Send page to a Friend Deb's Berlin Journal Travel Journal: "Jewish Life in Germany" Seminar in Berlin Dear All, Thank you for visiting JCRC's Holocaust Awareness Webpage. From August 19 - September 1 2006, I and five other Bostonians attended a seminar entitled "Jewish Life in Germany: Past, Present and Future Concepts" as guests of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Consulate General in Boston. The seminar was organized by the European Academy Berlin. The group attending the conference included young people, Holocaust Survivors, American Jews, German Jews and non-Jewish Germans.   Throughout the seminar, we visited the sites of the former concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck; the Olympic stadium, Langenmarckhalle, where the 1936 Olympics occurred; several memorial sites; the Holocaust Memorial, and the Centrum Judaicum - Center for Jewish Culture and History, We were treated to documentary screenings and discussions on relevant topics with governmental, academic and cultural representatives. Topics ranged from seminars discussing contemporary Holocaust education, to the evolution of modern-day anti-Semitism, to the ongoing process of reconciliation.   Throughout my time in Berlin, I updatedthis site with details of my travels, my experiences, and my reactions. I hope that you find these reflections interesting. Please feel free to email me with comments, suggestions, questions or insights. I look forward to sharing my travels with you and hearing from you.   Best, Deborah Donig   View the European Academy's Berlin Seminar Lecture Schedule. August 31, 2006     Instead of heading to the city center, I decided to spend my final day in Berlin in the suburb of Grunewald. I had seen what I had wanted to see of the city itself, and after visiting the Memorial the day before, I felt that any return would seem anticlimactic.   I didn’t set out with a specific destination, but found myself walking back toward the forest. I passed the embassies and the attractively landscaped estates lining the avenues. When I reached the entrance to the forest alongside the lake, I took a final look down the path and headed back. Instead of returning to the Academy, I walked back to Track 17, where Jews had been rounded up for deportation to the camps. A few retirees sat at the café near the memorial, enjoying a mid-morning coffee. At the S-Bahn station nearby, commuters awaited the incoming train into the city.   I approached the memorial and stood face to face with the rough stone slab, aligning myself with the life-sized cut out human shapes, the missing spaces in the wall reminding the viewer of what has been removed, what is absent. In the last few days, dignitaries from the Israeli government had stayed in Grunewald, and I evidence of their visit appeared in the form of large white wreaths, decorated with banners of Hebrew writing lay on the tracks. I walked up and down the platform, taking care to read every inscription alongside the track. Each inscription, in the same rusted metal as the tracks, included the date of a deportation, the number of people reported, the specification “Juden”, and the destination of that deportation. I read each plaque with care, trying to comprehend how each plaque that only took me a few seconds to read, spoke of the fate of hundreds, that each inscription carried with it hundreds of stories that would end shortly after that train left this station.       Facing the tracks, I looked alongside those tracks, now covered with trees and multiplying foliage that would soon overrun the path that the trains had traveled. I stood for a few minutes in silence, until the sound of the S-Bahn arriving at the station behind the Track 17 Platform brought me back to the present. I looked at my watch and discovered that I needed to head back to the Academy and prepare to leave for the airport. I left the platform and again passed the retirees sitting at the café, the commuters waiting by entrance to the S-Bahn, and finally, those cut out shapes, missing spaces in the memorial wall. August 30, 2006 I was approaching the end of my stay in Berlin and had yet to thoroughly visit and absorb the Berlin memorial to the Jewish Victims of the Holocaust. After another failed attempt at a run, I left for the city center. The memorial is located in the most central plaza in Berlin, and so my plan was to make the memorial the point of origin and plan the rest of the day from there. The rain had finally abated, so there was a bit of a crowd to get into the underground information center located under the memorial. I decided to walk through the memorial to let the crowd die down.     