Berlin is a really neat city and I really enjoyed my time there. I would go back in a heart beat.

This blog entry isn't going to be like a lot of my other entries where I tell you lots about myself. This entry is going to ask you to think and to feel. It might be a bit depressing. (Don't worry it has nothing to do with me.) History, especially these exerpts of history, can often be a bit depressing.

I'm just going to hit the highlights so here we go.

Things that I enjoyed or if not enjoyed (because the topics were depressing) important and worthwhile to see:

Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden

The Wall

Potsdam

Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

Jüdisches Museum Berlin

Ampelmännchen

(Don't worry I'll go into detail just bare with me.)

Things I was dissapointed in:

Checkpoint Charlie

Pergamonmuseum

Random facts/points:

There are probably more Dunkin' Donuts in Berlin than in any other city in the world.

A political party apparently knows who Pinnochio would vote for. (LOL) Pinocchio würde SPD wählen. -- Für neue Märchen in Europa und weniger Holzpuppen im Parlament. Die Bergpartei. (Pinocchio would vote for the SPD (a political party in Germany). For new fairytales in Europe and not as many wooden puppets in parlament. The Bergpartei (another political party.)

This is a quote I read in a mueseum about Berlin. "Berlin is radical: the only tradition this city will accept is that it does not have a tradition. There is scarcely a single district, building, or monument that is sacred to the city. If you are lookinb for cosiness or classical beauty, you're not likely to find much in Berlin. Almost every generation seese Berlin trying out a new face: this is a city of experiment..."

This is another thing I read in one of the mueseumes: "Hitler's signature reflects his life and his state of mind. The first surviving signatures are still uncertain and awkward. The handwriting becomes firmer when is about 30. When the war reaches its final turning point in 1943 Hitler starts to go into a physcial decline: his health is affected, and the signature becomes increasingly tentative. He can no longer sign decrees and documents personally. The work has to be done my a machine. Immediatly before committing suicide in April 1945 he signs something for the last time--his will. The fifty-six-year-old can manage only an illegible scrawl before taking his own life."

Our trip wasn't as organized as it could have been. So we didn't see as much as we could have in a week, but we did see some pretty neat things and now I'll outline them for you!

So I'll start off with the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden. That was really intense and this is something you really can't miss if you travel to Berlin.

"Eisenman’s design is quite unique and has drawn both praise and criticism. Occupying about 205,000 square feet (19,000 square meters) of space near the Brandenburg Gate and just a short distance from where the ruins of Hitler’s bunker is buried, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial is made up of 2,711 gray stone slabs that bear no markings, such as names or dates. The slabs undulate in a wave-like pattern. Each is a five-sided monolith, individually unique in shape and size. Some are only ankle high while others tower over visitors....Visitors may walk through the memorial in any direction as there is no set pattern to the stones." http://www.aviewoncities.com/berlin/holocaustmemorial.htm

That description should give you an idea about what it looks like. It was a very memorable experience walking around this memorial. I'm not going to talk about how I felt, because if you go I don't want you to be influenced by what I felt. It's something you need to experience for yourself.

After walking around the memorial we went into the mueseum. I wasn't prepared for how difficult it would be to go through the mueseum. It was incredibly well done and I cried hard. I had prepared myself for Buchenwald, but I'd had no time to prepare myself for this. We didn't find out until the day of that we were going there. I was allowed to take some pictures of things in the mueseum that really affected me and now I'd like to share them with you. I think that means more than talking about how I felt. I think after you read these little bits and pieces you'll understand. There were 4 specific rooms in the mueseum.

The Introduction:

24 July 1935: SA men lead Christine Neemann and her Jewish boyfriend through the city. They have to wear placards on which are written, " I am a German girl and I have let myself be defiled by a Jew" and "I am a race defiler."

July 1941: After the program in Jassy, over 4400 survivors are crammed into two goods trains in baking heat and without food or water. More than half of the deportees had died of thrist or suffocated by the time the trains, after several days, reached their respective destinations.

