Berlin O philia

The Missing House: A work by Christian Boltanski, from 1990, located on Grosse Hamburger Strasse, across the street from the Jewish School, not very far from the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse. The missing building was destroyed in WW2. Some of its former residents were Jews. Boltanski constructed there “a memorial space dedicated to absence”. The signs on the walls indicate the names, dates of birth and death and profession of the former residents.

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The memorial “Places of Remembrance”, created by the artist Renata Stih and the art historian Frieder Schnock, consists of 80 street signs, presenting anti-Jewish laws and regulations under Nazi rule. One side of each such sign shows a picture, the other a piece of anti-Jewish legislation.

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The Sachsenhausen concentration camp is located some 35 kilometers from Berlin, in Oranienburg. You get there by taking the S1 from Berlin to Oranienburg central station, and from there taking bus line 804 directly to the place.

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The Villa Marlier on Am Großen Wannsee 56-58, the place where the conference dealing with the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was held back on 20 January 1942, is nowadays a memorial and educational center.

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The Grünewald S-Bahn station is a train station on the S7 line going to Potsdam. This station was the place where the deportations occurred. More than 50,000 of Berlin’s Jews were deported from here to extermination camps.

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The next few posts will deal with a subject close to my heart, and one of the things that first attracted me to this magnificent city. That is, the memory of the Holocaust. I have already mentioned here before I have personal interest in this subject, being what is known as “third generation to the Holocaust”, and obsessed about the issue.

My particular obsession is focused on learning from history, making sure such things never happen to anyone, anywhere. One of the aspects of learning from history is the issue of dealing with the memory. Being a descendant of victims is not an easy thing. There’s a lot of unremitting pain involved, a lot of distress, a lot of very tangible loss, still very much alive. But I always thought that being a descendant of the perpetrators is even harder.
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