Berlinin not Disneyland
(excerpt from Entry 46 "Berlin not Disneyland"of my journal"Lost in France")
When the bus pulls up to the Brandenburg Gate, we decide to get off. The Holocaust Memorial is nearby and it is on my bucket list. In a very wide open space, almost as long as a football field and considerably wider, massive gray concrete blocks are arranged in a grid pattern. There are narrow passageways between the monoliths. As you enter the cruel meadow of stone, the ground slopes down toward the center. The weight of all that sin and cruelty from the past pulls you down gradually into darkness blocking the sun. It is a powerful metaphor of Germany’s slide into darkness. What I didn’t know was that there is a Holocaust museum underneath the field of massive blocks.
“Museum” seems too small a word for the experience we had. You are underground, all is shades of gray. The corbeled concrete ceiling mirrors the blocks above and ever so slightly bends downward, lending a feeling of claustrophobia. Of course, there are mind-numbing facts and figures, but the information is humanized. In one room, pages from the diaries of doomed captives are illuminated on the floor; you move between the pages as if you were in a graveyard. Their words are kind and confused, at times despairing, but not lost. Another room has phones where you can hear actors recreate the words of survivors that are now gone. You select your language and listen to their stories of horrible choices in impossible situations. At the end of each story you find out the final fate of the truth teller. The pain and guilt of surviving while everyone you loved died is too much to bear; some survivors committed suicide. Others were able to go on somehow.
My daughter Claire, who had been there before, told us to go through the museum and Memorial separately and experience it in solitude. Nearing the end, I reunited with Nancy. She leaned into my chest sobbing. I shed a few tears. There was nothing to say. Emerging from the museum, I climbed the stairs toward the light and then walked in between the tight rows of towering monoliths and experienced the feeling of being lost for just a few moments, which was enough. I heard people laughing and taking goofy selfies as if they were at some amusement park. I chose to forgive them.
Everyone was hungry, so following Google maps we head off to the Mall of Berlin and a meal of falafels. On our way we came upon a nondescript dirt parking lot. As we approached it, Ed said, “Hey, that looks similar to the location of Hitler’s bunker.” Sure enough, there were tour groups there. We pause briefly but move on to our goal of falafels—why spend time on him.