At the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, senior ministerial civil servants and high-level Nazi Party and SS functionaries met in a villa at Berlin's Wannsee Lake on 20 January 1942. This meeting later would be referres to as the Wansee Conference. Heydrich explained the plans for a programme to murder all European Jews. The only matters for discussion was how this was to be implemented. The decision to commit genocide already had been made at a higher level. This programme of extermination was intended to encompass more than 11 million people, including Jews in countries beyond the German sphere of influence such as Switzerland, Great Britain, and Turkey.

So you thought the introduction was heavy. The next room was the room of dimensions which focused only on personal accounts found from Jews during this time. It showed the original document, the quote, and what happened to the person who wrote it and how old they were.

...After lunch the corpses from five vehicles were buried. From one vehicle a young woman was thrown out with a baby at her breast. It suckled its mother's milk and died. On this day we worked under the light from the searchlights until seven in the evening. Also on this day a vehicle drove so close to the pit that we heard the chocked screams and desperate cries of the victims as well as the pounding on the doors. Before work had finished 6 of the pit workers were shot...

But why are they in such a hurry to make the names disappear? Are they afraid, the civilised world could get an insight into how man thousands of lives they have taken? Are they trying to wipe out the traces of their crimes? Yes, then they will probably wipe out the few of us who remain.

Because of the great crush, the mass of bodies pressed together... could keep people...hanging in the air, this made it possible for them to stand for thirty hours. There were no conversations, no discussions....Everyone was only half in possession of their senses due to tiredness and exhaustion. The cramped conditions fatigued and debilitated everyone, and overwhelmed the spirit at the crucial moment. Only once was the door of the wagon opened: in came two gendarmes who, in exchange for wedding rings from the women, allowed them something to drink.

31 July 1942

Dear Father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won't let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the samll children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly.

Your J. **I remember this one imparticular. This was written by a child.

...introduced the gas...we carried the corpses of these...innocent women...which was brough to othe oven...and put inside an oven there...and forced us, to put it through a coarse sieve and it was later loaded onto a car and shaken into the river which flowed nearby and they covered over all traces. The dramas which my eyes have seen are indescribable. Approximately 600 000 Jews from Hungary, French people, Poles...

There were only one or two writers out of the 15 who lived. I don't remember which ones lived or died anymore. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of that. I wasn't exactly thinking straight.

The next room was the room of Families: I didn't take many photos by this time. It talked about groups of Jewish familes from all sorts of different backgrounds. You could also read who lived and who died. Most of them died.

Here are a few quotes I did take pictures of:

Believing that only men would be affected Abraham Hofman and his son Joseph Hofman hid with neighbours (when they knew that the police were rounding up Jews). The police arrested Abraham's wife, Baila Hofman, and those children living at home at the time. Together with thousands of other Jewish men, women, and chilldren most of them foreign, they were taken to Auschwitz. Abraham and only 3 of this children survived.

The firing squad sonsisted of about 15 Lithuanians who sood outside the pit, at its edge. In groups of ten, the Jews were forced to jump into the pit and lie down, the shooting commenced immediatley. I did not hear a command. It was a scene of wild confusion. They shot with sub-machine-guns. If they saw movement within the pit, they fired into it. There was no confirmation of death. The squad simply shot into the grave until there weas no more movement. Onoe man, it might have been a memeber of the SS, tore little children away from their mothers, shot each of them in the back of the neck and kicked them with his boot into the pit. The Jews met their fate with composure. But one Jew went after a police officer with a knife as he stood on guard, wounding him in the face. This jew was tied up, thrown in the snow and beaten to death. He was beaten between the legs, on his genitals with a cudgel. When he was dead, he was dragged to the pit and thrown in.

Song of Resurrection.

