This photo gives you a sense of the memorial, Gleis 17, which means Track 17.
This is the track the Jews were taken from Berlin to be deported to various concentration camps.
The track is in Grünenwald.When you walk downstairs from tracks 1-4 turn left inside the train station, which is part of the S ban or above ground train lines used daily. It's how I got to this place and took another S ban to get back to the flat in Kreuzberg. Every panel has a grid and at the top or edge of the platform are: the date, the number of Jews (Juden), then Berlin – name of camp. Earlier in the beginning of this forced mass exit, the numbers are smaller, but then they would swell periodically. The largest number to Auschwitz was 1743. Sometimes there only 33 or even single digits. but they seemed to keep aiming for a quota of 100, I saw 100 a lot. On March 4th there were 1143, and the day before there were 1732. They went to Riga, Lodz, Theresenstadt, and Sachenshausen which is quite close to Berlin city centre.
Seeing these details is very chilling and disconcerting. Grünenwald is a bit out of Berlin, kind of like Westchester, but not as far (more like Forest Hills). If you walk around the block from the train station there are beautiful villas with lovely architecture, lawns and clean well swept sidewalks. This area didn't seem to be bombed, so the buildings pre-date 1945, unlike much of Berlin which was seriously flattened., by US and other allies. Berlin was bombed about 500 times more than London during the Blitz just for a comparison.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. These people (the whatever # Juden) were marched out of Berlin, made to walk to this station, through the streets and then put on these trains to take them to basically the end of their lives or if not that the lives they had before. The Jewish population was about one third of Berlin. That's a big proportion. I wonder on a busy day, a large group, what the people sitting in their villas thought of these people being marched (let's assume at gunpoint) down the street of their neighbourhood? Did they look out the window? Were they afraid? Smug? Disinterested?
Looking at this memorial, walking up and down the platform I heard other trains come and go. It reminded me of Steve Reich's 'Different Trains'. Hearing people chat and laugh over a beer at the nearby biergarten, audibly overlapping the trains passing, it gave a strong audio track to my contemplation of Gleis 17.
I went to Berlin, not to go to see the lurid horrors, the violent cruelty, e.g. Sachenausen near by, is open everyday. I knew there was dark history, and I wouldn't ignore it, but I wouldn't go on a tour of a camp. I've seen so much footage from age 11 onward. Previous to all this, I was interested as a young child to learn how to speak German. I'm sure my parents were horrified, it was 1971. Or they thought, whose kid is this? Earlier I had wanted to make a Japanese style doll house....Both my parents had lived unscathed in the US during WWII, but were very aware of who 'the enemy' was, and to have their kid interested in 'the enemies' culture? It wasn't the first or last time I tried their patience. But patient they were. When there was a program on TV (shortly after my interest blossomed) about the Holocaust, my Dad and I watched it, I was fascinated and puzzled as well as horrified. My father, at a rare moment of calm patience, after we watched, explained that was why he wasn't so keen about my learning German, though he himself had studied it in high school. Jump ahead 10 years: It was why on a Eurail pass summer break from college I went to Germany on my whirlwind tour of too many countries at once. To have it (Germany) not be 'this place' that was a country of people aka 'the enemy' who hated people 'like me'. I'm glad I did. It helped me peer over a wall that had built in my mind. The phrase, "If Nazis marched down Broadway, you would be dead, " was not uncommon when and where I was growing up. For some reason, the bigger part of me, went to visit 'this place'. I'm glad I did. Even now I have a friend that I met in Italy, lived in Köln, invited me to come visit her during this trip and it made all the difference. It put a person who I knew and liked on 'this place'.
I am not religious. I am Jewish by culture as I am Christian by culture (coming from my parents). Coming from New York City, my culture weighs more to the Jewish side. Preferably I am a secular humanist with my own personal spiritual beliefs that need not be shared because they are personal and not the point in this post.
Seeing this memorial, after seeing a bunch of others, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenman (who lived in my building and whose kids I babysat for), the Jewish Museum (designed by Daniel Libeskind (who designed the Freedom Tower and 9/11 memorial) and the plaques outside of buildings stating people who lived there and were deported. They all ask more questions than they provide answers. Strangely they circle back in some way to where I was from: far away and long after all this went down. I'm glad that they are there and that they do. This 'behaviour', treatment of people we consider 'other' continues to this day. We are all guilty and are all innocent, all victims, all complicit. It is in our natures, just as it is in our natures to be heroic and risk our life for another, sometimes a total stranger, which also happened many times during this dark history. And thankfully is still happening as we speak.
I didn't mean to be preachy or dark. My intention is to report what I see and share it through my eyes and thoughts. On the way to the Jewish History museum I saw this mural which I liked enough to take a snap. I take my leave with this photo:
BTW- Berlin is a terrific place. It has a dark history and almost everything built here is new, but the sensibility and the quality of life is very positive. I have enjoyed my time here. This trip has had an arch of 'all this' (see above), but I look forward to returning, it's nice to be here. Despite all I wrote I'm having a great time. I have met and been re-acquainted with wonderful people. It seems familiar. Perhaps in another space/time continuum it is.
