{"id":21580,"date":"2012-09-08T10:28:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T17:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=21580"},"modified":"2012-09-11T00:16:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T07:16:24","slug":"berlin-between-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=21580","title":{"rendered":"Berlin Between Past and Present"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Existential art in East Berlin\/Photo: Candace Mittel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can\u2019t help but point out the irony in taking an El Al flight to Berlin.\u00a0 Despite the 67 years that have passed since WWII ended, the ironies are there.\u00a0 Who would have thought that just 67 years after the end of the most vile attempt to annihilate the Jewish people in history, the Jewish people would have built their own airline company that flies passengers – Jewish passengers! – to the very same country that harbored the genocide, that murdered the passengers\u2019 grandparents? The paradoxes exist – they are glaring and they are rough, and yet they are often comfortably overlooked by the millions of tourists visiting Berlin, one of the most popular and chic cities in Europe, each year.\u00a0 It is easier not to look.\u00a0 But as Charlotte Delbo, the French writer noted for her powerful memoirs of Auschwitz, writes: \u201cTry to look.\u00a0 Just try to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Graffiti in Potsdam\/Photo: Candace Mittel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a difficult balance between past and present – when to really look, when to really see, and when to look and see without the ghostly impression of the Holocaust overshadowing your every thought, your every step.\u00a0 The AJC trip I participated on was titled: \u201cGermany Close Up: American Jews Meet Modern Germany\u201d and modern Germany (by way of Berlin) is, according to the El Al website: \u201can attractive touristic center for visitors from all over the world…the European capital of nightlife…rich with culture that unravels an old world corresponding to the Western progress.\u201d\u00a0 El Al\u2019s blurb for Berlin goes on: \u201cif you are planning a flight to Berlin, you should plan your vacation in advance, for the city offers varying concert, opera, and museum halls.\u00a0 And if you have any time to spare – Berlin is a great place for shopping.\u201d\u00a0 Nothing about how by the end of 1939, the Jewish population of Berlin had dropped to about 82,800, 50% of the Jewish population figure in 1933. Nothing about how on the night of November 9th, 1938, most of the synagogues in Berlin were burnt to the ground, the windows of Jewish schools, offices, and other public institutions were smashed and destroyed.\u00a0 Nothing about how on that night dozens of Jews were murdered in the streets of Berlin and several thousand were arrested and taken to concentration camps where they suffered through inhumane labor and starvation until their eventual murders at death camps a few years later.\u00a0 Nothing about how on December 3, 1938 a law was passed banning Jews to move about freely in public – Jews could not use public swimming pools or enter government office compounds.\u00a0 Nothing about how by the end of the war, just 67 years ago, a total of 50,500 Jews had been deported from Berlin to death camps in the East.<\/p>\n

Is it all too exhausting?\u00a0 Is that why we don\u2019t remind our El Al passengers of Berlin\u2019s history on the flight over there?\u00a0 Is it all too remembered?\u00a0 Too reminded, too taught, too ingrained in our historical memory as a People?\u00a0 But how does one walk the streets of Berlin and not remember?\u00a0 Every block or so, you literally stumble upon a memorial, walk right over it on your way to the grocery store, the movie theater, a bar with friends.\u00a0 There are thousands of these \u201cstumbling stones,\u201d in Europe, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of the Holocaust, commemorating those murdered at the hands of the Nazis. I noticed them everywhere I went in Berlin: the name, the date he or she was deported, the date and place he or she was murdered.<\/p>\n

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Memorials for Jews murdered in the Holocaust\/Photo: Candace Mittel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The question emerges then, not just in Germany but in Israel and in the collective memory of the Jewish people, how to move forward without forgetting the past, but without simultaneously suffocating from it.\u00a0 We should not let the past enclose us in a tiny box in which all we discuss, all we are concerned with, all we remember is a specific event in history.\u00a0 Yes, the Holocaust is both a formidable and consequential event in Jewish history, yet I am under the conviction that we should not concentrate exclusively on one event, even the Holocaust, and emphasize it with radically greater weight than any other event in our 3,000 year history as a People.\u00a0 Berlin was the first center of the Haskalah, the Jewish cultural enlightenment movement in the 18th and 19th centuries.\u00a0 I visited the exhibit at the home of Moses Mendlessohn, the eighteenth century German Jewish philosopher whose ideas sparked the Haskalah, forever changed our modes of Jewish thought, and led to the founding of Reform Judaism.\u00a0 In the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century, 142,000 Jews lived in Berlin, dominating and influencing the city\u2019s intellectual, economic, and cultural life in many arenas.\u00a0 Yes, the events following 1930 are also significant, and we should not forget that in August 1933, the Berlin-Lichtenberg municipality revoked trading licenses that had been granted to Jews.\u00a0 But Jewish history in Berlin specifically, and in Germany, Europe, and the rest of the world, is rich and extensive, sometimes compelling and magnificent, animated with stories of triumph and success, perseverance and pride, and sometimes so darkly dismal, stained with sorrow and horror, depression and calamity, almost to the point of destruction.<\/p>\n

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Communist dictators Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing on the lips\/Photo: Candace Mittel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After 7 months in Israel, and as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and a great-granddaughter of innocent victims murdered in Auschwitz, my visit to Berlin touched a deep struggle to balance the past with the present.\u00a0 \u201cAmerican Jews Meet Modern Germany.\u201d\u00a0 It was a confrontation with the past, ever present and obvious, and yet it was an agreement with the present. I affirmed the current Berlin, one of Europe\u2019s chicest cities, parading its liberal character on every corner, from a rather large billboard of a vagina to a painted segment of the Berlin wall depicting the Communist dictators Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing on the lips.\u00a0 Berlin boasts cultural institutions and platforms for artists, and the city is celebrated as the nucleus of youth and popular culture in Europe.<\/p>\n

I saw this Berlin.\u00a0 I really did.\u00a0 I saw the Berlin that everyone admires: the funky existential art posing philosophical questions such as \u201cHow long is now,\u201d the innovative graffiti that decorates the city in vibrant colors and clever images, the wild night life that only begins at midnight, the friendly residents sporting voguish clothing.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t neglect the past.\u00a0 I could not ignore the past.\u00a0 I remember a walking tour we had in Berlin one day titled \u201cThe Absence of Empty Spaces: Don\u2019t Trust the Green Grass.\u201d\u00a0 From the open field to the left where a group of slouchy teenagers sit smoking pot to the park on the right where a mom pushes her daughter on a bright yellow swing, there is a story to the grass beneath you.\u00a0 Don\u2019t trust it for what it looks to be. The grass in Berlin will have grim stories.\u00a0 Just keep that in mind.<\/p>\n

Candace Mittel interned at Midnight East during the summer of 2012. She is currently completing her studies at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n

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Candace Mittel in front of Humboldt University, Berlin, where Einstein studied.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t help but point out the irony in taking an El Al flight to Berlin.\u00a0 Despite the 67 years that have passed since WWII ended, the ironies are there.\u00a0 Who would have thought that just 67 years after the end of the most vile attempt to annihilate the Jewish people in history, the Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}