My little daughter, my first one Lorotschka/ Probably would have been a grandmother by now.// Yet for all time she remains a little child-/ One out of the bloody number of six million.//It sometimes seems to me in the silence of a sleepless night that/ I hear moaning, I hear weeping, a child is screaming.// This moaning, this weeping penetrates to the depths of my consciousness./ Although the years pass, the feeling and the shivering do not diminish.// That mortal enemy, that common criminal wanted/ To wipe out children's laughter in my peopole´.//That lunatic wanted to chop the thread that links generation to generation./ To burn it so that only ash remained.//But the thread will not be severed. Oh, no./ I am leaving a deep imprint on this earth.// The madman with those crazy ideas rotted away long ago./ My children will have grandchildren.//My descendents grow with every passing day-/my lovely, beautiful Elena.// Like flowers in the spring/ Marinushka and Ilya have come into bloom.// The sky will be bright and blue./ There will be wedding celebrations--weddings of the young and wedding anniversaries of the old./ / And my grandchildren will become grandmothers and grandfathers./ So let the music play- the great march of victory!//Nobody , never, in the whole wide world/ should ever dare besmirch the sanctity of childhood./ Peace and happiness-to the children!//...So that the horror never is repeated-/ I sing this my song of resurrection.

Matvey (Mordechaai) Kaplan April-May 1984.

The next room was the room of names. There you could sit down and listen short bio's and names of jews across europe who were murdered or presumed dead. "Reciting the names and the life-stories (short bios) of all victims as presented in this room would take roughly six years, seven months, and 27 days."

The last room was the room of sites and it talked about the major places where jews were killed. I would have liked more time to have looked around the room, but I was the last one, and they wanted me to go so I did.

The Wall

The wall was really really neat. We took some really interesting pictures. There are only 3 sections of the wall still standing. We went to the biggest one. (The East side Gallery) It was 1300 m long and it is the longest of the 3. My host parents told me they can still remember visiting Berlin when the wall was up. That's something I can't even begin to imagine. Parts of the wall are being repainted, because this year is the 20th anniversary of the falling of the wall. So they are redoing some of the paintings. We saw some of the artists working and it looked really really cool.

Potsdam

We went to the Schloss Sanssouci, which is pretty much a mini Versailles. It was really cute and I throughly enjoyed it. The gardens were great.

Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

We went on a really neat tour in this mueseum. "The German Resistance Memorial Center
is a site of remembrance, political studies, active learning, documentation, and research. An extensive permanent exhibition, a series of temporary special exhibitions, events, and a range of publications document and illustrate resistance to National Socialism.The center's goal is to show how individual persons and groups took action against the National Socialist dictatorship from 1933 to 1945 and made use of what freedom of action they had."

http://www.gdw-berlin.de/index-e.php

So that should give you an idea of what it was about. The tour was very well done. The building actually contained Staufenberg's real office. (He was a man who attempted to kill Hitler.) I'm sure some of you have heard about the movie with Tom Cruise which just came out this year. That's about the attempt.

So the tour talked a bit about Staufenberg oh and by the way one of the guy's who I performed in the play here in Germany in my school, well he is related to Staufenberg's best friend who helped Staufenberg alot with this plan. Pretty neat huh? She also talked about a group called the White Rose which was a group of young people who made flyers against the Nazi's. It's a good example about how a group of young people made a difference during this time.

She also talked about how people in Germany knew a fair bit about what was going on. For example there were films about concentration camps made for the public to see (they definetly weren't showing them killing anyone, that wasn't generally known to the public, but the Nazi's were trying to establish fear.) There were also lots of buildings in cities where the SS and SA took people and tortured them if they did something or said something unacceptable to the regime. This was also not a secret. This was to install fear. So you had a few options stay silent and do what your told or act up and possibly get into a lot of trouble.

I also saw a map of Germany which was coded to show where the Jews or other 'undesierables' (in the words of the Nazi's) would be taken. So which concentration camp or extermination camp. I found my city and they were taken to the nearest one. Buchenwald.

