Frizz

I've just found out that I have an ancestor who in 1609 was burnt at the stake by the Portuguese Inquisition. I think that might be more information than I wanted or needed to know.

Labels: Berlin

I've been telling friends about all the relations popping up all over the place and how I felt about being in Germany - comfortable but... and well it all got a bit too much today - lots of emotions and thoughts flying around in my head. Especially there is this thought, what if things had been different, would we all have known each other? Of course that's silly, because I wouldn't be me, but still. Then I've been reading a little about Portugal and the Inquisition, now I've got actual names, it's not just some line in a history book, it's putting a different light on recent history, like it's all happened before... so many times.

Another part of the story is that there are past Chief Rabbi's popping up all over the place and coming from what I thought was such a secular family that's thrown me a bit.

Labels: Berlin

I've wanted to see Daniel Libeskind's building for the Jewish Museum since it opened in 1998, but even so I didn't rush to get there, I dragged my feet. I got a little lost, must have walked past the signpost and unexpectedly ended up at checkpoint Charlie instead. We'd gone through on the school trip and a friend had had film confiscated after she'd taken a picture at the crossing, so I was struck by how something so serious and scary then, was now just a tourist attraction. Grim Eastern block buildings and cars, a cliché I know, marked the contrast between East and West then. I walked through and looked up at the shiny new buildings. Then I headed back the way I came, but still couldn't work out where the Museum was. A man on a bike stopped and shouted something in German to me; I proudly managed a German response.

So there it was across the road.

In the basement of Libeskind's building are three intersecting axes, one leading to the Garden of Exile and Emigration, whilst another leads to the Holocaust Tower and a third to a long steep staircase up to where the exhibition starts and represents the difficult road to a reemergence of Jewish life in Germany. In the Garden there are tall concrete posts, which I walked between on uneven ground, finding it hard to keep my balance, but it is outside, there is air and light and olive trees shade it. In the Tower there is a never ending darkness broken only by a single split window so high it is completely out of reach, but giving just enough light to see and feel the awful isolation, fear, and complete desolation. Libeskind is brilliant; his building says everything, without words, or exhibits, speaking directly to my emotions.

I walk up the steep staircase to the permanent exhibition, I know from friends that this might well disappointment me, but I hope to be surprised. When I finish the exhibition what I'm left with is a dawning reality that a history really was destroyed. There are just not enough exhibits to tell the story properly, either the museum did not understand what was needed or that all the artifacts really were destroyed and perhaps there was a resistance from exiles to send family possessions back. I don't know, just that again I left with an incomplete picture of Jewish history in Germany and a growing frustration.

Links abound; the last book I ever gave my father was Amos Elon's The Pity of It All a history of German Jewry. I was reminded of it a couple of weeks ago, because Another Road Home was by his daughter and she films her father at a book reading. So now I will dig it out in the hope that it can fill in some of the blank spaces.

Labels: Berlin

With the idea that I wanted to know more, the next day I finally headed off to the German History Museum, where I wondered around for almost five hours soaking up the information. I only found a little of what I was looking for, titbits of explanation. In many ways it felt more like a history of Europe, taking a wide sweep, understandably; it reminded me of just how related to each other European countries are, with a connected and interlocking history, but I wanted details – how did people live in this part of Germany, at that time and then in another part, at another time. I left with back ache and only a little more clarity, thinking well OK, the Jewish Museum will give me the answers, even though I'm not sure I want it to be a separate history from the greater population.

Labels: Berlin

I dragged L along with me to meet the 'Cousin'. We took the train out of Berlin's impressive new central station, a double-decker train (how come we don't have those?) and arrived in the town with the 'Cousin' (P). L saw him first, a very tall man holding a large sheet of paper – the family tree. P had moved back to the town where many of my ancestors lived after the reunification of Germany. I was expecting a small village, but it was a large town, surrounded by water and absolutely beautiful; hardly any war damage. P took us on a driving tour, an old house where the family had lived, the place where the synagogue had been; a plaque marking the spot, a street (kinda outside the town) named after a great great uncle. A lovely lunch at the Schloss, an almost Disney affair, a better Apfelstrudel, lots of talking, trying to work out who was who. Names that previously were just anonymous words on paper and dates that I hadn't thought much about were brought to life, I want to know more, who were these people and what were their lives really like? And P's side of the family only partly Jewish, had stayed throughout the war, lost jobs and university places, kept their heads down and been 'OK'. It was a lovely day, a bit of a whirlwind, in my head a constant background of questions and emotions.

