"I should like someone to remember that there was once lived a person named David Berger" is the quote from David Berger in his last letter written 1941. I was at the Jewish Memorial Museum where I had been briefly on a tour before.
I fully expected the tour to be packed with middle aged to elderly men but there was a good variety of people. Our guide Barneby was a giant at 204 cms tall. He had a very dry sense of humour but was very informative and at times, I felt as if I could have been at a university lecture instead of a tour.
We stopped at the old Reserve Guard building which was made famous in the movie "Valkyrie". The real players were in the building and were shot in the courtyard. Our guide described Hitler as the luckiest man in history for having captured power and then escaping assassination attempts so often. Other potential collaborators met their deaths in a way too gruesome for the scope of this blog. Cruel and bizarre might sum it up.
Next, we saw a bullet and sharpenel marked building. They serve as living memorials to what happened. Next, we took in the gates of Brandenberg where the Nazis marched a procession through continuously except they were making a circle around the street to make their numbers look bigger than they actually were. The lighter moment of the tour came when we saw the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the edge! Worth the 12 Euros alone for that!!
We also took in the Reichstag where the accused apparently set the stone building on fire with a box of matches. Not likely and the sanity of the accused is questionable. Our guide thought that Hitler was unaware but that agents of Goering might have done it. That was the break that Hitler needed to take power and rule as a dictator.
Our stop at the Murdered Jews Memorial was interesting because at first glance, it is just a bunch of blocks set into the ground. However, they are all unique and as you go further into the centre. It gets deeper and darker. It has been designed to be big enough to allow a wheelchair go through but two people cannot walk shoulder to shoulder through it. Clever. There is also no one spot where someone can hide. It has multiple alleyways which can all be seen from various angles.
It has been controversial because other groups were affected but are not included in the memorial. Additionally, people wondered what it was but the architect intentionally choose something interactive as it was impossible to make one thing to represent this tragic experience. It is strange in that initially it doesn't look likd much but once you come out, it held much deeper meaning for me.
I came back later to view the museum and appreciated again, all the individual stories and efforts made to get stories out, no matter how short. To be remembered maybe, is everyone's wish. One area had a story on each person murdered in the war. It would take roughly seven years to listen to each one. I stayed for three all involving women. It was absolutely quiet in the museum and several people wiped away tears during the tour.
Back to the tour with Barneby. We went to the area where Hitler had his bunker and saw the rough area where Hitler and Eva would have been cremated. Our guide reasoned that it must have been the strangest wedding and reception ceremony ever. What would you say?
To finish off the tour, we saw the building of Eichmann who was the guy in charge of the trains that played such a big role in the Holocaust. His building was one of the few still standing. Remarkably, the massive office of Goering was also somehow spared in the massive bombing of Berlin. All traces of war damages were removed though. The tour gave me a better perspective on Germans willingness to participate in this horror and I am more convinced that it was a small minority controlling the majority. They take the lessons from it very seriously now and I found that it is actually illegal to be a Holocaust denier. Apparently on some tours, there are people who state that the numbers are grossly exaggerated. That one innocent was put to death is enough I think. Afterwards, I headed back to take in the Jewish Memorial Museum. A deep day that just flew by. I have one and a half more days here and I'm torn about what to do.