As our guide told us there were not a lot of people who stood up to the Nazi's but the people who did were from a lot of different backgrounds, ages, races, started up their resistance alone or with others, resisted in different ways, and started their resistance at the begining or maybe even closer to the end, but there were people in Germany who stood up and tried to do something. For example there was a normal man who, after a year of preparation, managed to get close enough to Hitler to place a bomb. A normal man, working alone. Then there were groups like one Staufenberg belonged to within the army. There were a group of university students. Did you know there were 42 attempts on Hitler's life?

Jüdisches Museum Berlin

This mueseum was more focused on the Jewish lifestyle than on the Holocaust, although there were things which alluded to the Holocaust. It was a very interesting building and again it's something you have to experience because it's more about how you feel in the different rooms or areas than the information. We also had a very good tour. I bought a ridiculously expensive magnet there, but I bought it because when I have my own refridgerator I want to see that symbol for this mueseum everyday. I want to be reminded of what can happen when we look at a group of people and blame them, or think they aren't as good as us. I want to be reminded what hate can cause and how we divide ourselves from others. I want to remember not to judge other people even though it can be easy sometimes to lump people into categories. Humans may not be perfect, but we can strive for perfection.

One thing which just floored me at the mueseum was the following interactive question on a computer.

Do you think that in your circles of friends anyone hold predjudices against Jews?

I clicked my answer. These were the results.

41% voted yes

59 % voted no

These feelings haven't died since the Holocaust. Isn't that scary?

Ampelmännchen (On a light note.)

Ampelmännchen (help·info) (German: little traffic light man, pl. Ampelmännchen) is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights at pedestrian crossings in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany). Prior to the German reunification in 1990, the two German states had different forms for the Ampelmännchen, with a generic human figure in West Germany, and a generally male figure wearing a hat in the east.
The Ampelmännchen is a beloved symbol in Eastern Germany,[1] "enjoy[ing] the privileged status of being one of the sole features of communist East Germany to have survived the end of the Iron Curtain with his popularity unscathed."[2] After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Ampelmännchen acquired cult status and became a popular souvenir item in the tourism business.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampelm%C3%A4nnchen

Here's a bit of history about them. I am also in love with them. They are really really cute. Google them!

Checkpoint Charlie is really just a tourist trap. The real thing doesn't exist anymore. There are two men dressed up as an American solider and a Russian solider. They have flags and you can take a picture with them if you pay them. We didn't go in the mueseum, but I think that might have been good.

Pergamonmuseum

We randomly went to this mueseum which had nothing to do with Germany. I was rather disapointed. The mueseum was OK, but I'm more interested in German history than the Babylonian Empire.

I'll end this on a light note, because I don't want all of you to go into a depression, but I would encourage you to feel what ever you are feeling and think about it some more if you need to.

Yesterday instead of going to school I was given the opportunity to visit two rehersals from a famous theatre in my city. It's an outdoor theatre inside a ruin. IT IS AMAZING!!!! So I was there from 8:30am -4 pm and then from 8:30 pm -12 am. I saw two different rehersals. The Rotarian who made this possible, the owner, kind of abandoned me, but I know she's busy and I had a great time just watching. It's made me itch to be in another play. We'll see...I have the opportunity to go to two of the summers play performances. One is West Side Story. (Rotary invited me to this one.) The second one is Odessy which my last host family will take me to. I'm quite excited. That happens next week!

They have some amazing sets, costumes, actors, and directors. It's really cool and it's world known. So yesterday was a really cool day. Today I was back at school again, but this week is short because we have a few holiday days, but I'm away with Rotary again.

So on that note I'll wrap this up. Sorry that I can't post pics. Ever since this computer erased my memory card I'm spooked! So I'll have to show you them when I get back. Take care reader. *hug* I thought maybe you'd need one. And remember if you can leave a comment, because it takes me awhile to write these and I do this willing and happily, hoping for some comments. Thanks =)