Goodbye

Well then, tomorrow is (finally?) the day I will fly to Japan. I cannot say I am terribly excited, nor am I really that happy I am going yet again. However, hopefully this time will be more interesting, easier to survive and more exciting than last time.

One of the reasons I did not enjoy Japan the last time is that I was expecting something which it turned out not to be. Accepting one's dreams and hopes were maybe severly misguided isn't quite easy to accept, but - しょうがない - it can't be helped.

There are some things I do look forward to do in Japan, though: Meeting my old friends I had to leave behind last time, going to sentou, Japanese cuisine...

Well then, let's not look back. Japan!, here I come!

Berlin: Never Forget

German history has seen a lot of ups and downs, but probably no one period has had such a profound and horrific impact as the extermination of the Jews under the Third Reich. Every once in a while there is much discussion in Germany about how responsible the current (i.e. my) generation is for the terrible actions of our ancestors. This discussion essentially misses the point. It does not really matter, whether we - the Germans - did it or we - each individual - did it. The Holocaust is a part of German history, our history, my history. Of course it is necessary to find the last war criminals alive and put them to justice. However, the current generation of Germans' responsibility is never to forget what we have caused. We have killed six million people because we regarded them as inferior, as tainting our blood. Six million innocent people. It must never happen again!

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial is a place to remember what happened. The field is made of 2,711 concrete stelae, which seem like graves. None of them is completely straight and the walkways inbetween are sloped up and down, which makes walking inbetween them genuinely confusing and disorienting. It is worth going with a friend to see how easily you lose each other inbetween blocks. Looking up you can see the sky being obscured by the slightly tilted blocks. It is a depressing sight and rightly so.

Walking through the field, you will eventually come to the museum, which is located underneath the field itself. Some of my previous entries have shown pictures of the inside of the museum and the horrible pieces of information it holds. The Room of Names is the one installation that stuck with me the most. It is a dark room with a couple of white blocks to sit on in the middle. Projectors show a name, year of birth and year of death on all four walls. Then a short biography for that person is read in German and in English.

Zvi-Otto Schuster
1933 - 1942

Zvi-Otto Schuster was born on April 4, 1933 in Rosenberg, a small town in the North of Slovakia. He began school just when Slovakia had become a sovereign country and started to disown and prosecute the Jewish population. From 1940 on Zvi was not allowed to go to school any more, like all other Jewish children. In June 1942 the Slovakian authorities deported him and his mother to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where the SS suffocated him with the poison gas Cyclon B. Zvi-Otto Schuster was nine years old.

Jakow Ajzensztadt
1927 - 1942

Jakow Ajzensztadt was born in Warsaw. Together with his younger sister he grew up in the Polish capital. In September 1939 the German Wehrmacht invaded the city. In 1940 the 13 year-old Jakow and his family were forced to move to the Ghetto with all other Warsaw Jews. They were deported to the extermination camp Treblinka in 1942. Except for Jakows Sister, the whole family was poisoned with exhaust fumes by the SS. Jakow Ajzensztadt was 15 years old.

Source: Berlin Holocaust Memorial, Room of Names, my translation)

Adam Buxton: Sausages

Today on Art and Sausages:

Berlin: Childhood

31 July 1942
Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won't let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly.
Your J.

(Source: Holocaust Memorial Museum, Berlin. Copy by Soviet soldier. Original missing. Written by 12 year old Judith Wischnjatskaja.)

An: Kurt Beck, SPD-Problembär

Lieber Kurt,

leider musste ich kürzlich durch die ach so gemeine deutsche 'Presse' erfahren, dass man Dich entmachtet hat. Was für ein Eklat! Eine hundsgemeine Intrige war das! Ein Komplott! Hinter deinem Rücken ohne Skrupel geschmiedet. Man hat Dich ja - ohne Vorwarnung oder ohne jemals wirklich offen konstruktive Kritik an Deiner Person zu üben - hinterrücks erdolcht.

Nun möchte ich Dir natürlich nicht nur mein Empören über dieses wirklich unverschämte Vorgehen deiner Parteigenossen mitteilen, sondern Dir auch ein wenig Mut für die Zukunft machen. Auch wenn sich die deutsche Wirtschaft langsam der Stagnation oder eventuell sogar der Rezession nähert, so sehe ich für Dich keinen Grund zur Sorge. Ich bin mir sicher, dass du alsbald einen neuen Job finden wirst, falls Du Dich rasierst, einen neuen Anzug kaufst und ein bis zwei hundert Pfund abspeckst.

Alles Gute und viel Glück für Dein weiteres Arbeitsleben.

Viele liebe Grüße,
Dein eggsnbacon

Awesomeness...

Kim Jong-Il about his father Kim Il-Sung on the website of the embassy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Berlin:

"Our leader is indeed the greatest leader of the working class. He personified unusual intelligence, outstanding leadership and lofty communist virtues, which nobody has ever possessed, and opened up and shone modern history with his profound revolutionary theories and great revolutionary practice. He is a benevolent father of the people, who brilliantly covered the whole distance of the prolonged revolutionary struggle with boundless devotion to the revolutionary cause and with warm love for the people."

Terrible News

Something horrible has happened at work today - MURDER! I am still shaking as I was the first to discover the slashed remains of my dear friends. The urinal cakes had been viciously attacked - possibly from behind - and had suffered fatal wounds. Their green blood...splattered all over the urinal! When I came to pee on them, I found them in their last death throes...I tried to resuscitate, but it was too late. 'Avenge our deaths' was the last thing they whispered before fading away into oblivion...