Reflections on Germany

Germany...we found it very difficult to get seats from India to Europe...finally we got on Air France from Bangalore to Paris>>>Frankfurt>>>Berlin

We went to Bangalore...had a lovely dinner with some of the faculty from UTC...went upstairs to check in for a 2:30 am flight and found out that a terrible storm in Paris had forced cancellation of our flight...hours later in the Bangalore Airport...we were put on Qatar Airlines.

Flying on the Qatar Airlines…was ONE long painful experience of GATE KEEPERS!

Doha…the skyline from afar…real Oil Arabs…Muslims from Indodesia..foreign workers and a Mosque in the Airport with entrances for males and females..

Finally....after arguing and then purchasing a different ticket...we got there

Berlin…a big city with great beer…

The Neue Synagogue…a second visit..climbing all the way to the top

Lots of school children visiting, non-Jews asking questions

Visiting the beautiful Lutheran Cathedral nearby…rebuilt in all its glory..

You can’t get in the small new shul only open for Shabbat..so most people see what WAS!

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe…in the middle of a neighborhood within 100 yards of the completely redone Brandenburg Gate..the street is closed off for the British Embassy…walking to the memorial there are no significant signs…though you see the steelea…we saw several teens playing on them..taking photos..smiling…I was upset..Machelle asked me not to make a scene…a security guard eventually found them and told them to stop…the rows of matte black different heights…”kittywampus”…all angles…NO straight rows…all the rows end at the street…houses, apts…souvinere stores…cafes…then you find the entrance down into the information center…NOT a memorial nor a museum…simple wall INFORMATION of history…then a room with names of the camps on the wall…and in the floor back-lit statements by victims…pictures of handwritten or original statements…translated…different ideas.. very well done…quiet…everyone is tooking down…then several large back-lit boards with families from all over Europe…their stories…large pictures…far right listing of everyone in the photo of who died and where…the diversity of Jewish life that was destroyed..

Shoah and Holocaust are according to Rolf, foreign idioms that do not translate immediately to German…issue of immediate accessibility…MURDERED has total clarity…forever changes KJV translation of Asseret HaDibrot…Nov. Pogrom NOT KRISTALLNACHT which is a REICH idiom…like the use of Maranos or Flashas..

Today Germans who know use, So-Called Kristallnacht

Berlin does really…own its own reality of being the origin of the Unthinkable.. USHMM is not a memorial site like Auschwitz or even Warsaw or Barbi Yar nor is it Yad VaShem where victims and survivors live…whose memory…purpose of the memory…who is asking me NOT TO FORGET??? Berlin understands…this is the place where it began or this is the place where the perpetrators gave the orders…led the attacks.

Train from Berlin to Kassel…beautiful and very quick