after a long flight with little sleep we arrived in frankfurt where we had to go through german customs and then wait for our next flight to berlin. the flight to berlin was only about an hour and i slept almost the entire time as it was a much quieter plane than the previous 7 hours flight with a crying baby and a tight squeeze. after grabbing our luggage we met up with our israel tour guides and boarded our HUGE bus to a city that had many symbols of what once was. we went off exploring for a few minutes and asked some kind german citizens a few questions about translations and their feelings toward some of the signs that hung reading and depicting the nuremberg laws. we were fortunate enough to run in to a gentleman and his wife who told us their story. i was fortunate enough to record it, as he is a survivor returning for the first time on his own to search through his personal family history. he told of how his grandmother saved his life and how when they came to take his family away from his house an s.s. officer made them stop. the s.s. officer had been their family doctor. it was a very moving story but that is my mini summary. we got back on the bus and headed to grunewald train station, which was the sight of many jewish transports. along the tracks there are dates written alongside numbers followed by the word jude (symbolizing the number of jews deported) and then the camp that they went to. at first the numbers i saw were small, 30 jews, 40 jews, but as i moved down the track the numbers rapidly increased to the 1,000's. i was trying to picture and feel the emotion but the bitterness of the german weather and the fatigue were slightly overwhelming unfortunately. henry silberstern, one of the survivors traveling with us told us stories of what the germans told the jews about where they were going. lies to get them to go along. it was sickening. we boarded the bus again and headed to wansee, a wealthy area of berlin. wansee once hosted some of the most high up officials of the nazi regime to come up with "the final solution." unfortunately we only were given about half an hour to tour the property inside and out. the inside was set up sort of like a museum with so much to read i could have been there for hours! it was hard to pick and choose what to read but the letters were of particular interest to me, as well as the racial ideologies depicted in nazi propaganda. my time was cut short and i was actually the last person to leave the villa as they were set to close at 6:00 and the employee had to ask me twice to leave so they could shut down for the day (whoops :P). we headed back to our hotel (about a 40 minute drive), checked in, and had about an hour to nap, get settled, or shower (which is what myself and my roommate laura decided to do). the thing about this hotel is (two things actually) it makes no sense and it is not fit for clumsy people like myself. it is a very odd shaped hotel with room numbers out of order and strange wings. very easy to get lost! not only that but there are strange ledges everywhere where you have to step up or down and i've learned to pay attention to them after tripping about 10 times! (typical me!). after getting lost, we found our way upstairs for dinner, which was absolutely delicious! i stepped out of my comfort zone and tried a lot of new things and i was pleasantly surprised. we had a lot of options to choose from and dessert was just as good. the food here is a lot of carbs, so i am trying to be careful, but the bread is absolutely phenomenal. we listened to a lecture following dinner but most of the group was fairly tired so they let us go a little early and here i am!
one other thing i wanted to post about is what i like to call "time traveling." not only today did i travel through time zones, i also traveled back through history. the hardest thing for me today was understanding how life goes on in these places that i know to have so much history related to such an evil time. to see life carry on in berlin, it makes sense to me, but it is still hard to wrap my head around. to see children playing in the streets where thousands of jews were taken away from their homes and eventually sent to their deaths was hard to grasp but this is only the beginning. i am trying my best to open my mind and let myself go back in time to truly feel but that small factor is a speed bump i need to overcome.
that's all i've got for tonight. i'm going to try and get some rest as they will wake us up at 6:30 tomorrow.
-jill
one of the signs with a nuremberg log stating that jews are not allowed to sit on park benches.
plaques on the ground in front of the home that the weiss family once lived in and was deported from (with the date of their deportation).
grunewald train station
24 jews deported to auschwitz on the 19th of march 1944
grunewald train station
roses and yahrzeit candles at the tracks
the front of the wansee villa
sorry i can't rotate the picture but if you look at the right side the 11,000,000 symbolizes the number of jews slated to be killed in the "final solution"
nazi propaganda showing the differences between aryans and jews and passing down their "traits."
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