Walking into the depth of the memorial, I got a better sense of its size than I had walking around it. The massive and towering pillars grew increasingly tall and obstructed not only my path forward but also my vision and my perception of where I should go. The ground, undulating, is also disorienting and unsettling. In the middle, it is at least five degrees cooler than on the outside, and the gray of the stones and their height blocks out the sun and darkens your perspective. I stood in what I thought might be the center for a while, and after a few minutes of looking around I did not know where I had entered from. I found my way to the perimeter, trying to direct my path in the direction of where I thought I had started, and came out on a completely different side of the plaza. A few people were strolling around, and I suddenly noticed a conspicuous group of young soldiers dressed in the uniforms of the German Army standing in the midst of some of the shorter stones of the Memorial's perimeter. A young woman, who I guessed to be a superior officer, was speaking to them. I watched them remove their berets  and hold them in their hands as they stood. I could not understand the language spoken by the woman, but I believe I understood what she was saying. I was very touched by this act of memory, of this tremendous symbol of German reconciliation with the past. I went back to the line and waited to enter the underground region of the Memorial. Following those in front of me, I descended below the Memorial and started to study the exhibit. The information center began with a chronological outline of Holocaust events, and then moves from general to personal accounts. There were many people there, and I felt rushed to finish reading so that the long line behind me could proceed. I wanted to memorize each individual story, all unique and sacred, and at the same time all with the same elements of terror, inhumanity, sadness, and loss, at once singular and simultaneously belonging to what has become the weighty Holocaust canon.   In the final display, one is invited to sit as names are projected onto a large screen on each wall of the darkened room. While the names are on display, along with the birth date and death date of that individual, their story, as much of it as known, is told, first in German, then in English. Again, each story I heard was both totally individual and invariably uniform. Though I could not understand the German version and had to wait for the English translation that followed, one word, announced over and over and again was a constant reiteration, recognizable in any language. Over and over, Auschwitz. Auschwitz. Auschwitz. All names were accompanied by the death dates mostly ranging from 1937-1945. I became absorbed in the stories, and they all started to twine together. I forced myself to keep track, make distinctions, keep each story separate and individual, as each name flashed on the screen. Aaron Einberg . 1919-1945. Born April 4. Murdered in Auschwitz. The April 4 birthday was the first thing that struck me. My birthday is April 6, and after some basic calculations, I realized that at his death in 1945, he would have been 26 years old, three years older than I am today. As his story unraveled in German, I began to cry. I did not know his story, and I didn't need to wait for the English in order to know how it would conclude. I cried for the tragedy of Aaron Einberg, borh in 1919, in Poland, of the wrong religion in the wrong time, who could have as easily been me. I cried for Aaron and for the thousands of Aarons. I cried not only for Aaron, not only for the tragedy of those people who died, but also for the tragedy of those who lived, who lost forever their families, their childhoods, their innocence, their way of life, their frame of reference for how to live. For those who did not live to know life, and for those whose lives are shrouded in tragedy and loss and terrible memory. For life lost and for a way of life lost for those who survived. I left the Memorial and did not know what to do with myself. Coming up from the underground, people were going about the daily life of urban Berlin, buying souveniers, eating at cafes, struggling to locate themselves on a city map. I walked the streets for the rest of the day, headed nowhere in particular, with no destination in mind except the S-Bahn home before dark. As I wove through the different neighborhoods, from East Berlin to West, from the Brandeburg gates through Tiergarten and down the trendy avenues of Under de Linden, I observed the city without participating in it. Finally, the streets emptied and, exhausted, I took a train back to Grunewald. August 29, 2006 Today I could not summon up the energy to run. I put on my running clothes and sneakers, headed out the door of the Academy, and could not get past the front gates. A massive wave of torpor had me heading back without leaving the driveway; my body felt physically incapable of moving me in my usual direction on the path that had been mine each morning since my arrival. We had a busy morning exploring Havelburg, a picturesque village that has dedicated itself to preserving its past of Jewish presence in spite of the fact that no Jews live in the town today. The town has a museum wing dedicated to Jewish life in the past, a historian dedicated to the study and teaching of this history, and a council that each year leads the city in a Kristallnacht commemoration. All of these things run in the absence of Jewish people. I again got the sense that Berlin is a museum, and we the