Berlin Day 5

Although I didn't sleep in, Gila was dead to the world, so I let her sleep until 10:30. Since we had finally learned that all plans are subject to change, we did very little preplanning. We thought we would go to the Judische Museum first and then see what unfolded. I'm also becoming a little more adventurous in trying new subway lines, so we tried a transfer of lines instead of doing the extra walking. We came out of the station and we were facing the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. It made no sense to walk by it especially since it was one of the sights we wanted to visit. I had been there before, but my recollection of the contents of the museum was murky at best.

The history leading up to the building of the wall as well as the divisiveness due to the wall was displayed in photographs and film clips of the day. There was also a display of the ingenious ways people tried to escape from the east. Parts of cars were removed so hiding places existed and to compensate for the extra weight, balls were put into the springs so the car wouldn't sag. Although he was not stationed in Berlin, there was corner devoted to Raoul Wallenberg, his disappearance and the efforts to locate him. There was just too much to take in and after several hours, I was saturated and had to leave. I was amazed to learn how so many of the events in the 50s and 60s were related to the cold war and the erection of the wall.

Both of us were hungry and thirsty and found a place to sit down to eat. It seems that every other small restaurant or bodega is owned by Turks and serves very good doner. The Judishe Museum was a short walk from where we ate. We saw it a typical 19th century house painted yellow and correctly assumed it was what we were looking do. My first reaction was disappointment because although it was a nice building, it lacked the drama of the Daniel Liebeskind structure I had heard about. As we got closer another building, adjacent to the original building loomed ahead of us, with aluminum cladding, stark corners at every level and slits like slashes for the windows. The entrance was through the old building but the Holocaust memorial and permanent collection were in the new structure. The lower level housed the memorial. The walls were at strange angles. The floors were slanted. The walls were starkly black and white. With most memorials, it is the number of victims that is emphasized. This exhibit focused on a number of individuals, their photographs, their fates and what artifacts of theirs remained. We were viewing an individual's tragedy, not the horrors suffered by millions. Suddenly, there was a personal face that made it so much more real and wrenching than the trials of faceless victims. One of the hallways about the exiles of the Jews ended in an outside garden, the Garden of Exiles. Walking around was disorienting as the floors here too were slanted. Forty-four tall steles (cylinders) symmetrically placed were filled with earth and Russian olive trees grew from the top. There was an eerie silence and a sense of feeling nauseous while walking through it. The shape of the garden was a square and it was the only closed form anywhere in the building. At the end of another corridor was the room called the Void of Memory. This area was entered through huge black double doors and stretched up through the entire height of the building. It was illuminated only through a slit of a window. The space represented those who were murdered. It was very powerful. There was another memory void in the permanent collection. This one had an art installation as well. The floor was covered, as if they were leaves, with metal disks of many different sizes.. Each disk had its own unique face, holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. Each mouth looked like the Scream by Munch. You were permitted to walk through the installation. Instead of the soft rustling of leaves, you heard the metallic clang as the faces moved. Bone chilling.

The permanent collection started on the top floor and wound its way down to the main floor. It contained the history of the Jews in Germany starting a thousand years ago. Each display was a vignette of a specific time and place. It recorded the extent of persecution through the centuries and the integration during the Weimar Republic, to the dehumanization during the Nazi regime. It was too much to bear and yet I could not leave until I had seen it all. We had dinner in the area and spent quite a while just decompressing, as Gila put it, resting our soles and our souls.

Our original plans included a jazz club in Charlottenburg. I could not do it. It was standing room only and my feet protested painfully. My headspace was not yet ready to move on to something more joyous and the next day was to be a four hour walking tour of Jewish Berlin. I encouraged Gila to go. She had really been looking forward to it, but she declined. I suspect that there was some relief that we were ending the day somewhat earlier.

The U Bahn was right outside the restaurant, but we didn't think our feet could handle the stairs, the transfer (with more stairs) and the three block walk back to the apartment. We hailed a taxi. It was the best ride I have had in a while and gave me some rest to handle the five flights of stairs to the apartment. Next time, I will ask what floor the apartment is on and whether there is an elevator.

Big day tomorrow, a personal tour of Jewish Berlin. I need my sleep.