On our second day in Berlin, we started with a Q&A session about the Germany Close Up program. It was interesting to hear how Dr. Pruin came up with the idea for the program and how her experiences as a teenager in Germany shaped her vision. I really enjoyed hearing about how her town invited all of its former Jewish residents back to the city in remembrance of the anniversary of “Krinstallnacht” and that all but 3 of of the 41 invited came.
We continued the day with a walking tour of Jewish locations across East Berlin. We saw the remains of one of Berlin’s first synagogues, the Rosenstrasse memorial of German wives who protested their Jewish husbands release from Nazi imprisonment, a former Jewish cemetery, and the small plaques across Berlin that memorialize where Holocaust victims lived. While viewing the monument of the German wives, Dr. Pruin posed the question, “had more individuals protested the deportation of their neighbors, friends, co-workers, etc. would things have been any different?” It’s hard to know, and unfortunately, it cannot change anything now, but I believe it’s important we remember this for the future.
The last piece of our busy day was a bus tour of Berlin, which was incredibly informative. We stopped at the East Side Gallery to see the various murals painted on the Berlin Wall, we saw the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Bayerischer Platz memorial in remembrance of its murdered Jewish residents, and the Bebelplatz memorial in remembrance of the Nazi book burning that took place in 1933. It was incredible to hear so much about the history of Berlin and see more of Western Berlin, including its Tiergarten Park, which reminded me very much of Central Park.
The Berlin Wall memorial gave me a better understanding of the division of the city and a sense of how difficult it would be for individuals to escape from East Germany, with the guards, the watch towers, and the distance between both walls. It’s almost hard for me to fathom how this could all happen so soon after Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
On the last bit of our tour, while walking through the Bayerischer Platz memorial, it was interesting to hear that students at the local elementary school have a project each year where they research and present about the lives of former Jewish residents. They then commemorate their research by writing the individual’s name on a brick and use these bricks to build a wall of remembrance in the schoolyard.
It was such a great day learning so much about Berlin and Jewish History.
Veronica Holland lives in Washington, DC.