Day 3 - Berlin

Today began with Steve Conner (HST Alum from '08) meeting us at our hotel. Steve is studying abroad in the Netherlands and took a train in yesterday to join us for a few days. Our first stop was Grunewald Train Station, the site where many Jews of Berlin were deported to concentration camps that included Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. This memorial shows the dates of deportation, the number of Jews deported and the camp to which they were sent.


This memorial was commissioned by the German Railway to address their role in the Holocaust. Students viewed this memorial in the drizzling rain.

From here, we went to the New Synagogue, which was opened in 1866. The architecture resembles the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, with its Moorish architecture.

Outside, Olaf pointed out to students the memorial stones that are embedded in the sidewalks throughout Berlin which they had not noticed.

These stones commemorate the Jews who lived in Berlin, and tell what date and where they were deported, and their fate.

These four stones commemorate the Schneebaum family, and are located outside the apartment building where they lived before they were deported. They all died at Auschwitz.

After lunch, we walked to the Rosenstrasse Memorial.

This site recognizes the brave Christian women, whose Jewish husbands and children were arrested during the Factory Action, in February of 1943, when the Nazis swept through Berlin in their efforts to make it "Jew Free". These women, whose husbands and children were being kept in the former Jewish Community Center on Rosenstrasse street, stood outside in an unarmed, quiet protest, demanding the release of their families. Despite Nazi efforts to make them go away, they did not give up, and Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda decided to release them to prevent a public relations nightmare and prevent additional protests.

We spent the next two hours in the Otto Weidt Workshop for the Blind. In this factory, the blind and deaf employees made brooms and brushes out of horse hair and pig hair. Otto Weidt also employed Jews here. Otto used the Berlin Work Act to legally keep employing his Jewish workers during the war.

Otto protected his Jewish employees by hiding four members of the Horn family in a secret room built behind a wardrobe closet. Inside the false back wall of the wardrobe, behind clothing, was an opening into the room where the Horns would sleep at night and hide during Gestapo inspections. After eight months of hiding, the Horn family was betrayed and deported to Auschwitz, where they were all murdered.

Our guide explained to us how Otto Weidt helped hide Inge Deutschkron, who is the survivor who preserved and documented the rescue efforts as a tribute to the memory of this heroic man.

Link to the Otto Weidt website

We ended our day at a new exhibition and memorial for the Berlin Wall which came down in 1989, leading to the reunification of the city of Berlin. Shalmi spoke to us about how many of the students' parents would remember this history very well, and also explained the Cold War and how East Germany had decided to build the wall in 1961 after 2.8 million residents of East Berlin had fled to the democratic West, to prevent further emigration which was an embarrassment to the East German government.

Student reflections...

Deanne says...

Grunewald train station had a big impact on me. While I was standing there, I was thinking how a train is an everyday transport to work or a vacation. It is supposed to be something happy. Well, that’s also what the Jews had in mind. Before the Holocaust, they went on with their everyday lives, traveling on trains. They didn’t know, however, where this train was taking them. This trip had not been planned by them and had an uncertain destination. It makes me think about my travels and where my transportation takes me and for what purpose.

Ashley says . . . .

We just left Grunewald train station from where many of Berlin’s Jews had been deported. The train cars were not cattle cars so the Jews were not crammed together; they were almost filled with a false hope, I feel, because conditions were not as bad as they could have been. Standing on the platform and reading the numbers of people who were just like me, made me think really deeply. I just keep picturing and imagining myself standing on that platform where a mother stood with her daughter. I keep seeing my mom next to me, holding my hand, checking to see if my sisters, brother and I were okay; holding my hand waiting to board the train that will take us to an unknown destination, with a smile hiding her own fear so we would not freak out. I can’t even begin to fathom how the Jews really felt because even just trying to imagine the experience of standing there with my family filled me with fear and brought me to tears.

Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind really hit home for me. My best friend is blind and seeing how Otto Weidt had the heart, as a non-Jew, to save Jews who were not only hated for being Jewish but also because of a disability they could not have prevented. Throughout the workshop tour I pictured Shafeka walking around back and forth between the rooms and the expression of security on her face, knowing that Otto Weidt was there to take care of her and protect her. I tried to imagine her sitting at the desk, making brushes with the machines, that were simple enough to figure out without Braille.