My wife and I recently returned from eight days in Berlin, where we gobbled up history and waffles in almost equal measure. Our son is doing book research over there and his family joined him for a few weeks and we came along as a kind of consolation prize and, perhaps, another wallet.
A trip to Berlin is not exactly a vacation at a Caribbean resort, or even a drop-in at a pretzel and sausage chomping Munich beer hall. There is a grey kind-of "World War Cold War" look to Berlin. I don't want to give the wrong impression — we had a great time. The visit coincided with my granddaughter's fifth birthday, and Tessa became convinced that the family had traveled overseas just to recognize the occasion. Our grandson found an indoor place to play basketball, and we all had a great time at the Berlin pop-up Christmas markets; a kind-of Christkindlemarkt on steroids.
But the essence of Berlin is its dark history and the way in which it... I don't want to use the word "embraces," but the way that it accepts that history; doesn't hide from it, sees it as a way to educate.
Nowhere was this more reflected on our trip than with the Stolpersteines located outside our family's temporary quarters in what was on the "wrong side" of the Berlin Wall. Stolpersteines are small concrete cubes bearing a brass plate inscribed with names and dates of Nazi victims. The program was initiated in 1992, and it became a kind-of collective civics lesson, as efforts were made to find the last place that a Jewish victim lived or worked. Over 100,000 such plaques are laid around the city; a constant reminder of what happened there.
Similarly, near what is probably the city's most popular gathering place, Brandenburg Gate, lies the Holocaust memorial. 2,700 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern — simple, stark, adhering to that moody feel of Berlin. Underneath the memorial (and much of Berlin's history is under the surface, reflecting a city that was once defined by its wartime bunkers), is the city's Holocaust museum. They don't call it that. It's the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; straightforward, no nonsense nomenclature, that in keeping with the Berlin philosophy that all Nazi-related sites are not to be forgotten or celebrated, but to tell a tale. Spin a lesson.
At a speech at the dedication of the memorial, a Holocaust survivor named Sabina Wolinski said that while the Nazi horror took away everything she valued, it also taught her that the sins of the elders are not visited upon later generations. That redemption comes from remembrance.
The parents of my grandchildren, Jamie and Erin, conferred for a minute or two on whether their children should visit the museum. They said "yes" to nine-year-old Asa and "no" to soon-to-be five-year-old Tessa. I watched Asa as he made his way through the remembrance hall, staring at the pictures but mostly reading the first-person testimonies of survivors. I doubt he'll ever get a more effective history lesson.
I bring all this up in the context of what's going on historical preservation wise in our own country. Pushing for changes in school curriculums to eradicate lessons about slavery, censoring museum exhibits, removing books from libraries, painting over murals: we seem to be going in the opposite direction from Germany, which elected to face up to its past, and in doing so, educate and illuminate. I don't think of myself as paranoid — I know everyone always says that — but I couldn't help but see parallels to our own government right now. the nonstop aggression, the casual cruelty.
I hope I haven't turned you off to Berlin. A multicultural city, the food is great, the people are wonderful, and they haven't stopped serving beer. There's nothing wrong with learning something along the way — entertainment through edification.
