Pathetic fallacy (1)

Couldn’t post yesterday: internet problems!

Wed. was our first full day of touring Jewish sites.

We spent the entire morning at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, about an hour’s drive from the middle of Berlin. The weather was bleak, windy, and frankly chilly. If you remember high school English, you’ll know this could be called an instance of pathetic fallacy: weather matching or echoing emotional states.

No doubt about it, it was a dreary place. We walked through the museum and open areas with our incredibly well informed and personable guide, historian Dr. Robert Sommer. We took in the ruins of the execution areas (interior and exterior), the offices, barracks, and memorials to the hundreds of victims (of executions, but more often of hunger and disease). Wide fields separated everything. (I, of course, made note of the wild flowers growing there.) Pine forests surrounded it all. 

Dr. Sommer showed us how the East Germans took one point of view when they memorialized the victims, while the West Germans, after unification, took quite another. (The camp is in the former GDR.) It’s too much to get into here – and I have yet to process my notes – but this appeared to me to be something you would not likely learn elsewhere. This and many other things he said. Nothing quite like a well-informed guide to make the difference between a mere tour and a rivetting mini-seminar.

We drove back in various states of silence. Nobody had been surprised by Sachsenhausen – as in, not ready for the sight of a huge place for processing and eliminating human beings – yet “psyching” yourself up for it was one thing. Being there, walking among the one-time barracks, was quite another.

We drove to the large street nicknamed Ku’damm: very posh, with familiar stores and German boutiques. Much to my surprise, anyway, Naomi led us inside an extremely fancy restaurant that dated from at least the beginning of the last century. It’s called Kampinski’s and it’s part of a swanky hotel. We weren’t even dressed in our best! I ordered vegetarian lasagna – there was nothing much else to order without fish, beast, or bird in the starring role (the Germans do love “fleisch”). Here’s a photo of my dish before I devoured it. It was perhaps the most delicious lasagna I’d ever tasted. 

We met with another knowledgeable person, this time at the Jewish community center. She told us about the Jews returning to Berlin over the years, and how the community receives them. Many were Russians for a long time, but in recent years, the influx from the former soviet states has all but dried up. The old community center was all but destroyed years ago, but the new one has incoporated the remains of the former glory at the entrance.

Afterwards, we headed by bus to the Goethe Institute, the organization that is sponsoring this trip. We met a film maker named Nicola Gelliner, and watched a film from her recent festival – at least we did until technical difficulties stopped the DVD from functioning!

After that, supper at a lovely Thai restaurant, then back to the hotel for blog etc.