Jews, the rare and antiqued artifacts in the display cases to satisfy the viewer's curiosity about the remains of an ancient and departed civilization. The city to me is one large display case of this sort, I cannot see it otherwise. It is impossible to travel the city without coming across a monument to the Holocaust or site connected to it. August 28, 2006 We set out this morning for Wansee, site of the conference during which Hitler and other top Nazi officials agreed to pursue the Final Solution. We left later than planned, but our guide told us that the drive would not take long. It took no more than two or three minutes of driving for me to recognize our route- we were driving on a road directly parallel to my daily running route. We drove further than I usually run, but once or twice I could make out my trail. Then, suddenly, we were there. Unbeknownst to me, I had been running along Lake Wansee the entire week. I had been running toward the site of the Wansee Conference. The calming and serene forest that had composed my pleasant morning jog was the same grounds that years before had served as the meeting location where the Nazis affirmed and codified their decision to exterminate all Jews. The Wansee estate itself is elegant and austere- a well maintained property like so many others in Grunewald, thoughtfully landscaped and picturesque. One can see the lake from the back balconies, and the surrounding forest ensure privacy. Today, the estate has been turned into an exhibit detailing the event that took place there, the evolution of Germany into a Nazi Fascist state, and of course the devastating conclusion. Leaving Wansee, I felt drained, depressed, and betrayed. Berlin, as I have experienced it, holds no untainted beauty. Even the scene of my morning run, usually taken in a half-awake, half-sleep state of mindless movement, has been sullied. Each site, each institution, each street, carries with it the weight of the past. I hear the word "Achtung!" from a cyclist asking me to let him pass, and the word itself is loaded. I cannot see how this country will ever be able to move beyond its past. August 27, 2006 Our programs on Sundays did not start until the afternoon, so Eric and I decided to explore the suburb of Grunewald. We visited the downtown, which boasts a premier chocolate store, a cigar shop, and a few specialty fruit and vegetable markets. We walked by the embassies and admired the architecture and landscaping of the properties, and shared our views and impressions of Berlin thus far. Our walk took us through the forest, where we took a route that passed by the lake, and into an old hunting villa for German royals. The villa has been turned into a museum displaying the art previously owned by German nobles, and that day served as a picturesque setting for children performing some type of play, and couples enjoying the warm afternoon. Walking back, we detoured and returned to the S-Bahn train station, also the site of track 17, the site of deportation for thousands of Jews. Plaques describing each deportation line each side of the track, listing the number of Jews taken, the date, the origin, and the destination. Riga, Thereisensdadt, Auschwitz, Unknown, over and over. Since the day was warm, people congregated at the café next door and we walked past them leaving the station. Later that afternoon, we drove back to downtown Berlin to tour the Jewish Synagogue, now a cultural museum, Like all other synagogues in Berlin, this synagogue had been destroyed during the Nazi regime and now serves as an informational memorial. Led by the guide, we learned about the Synagogue's history and the culture and lifestyles of the Jews who used to belong to that community (including the artist Max Leibermann), Most of the Jews belonging to this synagogue had not been religious, nor would they have identified themselves as predominantly Jewish. Their photos lined the walls of the exhibit. I didn't ask if any of them had survived, but I am not optimistic From the Synagogue, we visited a warehouse that had hidden hundreds of Jewish children during the Holocaust, under the guise of operating as a working house for the blind. We then walked to a Jewish graveyard which had become a congregation site for Jews who were to be deported/ The site is marked by yet another memorial, as always haunting, colorless, hopeless. August 26, 2006 The Academy left us alone on Saturday to pursue our own interests. Along with a few of the seminar participants, I went back to the city center to explore. I ended up finding a tour called "Third Reich Berlin: The rise and fall of Hitler's Capital" which traced the sites of Hitler's rise of power and traveled the city visiting different sites related to the Nazi regime. We met for the tour at 1:00 at the Brandeburg gates, where there is now, opposite from the historic Hotel Adlon, a large Starbucks franchise. On the Western side of the gates, a skating and motorcycle show held court, extending down the famous Unter Den Linden Avenue that runs on the side of Tiergarten, a vast area of greenery that is the world's largest urban park. The