Berlin

So, I'm back - the long awaited and sometimes dreaded visit to Berlin happened and is gone in a flash.

Let me say right off the bat - it was amazing.

First of all, we were all survivors or first generation of survivors and just being in the same room with people who KNOW how that feels, who've had all those feelings that are so unique - I felt I "knew" them all. Those who spoke up and shared got immediate responses of identification and commiseration.

I think of all the stories I heard, and I wish I could get them written down - compiled to share and to hold.

Carol was the best at making contact and learning people's stories. She's always been a people person and as I have so often said telling her not to speak to strangers was useless when she was little because she never met a stranger. She's not that much different now.

The Berlin government went to great and expensive lenths to make us feel welcome.
First of all - money. They paid for my husband and myself to fly there business class which may have spoiled me for life. They paid for our room for one week - not only that they paid for my son and daughter-in-law and their baby's room. They paid for Carol's room - not everyone brought an entourage with them but they were generous
to me.

Breakfast was included and it was vast, German and delicious. We all looked forward to breakfast and have missed it since leaving. We touched base with each other and we enjoyed the hospitality that food always conveys.

There were welcoming speeches and good bye speechs by the Mayor of Berlin and by the Vice President of the Senate - accompanied by buffets or a reception with appetizers generously served.

There were tours of the city, of the Jewish sites (good and bad), of the river Spree,
and the Jewish Museum. We had access to things that many people don't know exist let alone visit.

But the emotions were the centerpiece for me. I was so moved to be in the city of my birth - beautiful, green, with this lovely river running through it and with a park at it's center like a green heart beat. This city I felt I knew - my Mother had told me often of the great Kuferstendam street - a shopping street but also a street of cafes, restaurants, flower shops and gift stores. A street where people come to meet, greet and share. It throbs with life and energy.

I knew the street names as though I had lived there. I "recognized" some of the historic buildings as though they didn't just live in pictures but in my life. Some, of course, are so associated with Germany of the '30's that everyone knows them as they know the Eiffel Tower without going to Paris. The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie. But something more resonated in me - could I remember them? I was only two when we left but I don't doubt that my Mother and I, in my pram, strolled some of those places. Certainly,
the Tiergarten, the zoo, Ku'dam (as they call it) and Unter den Linden. I KNOW I was there before.

But there was pain too. We visited the street where my Father's business had been and where we lived. All reconstructed since WWII - I gather the bombing finished off a lot of Berlin and not all has been reconstructed as it was. But the street is there - quiet, green and close to all those things above that were part of my life.

We visited the Jewish cemetary - Weisensee (White Sea). I had heard my parents talk about that too - but never imagined the real thing as a thing of great beauty. It is huge - acres and acres of graves in a forest of greenery dense, quiet and eternal (or so it feels). It has been there 200 years and they are still burying Jews there. It goes on for miles, it seems, of rambling paths leading to clusters of upright granite markers - some ornate, some plain. The authorities had found my Grandmother's grave and we all were teary eyed as we cleaned up the ivy that was swallowing it and removed the debris that had collected.

The plain white stone said her name, her maiden name, the date of birth, the date of death. Plain, simple and so cherished. I know her three sons put in money to buy the plot and the stone - an act of love in the middle of the destruction of their lives. I'm told she loved me - I still have receiving blankets she made for me with the simple blanket stitch along the edges - I've saved them because they were something she touched with love for me. We left flowers and a stone I had picked up for the purpose.

I'm told there were other Baendels in that place but we had no time to search them out. It's strange to see a place that holds some of my family history - for so long it seemed that we were rootless, stateless and had no history.

We also went to a place called Grunewald (Green Forest). It is a neighborhood of beautiful homes, villas, and manors all set in beautiful trees and woods. Many with spacious grounds. Here lived the elite, the movie stars, the politicians. In the middle is a charming little, very Bavarian looking, train station. It looks like a cuckoo clock and you think a bird (a big one) might come cuckooing out - BUT, this is the train station where Berlin's Jews were herded into cattle cars and taken off to their fate which was a quick and painful death in some cases, and in some cases a long slow torture of starvation, torture and disease.

There are places where signs have been preserved - a historical reminder - one sign from 1933 states that Jews may no longer join singing clubs. It seems a foolish sign - until you realize, they really meant it - Jews were not good enough to sing with gentiles....they could not belong to any associations and the Germans love their associations and clubs. They have singing, dancing, hiking, picnicing, swimming, social clubs. Men's clubs, women's clubs, singles' clubs. And in the beginning of the Nazi regime, it was deemed unacceptable to have Jews in any of them.

There was the "new" Jewish synagogue (150 years old) - just a remnant of it's old glory with gilded roof, carved beams - still functioning for the remnant of Jews who still live in Berlin. And there are quite a few - nothing like the prewar numbers - but some who will live here because it's their home and their right and to leave means "that Hitler wins". On the wall of the synagogue there is a plaque - I don't know what any of it says except it ends with three words which translate to "Never forget".

We visited the site of the infamous wall, which is by the side of a pile of rubble left intact - once it was the home of the Gestapo. A place soaked in fear, suffering and degradation. Nothing is to be built in that space. It is too saturated with - dare I say - evil.

But the sun shone - it was downright hot and sticky. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds and all was right with the world.

Thousands of Germans collected in the Tiergarten to watch soccer and they beat England. There was ecstasy in the streets. The roar of the crowd could be heard for miles. In our hotel room, we knew when there was a score. The police were very present - quietly ready for any civil unrest that might arise. But the people were peacefully delirious. Waving flags, wearing flags, hanging them from rooftops, and balconies, hanging out of car windows waving the flag. I wanted England to win.

One of the speakers struck a nerve with me. They all had said how sorry they were,
how unforgiveable the past was; how they were working that such a thing could never again occur; that they hoped for good relations with the Jewish people and with Israel. But, this one speaker spoke of how the German people carried with them guilt and shame and grief - that no conversation with a Jew was completely free of this weight of the past - the recent past. I wonder if that's true - maybe for some people.

One of the wonderful people who volunteer to do this work of organizing, meeting, attending to the needs, helping the returnees said to me in response to my stating that I didn't know if I would have been brave enought to speak out as some did, risking their lives. She looked at me - deep into my eyes and said "But not enough did speak out." In that moment, I felt the weight she carried of the past.

So as I tried to deal with my feelings I realized that the ripples of those terrible times do not disappear in one or two generations. We are all branded on some level
with the marks of a past too painful to contemplate, let alone forgive.

I'll probably write moe on this subject as time goes on but these are my first impressions and the impressions made on me.