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)