festival was large, sprawling and loud, and when we stopped at the first site, the Soviet victory monument built (strangely enough in what used to be West Berlin), the modern music and revving engines of the motorcycles, which were flying and doing flips in the sky, seemed out of place. It was bizarre feeling a modern intrusion into a city stuck in the past rather than these monuments of the past situated in the present. We visited sites in which key Nazi figures made historic decisions- the ministry of propaganda, the Reichstag, Hitler's bunker, which remains totally unmarked outside of a small matter-of-fact sign and in the center of a middle-income apartment complex. The government has decided not to open the bunker, both out of a clear consensus from the historical and Jewish communities that such a memorial would be utterly perverse, and out of a fear that Neo-Nazis would make of it a shrine. We ended at the "Topography of Terror", which traces the rise of Nazi power and terror and factually reports their crimes. Following the tour, I continued with the guide to the Air Force Ministry. One day a year, the government opens all buildings to the public, to both literally and symbolically show the German public the transparency of the German government., and to assure the public that the government is hiding nothing. Since this day happened to fall during my visit, I decided take advantage of it. Since the Air Force Headquarters (Luftwaffe) was not severely damaged by the allies, it is the original building used by the Nazis and run by Goering during WWII. The architecture is a perfect example of fascist architecture, and it was incredible to see and have access to the content inside. It was truly like stepping back in time. After the tour, I walked to the trendy Honschker Markt, where I had a quick drink with some new friends and continued on to Muesum Island. Because of this special occasion, the museums were open until late in the night, so it would have been possible for me to visit multiple cultural and historical collections. I love museums, and usually I would have been gung-ho. I passed and went back to the Academy to meet up with the group. I had spent the day walking through the exhibit called Berlin. I didn't want to go inside another museum. August 25, 2006 We left early in the morning for Furstenberg, a picturesque and quaint town about an hour and a half outside of Berlin. Driving along the freeway, I tuned out the loud and expressive political debate taking place in the car to take in the scenery, which offered views of what Germany might have looked like before the war. Since this area had not been bombed, houses dating back to the early 19th century still stood, and the quaint life of an ageless agricultural town painted a picture of timeless rural life. If it were anywhere else, Furstenburg would be a resort beach town. It is breathtakingly beautiful, a quaint little village right on the water, the Lake George of Germany. Unfortunately for Furstenburg, it abuts the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. From Furstenburg, you can look directly into the camp grounds and the SS houses around the barbed-wire fences that line its perimeters. Ranvensbruck was established in 1938, and operated until it was liberated in 1945 by the Russian army. In those seven years, the Nazis executed about 92,000 prisoners, mostly Jewish women from over 20 European countries. We were given a tour of the camp by a very eloquent and learned scholar who told us the history and lay out of the camp, explained the displays (which are only in German), offered some critiques about the way the camp has been presented as a memorial, and some problems in Holocaust representation. One statement really struck me- in speaking about how to preserve the camp, he mentioned that a building that had formerly housed SS guards has now been remodeled to accommodate a youth hostel. Besides my consternation that any youth would want to spend the night next to a Concentration Camp, sleeping in the bunkers of Nazi perpetrators, I wondered what the protocol for behavior by the youth might be. Our guide explained that from time to time, those staying at the hostel would blast music, stay up drinking beer or laughing, and that rather than wanting to put an end to it, rather than being appalled, he approves of this activity. He explained that in cultivating Holocaust memory or memorials, particularly in these places, one must ask several questions: 1. What do we want to happen with this site? 2. What would the perpetrators NOT have wanted to happen, had they succeeded? 