Labels: Berlin

I have been a bit slack, to say the least, at updating. What with the cold and rushing around. I will play catch up tomorrow.

Labels: Berlin

Getting used to using a German keyboard.

I got very wet on the first day and am now fighting a cold. L is giving me drugs. Yesterday, we spent the morning talking, so I rushed off late to see the German History Museum and ended up at the Rebecca Horn exhibition, a spontaneous change of plans on the train as it closed later. I loved and hated it, understood it and didn't have a clue. The building though, it was in the Martin Gropius Bau, was stunning. I tried to get to the German History Museum again today and ended up at the Jewish quarter instead. The Neue Synagogue is beautiful - from the outside - of course I would choose Saturday to go there. At least I knew it would be closed and I have a good excuse to go back. I got emotional at Der verlassene Raum [I'll add the photo's when I get back]. And at what was Berlin's first Jewish old people's home, which was where deportations to the camps started from and next door to it the Alter Jüdischer Friedhof (Old Jewish Cemetery) which was completely desecrated. Then I went to an opening of a modern art exhibition - sort of by chance - it was a bit extreme self-harm, filming shooting yourself kind of art - I didn't stay for long. I finished the day with Pumkin suppe, which was reviving and the worst Apfelstrudel I've ever had, or at least I remember having... Oh and somewhere in the middle I saw how hard sweets are made... which was fun.

We are off to see the newly found 'cousin' tomorrow...

Labels: Berlin

Faces that look oddly familiar walking down the street, dark hair, half sentenses understood, a smile on my face, chickening out of trying to use my rusty German. So far I feel comfortable, even a New York kind of comfortable, I'm thinking about that. I walked through the Brandenburg gate, which I remember stopping in front of in a bus the last time I was here, when the wall was still up and Unter den Linden was in the East. I had the most divine hot chocolate at cafe Einstein and people watched. Friedrichstrasse, Alexanderplatz, Oranienburg names which seem to roll off my tough with ease. I went to visit the Pergamon Museum (like the British Museum) which my aunt had recommended, the last time she had visited was in 1937. I got a little emotional.

Labels: Berlin

Just in case you are wondering... I didn't win the lottery, but finding out about my ancestors and discovering a whole new part of my family does feel like another kind of windfall.

Labels: Berlin

I've had a serious family contact / finding out my ancestors sort of weekend. I met someone who knew my grandfather last week, brief conversation, which covered concerts and being chased by a colleagues husband sometime back in the 1950's, the latter I assure you nothing to do with my grandfather. Later in the week I was thinking about this grandfather again and catching up on some emails to family, which were so overdue many apologies were needed. I did a quick Google search and came up with a site, which rather amazingly had loads of my family tree on it. I'm in two minds about this, obviously it's exciting, there are many generations I didn't know about, but then it's my family tree and it's out there in the ether. I sent more emails out and received one back, which began Dear Cousin; so on the eve of going to Germany, I have found a cousin there, quite surreal. I then forwarded the email to a cousin in Israel who also wrote to him, so I think we made his weekend... I'm still not sure how we are cousins, have no idea who he is, but he knows exactly who I am, which has to be said is a little unnerving.

The family tree covers one branch of my family and goes down one particular line and this line goes very far back, quite excitingly along the way to Portugal, seemingly those listed having fled westward at the time of the Portuguese Inquisition (I have been reading up!) So suddenly I am partly Sephardic, having never been interested in the whole Sephardic/Ashkenazi thing, now I want to know more. The family tree continues going back and back - we are talking biblical names here and I don't really know if that's really possible to go back that far, but it's a nice idea and very intriguing.

Labels: Berlin