The War is ever-present here, which should come as no surprise to most people. From monuments to memorials to concentration camps to bullet holes in the walls, the scars of battle, death, and tyranny are everywhere. One of the most moving symbols of the war are the “Stolpersteine”, or “stumbling stones”. They are small brass plates placed in the sidewalks among the cobblestones in front of houses and buildings with the names of Jewish people who had lived there before before being murdered by the Nazis.
They are everywhere.
Once you start to notice them, the magnitude of the Holocaust begins to come into focus. Entire families. Everywhere you walk. Where you buy your groceries. At the pharmacy on the corner. At the tram stop. Everywhere.
However, one of the saddest things I have seen is a photo of a dead German soldier, laying in the street during the Battle of Berlin.
Being here during the 71st anniversary of the turning point of the war has been an exercise in empathy. Perhaps because while I had considered the millions of Jews, Russians, Roma, LGBT, and other groups murdered by the Nazis, I hadn’t really though of the German people as victims before. Understanding that we have turned “German” in to “Nazi” and “Nazi” into “disposable fictional enemy” has made me understand better how easily we marginalize people we know nothing about. Learning about the people who opposed the Nazis and paid for it with their lives was eye opening. I suppose I knew on some level this was the case, but when you realize that the entire nation paid for the deeds of a powerful few, it breaks your heart. With everything going on in America right now you get a sense of the helplessness and rage so many Germans must have felt as the monsters took over their homeland.
I look at that dead young man and I don’t see a Nazi. I see a boy who, at this point in the war, was in all likelihood conscripted into serving on the threat of death. And now he’s gone, giving his life in a lost cause to feed the horrible dreams of a megalomaniacal fascist state. Making anyone a caricature makes it easy to dehumanize them, easy to kill them, and easy to lose your own humanity in the process.
