Remembering Tragedy

Berlin is a city that just oozes history. For example, at The Topography of
Terror, the remains of a Nazi bunker are framed by a residual chunk of the Berlin wall. Germany has a difficult task when it comes to presenting their history. The country produced one of the worst events in human history and then had a wall dividing its people--how exactly are you supposed to go about presenting that? I think the museums and memorials we've visited have been handling it well. The memorials have been clever and moving.

The architecture at the Judisches (Jewish)
Museum was built to purposefully be disorienting,
and one of the areas (The Garden of Exile) was built to cause visitors to walk at angles that cause a sense of vertigo (Notice the angles in the picture over to the right). Another room had metal faces stacked upon each other on the floor that all had a similar screaming expression. The artist who created the "Fallen Leaves" said that he meant visitors to walk across the installation. This caused a horrible clanging noise and the experience was haunting and disturbing.

We have also visited where the Wannsee Conference was held, this was the house that the Nazis decided on the final solution.Chilling as the fact that they were planning on how to exterminate an entire group of people is, even more horrifying was that it was done civilly and over breakfast. Organizing and leading the conference was Reinhard Heydrich.

For my free weekend, I ventured to Dresden, a city that used to be famous for it's porcelain and is now famous for being fire bombed. I also went out of Germany and into the Czech Republic. Prague was a good city to end the week of Jewish history on, as I got to visit the Jewish district. The district used to be the worst part of town, but has now become one of the most prestigious areas. One spot on the walking tour was a synagogue that the Nazis (under orders by Heydrich) had left untouched for the purpose of using it to create " a museum about an extinct race, a museum about the Jews." Unsurprisingly, my favorite part of the tour was hearing about Czech resistance to Nazi occupation and their successful assassination of Heydrich.
Prague synagogue
Tree at the Jewish Museum where you can hang a wish written on a paper-pomengranite



















This is a memorial at a Jewish graveyard in Berlin. Stones placed on graves for mourning are a Jewish tradition.




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