A Cemetery In Berlin …
Some years ago, I was lucky enough to be visiting Berlin with my wife, Toni. We had arranged to meet up with several guiding friends and were pretty sure that we would get to see the city from behind the ‘tourist trap doors’.
We were proven correct.
One of the most memorable places that we visited was a Jewish cemetery (Jüdischer Friedhof Schönhauser Allee)!…..
I have a good background and understanding of the Holocaust, due to my diligent history professor and an insatiable appetite for military history…. So to be able to visit ‘hallowed ground’ that survived the atrocities of Hitlers Germany….IN the heart of Hitlers Germany, was an opportunity that I couldn’t miss.
Our hotel was located just a couple of streets away from the cemetery, and walking to it was a snip. Toni and I were chatting to each other about the previous nights meeting with our friends and colleagues. It had been a good evening and a great time to catch up. Holger was going to take us around what used to be East Berlin, and we had made detailed plans for what was to be a fascinating few days. Carlos and Caroline had told us to visit the Jewish cemetery and advice was offered to us.
Anyway, there we were standing at the gates of the cemetery. An attendant stepped out of the security hut and took our names. He also gave me a kippa which I immediately placed on my head.
At this point, I will say that I am non religious….. please don’t put a label to that…. I do not believe in any religion or form of spirituality. I attended a church school as a boy, and none of it ever made sense to me.
Toni and I proferred our thanks and solemnly stepped into the high walled compound.
I, certainly, was expecting a tailored, manicured gardenlike space, with rows of headstones.
It wasn’t that!
The enclosure was filled with stones…. Many had fallen over, many had been broken…some were being swallowed up by the trees and ivy that was devouring almost everything slowly. We didn’t feel like we should stand still for too long, for fear of also being swallowed by the undergrowth.
A simple, overgrown trail was all we had to follow, so we did.
The names that were still visible, were haunting.
The silence was heartbreaking.
I have spent time in the Arab world, but this has been one of the very few times that I have spent in the Jewish world. It will haunt me forever.
This was not a graveyard to Holocaust victims, it was a simple patch of ground that had at one time, been despised, by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods around us. I became angry and upset at that thought.
Travel sometimes jolts you…. This visit to the Jewish cemetery, did just that.
Visits like that make you ‘question’ things….. all sorts of things.
And we should never shutter our questions away. We should go out and and try to find reasons for historical events happening.
Take a step in their shoes…… just one!
But NEVER hate.
This is a post about hatred, and not about any particular group of people.