November 26, 2004/Kislev 13 5765, Vol. 57, No. 13
My Berlin diary...Veteran returns to city 60 years later
SI LIBERMAN
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Si Liberman was an airman during World War II and participated in a Berlin bombing mission. He returned to Berlin nearly 60 years later as a tourist. |
 Berlin's Holocaust Memorial with its 2,700 casket-like concrete pillars, designed by New York architect Peter Eisenmann, is a nearing completion near the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag building. It is scheduled to open next year. Its documentation center will list the names of every known European Jew killed in the Holocaust. Photo by Si Liberman |
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"Finally hit the 'Big B' (Berlin). Target visual. Flak not quite intense. Visibility good. Lots of damage. Rail yards a mass of bomb craters. Mission lasted 7 hours. All went well. One flak hole."
As a 20-year-old Air Force radio gunner on a B-24 bomber when I scribbled that diary note, I never dreamed I'd be returning to Berlin nearly 60 years later on another mission - this time as a tourist with my wife. Our aim: to see the city's resurgence and impact on Jewish life.
We were not disappointed.
From Warnemunde, Germany, where our luxury cruise ship, the Crystal Symphony, docked, it was a dull, three-hour, 170-mile train ride to the German capital with fleeting views of green fields, farms, domestic animals and working windmills.
The city's tortured East/West confrontations weren't immediately evident except for a portion of the Berlin Wall retained for history's sake. More than half of its buildings were leveled in World War II, but almost everywhere today shiny new structures co-exist with old landmarks.
It's a pulsating city of 3.5 million with more bridges than Venice, nine times the physical size of Paris and a horrific past.
Highlights of the 13-hour tour, billed as "Echoes of the Past," included a visit to Europe's largest and most visited Jewish museum and lunch in its restaurant that featured Middle East cuisine. We also stopped at an abandoned Jewish cemetery, the gravesite of Germany's Socratic philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, the gold Moorish-domed New Synagogue and a vast Holocaust memorial under construction virtually within the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, the nation's symbol, and its nearby Reichstag capitol building.
As one whose European relatives shared the fate of six million Jews, it was an emotional and exhausting day but a surprisingly encouraging experience.
Seeing scores of mostly serious young Germans awaiting entry and inside the huge three-year-old Jewish Museum was unexpected. The oddly-shaped, zinc metal-coated building with the zig-zag, narrow window lines symbolizing a fractured Star of David was designed by Daniel Libeskind, the designated master planner of Manhattan's new World Trade Center.
It's strategically located adjacent to the only section of the Berlin Wall still standing and a field that was the site of Gestapo headquarters.
Signs of Jewish history and culture are everywhere in Berlin, said our guide, Markus, a 36-year-old, West Berlin-born professional. Confiding he has Jewish relatives, he cited streets named after prominent Jews - Mendelssohn, Baruch Spinoza, Gustave Mahler. And to see a pedestrian near the Brandenburg Gate wearing a yarmulka, the skullcap worn by ultra-religious Jews, was reassuring.
We entered the Jewish Museum via an adjoining 18th-century Baroque building that had been a courthouse and museum. Purses were opened, contents examined, and backpacks and packages had to be left in a room near the entrance. After screening by airport-like security devices, we were led downstairs through a tunnel to the museum, a maze of broken, angular rooms with exhibits, depicting the highs and lows of Jewish life in Germany through the ages.
Only a small portion deals with the Holocaust. Among the artifacts here is a handwritten note by a young man in a concentration camp, confessing his love for a girl and vowing to be with her when they're freed. Both lives ended in a Nazi extermination camp.
When a member of our group criticized the guide for racing through the exhibit and not allowing time to read and reflect, Markus snapped, "It can take four days to see and digest everything here. I have only a few hours to show you what's important. You're welcome to leave us. Take all the time you want in each section or come back later on your own."
He later apologized to her.
Exhibited artifacts date back 800 years.
You learn Jews were accused of starting the Black Plague in the 13th century and expelled from the city and their houses burnt. Upstairs there's a painting of a Catholic saint canonized after being murdered in the 13th century. Jews were blamed for the crime with antagonists claiming it was part of a ritual.
An encased pair of denim blue jeans catches your eye - the 1873 brainchild and product of Bavarian-born Levi Strauss and partner Jacob Davis. Philosopher Mendelssohn's glasses are displayed, noting his record championing tolerance and civil rights and establishing a school. Also displayed is a wallet thrown from a truck carrying Jews to a forced labor camp. With it is the owner's photo with his wife. They never returned.
Heartrending, too, is a narrow, odd-shaped, high-ceilinged room with dark walls and thousands of iron disks you walk over on an uneven floor. The disks represent faces of six million murdered Jews.
Once estimated at nearly 200,000, the German capital's Jewish population was less than 1,000 when World War II ended. Since then, more than 20,000 Jews have settled here, many from the former Soviet Union.
Elsewhere in the city, Holocaust reminders appear on some streets as engraved plaques, identifying victims who had lived nearby.
A huge Holocaust memorial scheduled to open next year is nearing completion within view of the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag. It is emerging as rows of concrete casket-like pillars with an exhibition area that will list the name of every known Jewish Holocaust victim in Europe.
Across the street, its neighbor will be a new U.S. Embassy, which is under construction.
Seven synagogues, Jewish preschools, a high school and a yeshiva-like college operate in the city, Markus pointed out. A few kosher restaurants are in business near the restored eye-catching, gold-domed New Synagogue. The 1866 Moorish-styled edifice, ruined by rampaging Kristallnacht Nazi adherents in 1938 and Allied bombers, has been restored. It serves as a Jewish museum and area community center.
Before boarding the train at a Spandau area station to return to our ship, I asked Markus about the status of the Nazi party.
"No problem at all today. It no longer exists," he said. "Unlike in your country, America, we've outlawed the Nazi party in Germany.''
Si Liberman of Palm Beach, Fla., is the retired editor of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Sunday Press in New Jersey.