3. What do Survivors have to say? 4. What would the victims of the Holocaust have said, and what would they have wanted? To those cultivating the Holocaust memory of this site, the answer was to allow these youths to have their fun and to allow them release after the things they have probably experienced visiting the camp. He then made one more comment that has been on my mind; that the Survivors do not speak for the victims. In all my time spent on Holocaust awareness, I had not before really internalized that seemingly obvious fact. As minor and negligible as it may seem, this statement spoke volumes to me. We went to lunch after leaving Ravensbruck, and were met by the mayor of Furstenburg. He seems really young and fairly energetic, but is plagued by the economic and developmental problems that Furstenburg faces. No one wants to settle there, young people move out and into the urban areas. No one wants to open a business there. Undoubtedly, living next to a Concentration Camp, swimming in a lake filled with human ash, is distasteful to potential settlers. I had the experience of wanting this man to succeed, to see this beautiful town succeed, and being appalled that such a place could ever flourish. I still don't know how I feel. As Shabbat approached that evening, we made our way to a Jewish synagogue in the center of Berlin for services. The synagogue, like the Jewish Community and the other Jewish institutional sites we had visited, is heavily guarded. Additionally, this synagogue is behind a façade of buildings, invisible to the street and the entrance unrecognizable except for a police car in front of it. Walking on the street, you would never know it was there unless you knew it was there. This particular synagogue was badly damaged on Kristallnacht, and rebuilt in the late 1990s. It was not burned to the ground on the basis of it being too close to other non-Jewish buildings, which would have also been destroyed had the synagogue been set on fire. Men and women sat separately, and teenagers sat together. The service began in the familiar Hebrew, and it felt like any other synagogue in the world. Then, the Rabbi welcomed the congregation in German, and it was shocking to hear. I don't think any of us were prepared to hear the German language, with all of its post-Holocaust connotations, permeate the religious lexicon of the Jewish community. After the service, we went around the corner into a very lively area of  downtown Berlin for dinner. A few Germans my age that I have met went to dinner with the group, and we had a great night, toasting and laughing. We got back late evening/ early morning, not entirely sure of how to make sense of the day. August 24, 2006 I began the day with another long run through the forest near the Academy. Along my run, I pass by restaurants, boutiques, early bird pedestrians, through suburbia and past all the foreign embassies, to the beginning of the trail, joining Grunewald's many dog-walkers, running groups, and elderly couples enjoying their morning stroll. The group begins the day's studies hours later at the  Museum of Jewish History in Germany. The Jewish Museum traces the culture and history of the Jewish people throughout their residence in Germany, displaying early German Jewish cultural artifacts from different time periods, highlighting different contributions of German Jewish thinkers, philosophers, scientists, leaders, etc., and considering the ways in which Jewish culture directly and indirectly has influenced the evolution of German culture. While the museum does treat the Holocaust, it does not make the Holocaust the center of its discourse. Interestingly, Jewish history in the museum does not end in the mid- 1940s, but chronicles Jewish activity in Germany up to the present day. Each display, from "Jews and Sports" to 'Jews in politics" makes a distinct and significant statement about Jewish presence in Germany. Equally vocal are the rooms throughout the museum that  that remain untouched, without displays or texts or plaques, "voids". I think that to many visitors, the empty spaces symbolize more than all of the well crafted displays- that emptiness- a lack of voice forcing them to consider what disappeared after 1945. The spaceds are cold, with small windows, sterile, dark. The museum is very heavily trafficked; multitudes of Germans and, Jews and non-Jews come to peruse the relics of German-Jewish history and memory. We met with the head archivist of the museum. His job is to collect, evaluate, and label the Jewish artifacts that are donated to the museum and to design a space to display them. At one point in the discussion, I got the sense that on some level, a Jew in Germany is a creature unlike a rare fossil, the curiosity about Jewish culture a little like the interest in an archeological dig. On some level, the study of Jewish culture is comparative to the study of the dinosaurs:it is an extinct species. When we later met with the Director of the Jewish Communities in Berlin, he spoke about the redevelopment of Jewish Community in Berlin, and the challenges it faces. He confirmed the perception that I had already formulated- that Jewish life in Berlin will never reach the level of strength it had prior to the Holocaust, and that it will continue to falter. Jewish institutions, synagogues, and centers operate behind buttressed fortresses, and are manned by armed security guards and security check-points. Jews in Germany are themselves a disunited group, seemingly without a center, a central spokesperson, or a desire to unite as a community. In Berlin, most "Jewish sites" take the form of memorials. That evening I stayed in the touristy area of the city, and in downtown Berlin, I was surrounded by tourists, foreign accents, and wealthy pursuers of brand-named clothing. I stayed must longer than I had expected, and suddenly noticed that everything around me had closed and the streets were empty. I was conscious of being alone and not entirely sure where I was or where I wanted to go, of looking like a foreigner. I could not help thinking what it would have meant 70 years ago for me to be out at that hour, alone, on the streets of Berlin. I finally found my way home on the S-Bahn, but I could not shake that feeling for the rest of the night.     