Anne Frank’s Copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales Bought by American Museum
The Museum of World War II outside Boston has paid $50,000 for Anne Frank’s inscribed copy of Grimm’s fairy tales, in what the museum is calling the first major offering of material connected directly with Frank in nearly 20 years…
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.
As I mentioned, we went to the Holocaust Memorial I appreciate that they call it a memorial to the murdered Jewish people of Europe. The choice of the word murdered feels deliberate. These weren’t just the victims of war, they were murdered. Six million people. Men, women, children. The memorial is very disorienting. It’s hundreds of large stone slabs the shape of coffins, all different heights and angels. You walk between them and they start out small and grow until they tower over you. You can’t see anyone . I realized at one point I had lost Elliott, and while I could get back to where we started I didn’t know how to find him. Without a phone I could realistically lose him. Then the light bulb went on. That was the intended effect. While in the memorial you feel lost, isolated, surrounded by death. It’s actually very subtle, and that makes it more chilling. What really killed me was when I came upon a ladybug on one of the stones. She was the lone speck of color, a bright drop of red in a sea of gray. I instantly recalled the nursery rhyme“ Ladybug ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children are alone…
I had to leave after that.
I am beginning to enjoy waking up with the city. The S-Bahn makes this huge rumbling sound as it goes through Rosenthaler Platz. Because we are so far north (Berlin is at about the same latitude as Calgary) the sun starts to rise around 4am, but it takes a long time before it is actually light. I woke up famished this morning because I had neglected to eat dinner after downing a massive dönar kebap for lunch, so I cobbled together a breakfast of fried potatoes and pork out of what we had in the mini fridge. I am learning that with butter, garlic, and soy sauce you can make anything taste good.
I tried my hand at drawing some of the things I saw yesterday at the Tiergarten. I am actually pleased with how they turned out. They aren’t great works of art by any stretch, but I managed to express myself decently. I took some video, made some notes, etc. I won’t be able to ID most things until I get my phone up and working, but I did find a hazelnut tree, birch trees, and I think I heard some hoopoes. There are these really pretty blue flowers everywhere, I need to find out what those are. Germans seem to love the outdoors. The parks are always full every time we come across them, and there are parks EVERYWHERE. Seriously, every few blocks there is at least a small park. I find it interesting that the parks near our house seem to be pretty clean, but the ones near the tourist centers are full of garbage. Although most of Berlin shows the constant wear and tear of being Europe’s non-stop Mardi Gras (to Ibiza’s 24/7 Spring Break) Germans actually seem to care about their city. The pervasiveness of graffiti isn’t the sign of neglect that we consider it in the States. We see graffiti, we think vandalism, but Germans seem to view it as expression. This isn’t really a clean city, it’s filled with broken bottles, vomit, condoms, and strangely enough confetti. However I have yet to see the human excrement that was a pervasive part of the Los Angeles landscape. I will also say that in spite of the fact that people can legally walk down the street drinking beer, I have seen very little public drunkenness.
This has been kind of a dreadful day. We gave up on Lycamobile and went down the street to get our sim cards at an O2 store. Now we have some data, but the actual phones don’t work and the connection is slow as fuck. I am convinced the washing machine is actually just broken, which leaves us in a world of shit. Laundromats aren’t a thing here, and none of our sinks is big enough to wash our clothes in. After banging on the thing for an hour I just sank to the floor and sobbed in the hall in despair. Nothing has worked right since we got here, and no matter how positive I have tried to be it’s just getting shittier. I’ve tried laughing at our misfortune, but the fact of the matter is I am horribly depressed and really really just want to go home. We are supposed to get internet tomorrow, but I guarantee something will go wrong and we will end up stuck without internet for an extended period of time, effectively ruining my chance to do my schoolwork. At the end of this trip I will have spent our life savings and will have nothing to show for it but debt and bad memories. Perhaps this all sounds petty, but I spent my husband’s and my entire life savings on this, I have work to do, and people are counting on me. Traveling when you have Multiple Sclerosis is hard and takes a lot of extra work and consideration. I already had my time pretty tightly budgeted, now I am behind. There is a lot of fear and stress to traveling while disabled, and I really don’t need anything adding to it.
Ugh. I still cannot sleep. I keep waking up around 1am and then just sort of troll around the apartment with nothing to do until dawn. No internet, no phone, no tv, no books. I don’t even have any games on my phone. I found the Nibenlungenlied audio book on my computer, so at least I can get started on that. So I am sitting here at 5am, eating müsli with apples and vanilla soy milk, orange slices, peanut butter „toast“ (we don’t have a toaster, so I have to fry it in a frying pan) and peppermint tea, listening to the adventures of Siegfried.
Hoping today to go to the Tiergarten if the weather is nice. I don’t know what the train schedule is like on Sundays, but there is no way I can walk that far with these blisters.
Der Spülengeist is officially named Vladimir.
Ugh. I officially have a nasty case of „ballerina feet“. Blisters everywhere, bruised toenails, you name it. I even developed a blister under one of my nails. Don’t ask how I discovered this. Let’s just say I need to minimize the walking today. My legs are holding up admirably so far. Knock wood. It’s another beautiful sunny day, and I do want to capitalize on that before the notorious Berlin gloom returns.
Went to the Brandenberg Gate and the Tiergarten today. My feet are officially screwed, just a mass of blisters and raw spots. We took the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, and then tried to take the train to the Hauptbahnhof, but couldn’t find it. Had to go to the information booth, which was this weird fish bowl with a portal window the woman had to open to talk to me. While we were on the train, 2 guys got on with trumpets and started playing „When the Saints go Marching In“ and singing in thick accents while panhandling. This town might be weirder than LA. Saw the Holocaust Memorial. The monument itself is amazing, but the tourists were dreadful and treated it like a playground. There was a security guard there whose only job seemed to be to bark „HALLO! GET DOWN!“ at people climbing on the stone slabs. We decided that we want to sample him saying that and turn it into a dance track.
I have the Nina Hagen song „New York New York“ stuck in my head but instead of saying „we are going to another disco, disco after disco“ I keep thinking „we are going to another denkmal, denkmal after denkmal“ So many memorials, statues, and monuments for one city. I have decided the reason I love this city is because she is basically me. She’s old as hell and she’s seen some shit in her day. And then there was that whole goth phase…