Berlin Olympic Stadium   Our Group at the former Nazi- viewing level at the Berlin Olympic Stadium, now luxury seating for honored guests   The German Jewish Dialogue discussion panel   August 23, 2006 Today's activities continued to probe the ideas of contemporary truth and reconciliation, the relationship between the past and the present. We started the day at the site of the 1936 Olympics. In 1936, Hitler and Goebbels watched the games from the upstairs luxury pavilion. America made the news by refusing to bow the American flag as it passed Hitler?s seating, and Jesse Owens, an African-American and a direct contradiction to the Nazi Aryan ideal won the Gold Medal for the United States. Today the stadium is better known as the site of the World Cup. As a piece of architecture, it?s fascinating. As a sports arena, it?s impeccably planned and built. The stadium, built to Hitler?s specifications, adorned with elements of Nazi symbolism, and fully conforming to the Nazi aesthetic ideal. Our guide took us on the stadium field and up to the original platform from which Hitler and Goebbels watched the games. Sitting in the Chancellor of Germany?s seat, I was struck by how much the country really has changed. As I sat in the stadium, on the platform that Htiler built, I did not feel that Hitler?s buildings had remained a house for his ideals. It struck me that the shell of the country, like the shell stadium, now holds something completely different. From the stadium, we headed to lunch with the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the sponsors of our program. We spoke about the importance of this trip, what it has done in the past for German/Jewish relations and what will be required in order for Germans and Jews to find the answers they need for reconciliation. We then visited the Museum dedicated to the little-known German resistance to the Nazis. I think that the reason that the German resistance movement during the Holocaust is little known is fairly obvious, but we did see some very moving proofs and documentaries about those who did show incredible courage. When we returned to the Academy, we were met by several German members of the German-Jewish dialogue group back in Boston who have since moved back to Germany. These dialogue groups are composed of Jews and non-Jewish Germans in Boston who get together twice a month to open up about their own personal relationship to the Holocaust, and to work toward reconciliation on an individual basis. Frequently, Jewish members of the group are Holocaust Survivors or family of Holocaust Survivors. Many of the non-Jewish Germans are members of families that belonged to the group of Holocaust perpetrators, including beneficiaries of the Holocaust, members of the Nazi party during the Holocaust, and perpetrators of Nazi sponsored terror during the Holocaust. Sitting down with these men and women over dinner really hit it home for me: it is senseless to blame or to prejudice myself against modern day Germany for the crime of the past generations. It is pointless to want revenge or to hold responsible the people who sat across from me for the a past that they did not take part in. I think that I already knew this in a cerebral way, but the simple act of talking to them, of speaking with them about the Holocaust, about their taste in music, about the angst they have over the past of their country and their families, knowing that we share the same questions about the past and of the future- namely: how could this have happened, and where do we go from here- made me understand forgiveness in a totally new way. After we said goodnight, I realized how important forgiveness is, not just for them but also for me- in forgiving, I was able to have a good time, to allow myself to be pleasant, to enjoy myself, to want to enjoy myself in their company and to want to be good company. In reaching what I think is a point of forgiveness, I have I think, given myself permission to enjoy my time here.  August 22, 2006   I started the day out with an early morning run through the woods that stretch behind the Greunwald neighborhood. The woods are very much out of a Grimm Brother?s fairy tale,  a little Disney, a little Hansel and Gretl. I ran along a lake and returned tired, satisfied, and very pleased with myself and my surroundings. Greunwald is very picturesque and mild mannered. After a quick breakfast, we left for the day?s activities. After driving through more forest terrain, we passed through the suburban neighborhood that borders the German Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen. Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp prisoners were mostly Jews and political prisoners. Typhus was rampant, conditions unbearable, and in April 1940, the first crematory was built in Sachsenhausen. The infamous "Arbeit macht frei" slogan appears at the heavily barb-wired gates, and inside we visited the bumkers, the inspection areas, and the infamous ?Stazion Z?, where prisoners were sent to be systematically shot and mined for gold teeth by the SS. To this day, the camp is subject to attacks to the remains by Neo-Nazis. A few years ago, a Neo-Nazi  group broke into the camp, painted swastikas on some of the buildings, and set the remaining bunkers on fire. Recently, some excavations uncovered massive amounts of ashes, which were subsequently given proper burial. Our guide explained that the soft mosses growing on the camp perimeters covered acres upon acres of buried ash. During our visit, a few school groups of German students were also going through the camp on tours. I found it again unbearable that children should have to learn about these camps and these atrocities, and hard for me to comprehend how Germans can bear the weight of this history. During a lecture this evening, the head of the education development for Holocaust Curriculum spoke to us about how German youth is educated about the Holocaust. He described to us  through his translater how at age 9, he wanted to be part of the Hitler Youth, how after the liberation he experienced the world and everything he knew and believed in turned upside down; that which he was told before 9 was good was now evil, evil now good.  Our guide at the camp explained to us, in a personal anecdote, how her grandmother insisted that she never knew what was happening to the Jews. The guide revealed that later she found out that the SS marched Jewish prisoners to the camps right in front of her Grandmother?s house. What we know, what we see, what we choose to believe, what reality we invest in is so objective. Late tonight, we watched a documentary by Marte Ludin. Ludin?s father was a conviced Nazi, sentenced to death and hung for war crimes. The documentary chronicled conversations with Ludin?s mother, sisters, and grandchildren. Despite being presented with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, Ludin?s sisters and mother refused to admit his father?s culpability. They excused him on the basis that they claimed he couldn?t have known, just following orders, etc. etc. The level of denial and defensiveness was both astounding to us, and to Ludin, who was present with us for the movie and stayed to answer our questions. I asked him what he thought it would take for Germans to get beyond the guilt and the denial, and whether he thought they ever will. He said he does not think his generation will ever get beyond it. Maybe, he said, the next generation has a chance. I am captivated by the stories of the people we meet. Most of them have a story, a background, a personal past that they are trying to reconcile themselves with, as well as a German national identity that they are struggling to understand, accept, and become proud of. I am so intrigued by this internal struggle. From Marte Ludin?s documentary, to our guide at Sachsenhausen?s admission, to the educator?s burden of teaching the past of this country while still letting his/her children understand that they should be proud to be a modern-day German, it is a conflict that truly humbles me. I came her with the question of whether I could reconcile German society?s past with its present, and now I understand that my reconciliatory difficulties lie with the history of Germany, not the people. I see how important the dialogue between German and Jews is, and how much the search for answers is mutual and necessary.      The Berlin Holocaust Memorial for Jewish Victims.    Deb at the Berlin Wall.   The old railway paths. The tracks that stopped at a station located less than half a mile from where I am staying carried thousands of Jews to the camps. August 21, 2006 I arrived in Berlin late Sunday evening. From the airport, a taxi took me through the city to Grunewald, where I will be staying for the duration of the conference at the European Academy in Berlin. The Academy accomodates guests of the German Government, and is quite beautiful and located in a residential area abutting the forest. It is surounded by embassies and some very beautiful estates. Other seminar participants and I stayed up and shared our backgrounds and our expectations for our time in Berlin. As for me, I really did not know what to expect then, and after my first day here, I am still unclear about what I should expect. From my readings, my understanding of both the geography of the city and how it functions as a society is very confused. Now that I am here, I find both the city structure and its existance in being both a historical presence and a contemporary functioning entity extremely disconcerting. Walking around the city today, introduced to the historical sites of the city along the way, I still find that I cannot detect the city's center. It seems totally ungrounded and I find myself unable to locate its geographic essence or its contemporary status. Berlin is a city uprooted, construction and deconstruction is the only architectural and social consistency. Unlike other European cities that are grounded in the past, Berlin must function in the absence of its architectural history (most of the city was destroyed in the WWI bombings), and the overbearing omnipotence of its past. Every pre WWII building that stands connects it to the Nazi regime. Memorials of all shapes and sizes remind visitors and inhabitants alike that the bustling city once served as the center of operations during the Holocaust. In the center of the city stands the Berlin Memorial for Jewish Victims of the Holocaust, a large field of undulating grounds with countless gray stone pillars of different sizes in a field the size of a small park. Each stone, perhaps a pillar of a Jewish community broken off, perhaps a victim of a different age unites with the others to form a discombobulating maye. The field is as nameless, signless, unidentified as the massive graves of the six million left in the wake of the Holocaust. In front of the University and beside the Berlin library, a plaza contains a small plaque which reads 'A society that first burns the books later burns the people' - the site of the infamous Nazi Book Burnings. A large steel structure in the square piles books of famous authors and intellectuals condemned in the burnings. A large underground pit holds empty bookshelves. The absence of the symbol eerily invokes the ghosts of loss. Around the corner from the Academy, a large group merrily toasts the warm summer night at a local pub. We walk to teh S-Bahn, the train stop that brings us from our residence to the city center. As we walk to the new train depot, we must walk over the railroad tracks that deported Jews from cities throughout Europe to likely death in the camps. These tracks have been destroyed, stopped first by man to avert trains from ever carrying people again on that route, now by trees, foliages, and I noticed, one innocuous blackberry bush still bearing the summer fruit. In the moment, I am astonished and a little offended that something continues to flourish, to thrive, and to propagate itself on this land. One must literally walk over the ghosts of the Berlin of the past to transport one's self into Berlin in the present. Each site, every road both functions for and in the present, and forever for and in the past. A pedestrian walkway also follows the shadow of what used to be the Berlin wall. I walk through the streets and when I take a taxi ride from an aged driver, I wonder what he was doing 65 years ago, whether he was perhaps giving a salute as part of the Hitler Youth. Part of me finds this remarkable, as one finds survival of some species in the desert remarkable. I do not marvel at the resiliance, but rather I am simply astonished that given an atmosphere that seems so entirely devoid of the ability to spawn life and a land that should naturally poison life, creatures still choose to inhabit it, to forge continuum in a land that should stifle it. Yet life and modernity somehow inhabit this land, pub crawls, coffee shops, supermarkets, the hustle and bustle of Western commerce and culture. Unlike a Paris or a Rome, this city is not simply inhabiting the buildings and the memories in its past, but constructing its future. The Berlin I see today will look completely different in 10 years, and will have morphed again in 20. Buildings in East Berlin demolished by the Nazis, ressurected in the utilitarian style of the Communists, and razed again after Germany's reunification and the exile of the Communist regime, are again reconstructed, this time after the original models of the Prussian Empire. Museums open, seemingly on a yearly basis. They comment on the country's past, and because of their recent construction, these commentaries document a past so recent it seems like the present. And so the city feels almost like a museum of contemporary culture, forcing one (well at least me) to ask whether this is a society that can truly live in its present, or whether it will be able to reconcile itself with its past. Tomorrow's seminar will talk about how Germany's children are taught the history of the Holocaust, and how they grow up with the understanding that this cornerstone of human history is the history of their country and their culture, part of their past, that the cities the cities that they will grow up in are living memorials to terror and mourning. As I walk to my hotel room with a Holocaust Survivor, I find myself once again confused, l ost in the labrynth of past and present. I am tired from jet lag, absorbed in my thoughts, remembering the day just spent and remembering the history just reviewed while mentally preparing myself for tomorrow's activities. I wonder again, as I walk, how much I or any of us here can live in the present day of Berlin or the presence of its past.