One Trip to Berlin

Sometimes back in March of 2005 our neighbor, Lotte told Shirley that she was going to Germany at the invitation of the mayor of Frankfurt. That is what started the ball rolling. Shirley said: “Why don’t we go? It is for free.” Well, my feelings about Germany are no secret. If you had told me about one year ago that I would be walking around in Berlin, I would have told you that you are nuts. But time and a persistent wife can and will most of the time change your mind. It did it for me. I told Shirley that if she wanted to go she should handle it. She called the German counsel in New York and he very politely told her to put the details on paper and send it to him. She did just that.
A couple of weeks later we got a letter from him. The letter was so polite that one could throw up from it. He told us that he forwarded our letter to the mayor of Berlin (my place of birth). A few weeks later we received a letter from said mayor. I guess they all went to the same politeness 101 Cource. We were told that this year was taken already but that we would be invited in 2006. In the meantime they asked if I had any documentation like a birth certificate and the like. I sent what I had and was informed that the building my parents lived in when I was born still stands. To make this long story much longer we got a new letter a few weeks later and it turned out a place was available for us on the August 22–30 of 2005. We accepted. […]
I had a lot of debates going on in my mind. I had to do a lot of soul searching. I finally decided to give it a shot, to got with as open mind as possible. And so I did. By the way I have to mention that the city of Berlin paid for the airfare and the hotel, which included breakfast.
August 22 came and off we went. We got to JFK and sat there waiting to bord the plane. I still had hesitations in mind. But then came boarding time and I felt like I was going to the slaughter. I guess it was foolish of me to feel that way, after all the Germans of today are not the Nazis of the thirties and forties. After a 7 hour flight we landed in Berlin. There were people there to receive us and we were taken to Hotel Kempinski, which is right off the main luxury boulevard (Kurfürstendamm). […]
Wednesday August 24 we had a 3-hour guided tour of the city led by Milk & Honey Tours. […] One of the more memorable stops was at the Holocaust Memorial. Before arriving there the tour guide told us that millions of Jews who were killed during the Nazi era have no memorial so that the city of Berlin built this memorial for them. That broke me up. Even now as I am writing I have tears in my eyes. The place is constructed out of 1700 dark grey blocks in the fashion of an old Jewish cemetery. The stones are very close to one another so that you have to walk through single file, which was meant for you uncomfortable, disoriented, and in isolation. It was the most impressive sight in Berlin. It made me feel like I was standing at my grandparent’s grave. I, for one, will remember that scene for a long time. […]
Thursday August 25 at 4 PM we left to go to the Jewish Museum. We were given an hour-long tour of the museum. Which by the way is run by the city of Berlin, is open seven days a week and closes only for Christmas, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Germans got a lot of thought into building the museum. Interestingly enough, both the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Monument are American designed. You walk into an old building and walk down about fifty steps where you arrive a long passageway which looks like a street with the names of all the concentration and death camps on the walls on both sides (the way to death). In about the middle another street crosses it (the way to escape) on these walls there are windows with all kind of Jewish displays. At the end of this corridor is a door. They let us into a room, which was completely dark. There was a tiny window at the top (about 25 feet up) – The room of no escape – very scary! Next we climbed up into a brand new building where we found an average Jewish Museum. The interesting part was that the city of Berlin made the museum and not the Jewish community. For that I give them credit. At the end of the tour we had to go down the fifty steps and down the corridor and then climb the fifty steps backup to the old building where we were invited to a buffet dinner given by the museum, whose director addressed us. […]
Sunday August 28 In the morning we had a three hour tour of Jewish sites of Berlin. We went to a sight of a synagogue that is no longer there. The sight was used to collect the Jewish in order to send them to camps. There is a memorial on the sight with list of all the transports that left from there. Then we went to the big Berlin temple where only the front still stands today. It is amuseum. One of the sights we were taken to was a little street that we went around a circle. On the sidewalk there are signs an lampposts with regulations against Jews like, “No Jew is allowed to sit on a park bench.” Another one says “People going to Jewish doctors will not get their money back from the insurance companies” and a few more like that. We were taken to the sight of the old Jewish temple, which was destroyed on Krystal Nacht. On that sight there stands a selection of sculptures done by a 90 year old women. That is across the street from a building where the Nazis collected 2000 men who where married to non-Jewish woman who demonstrated for seven days and nights and got their men back. A movie was made about that story called “Rosenstraße”. […]
Tuesday August 30. We stayed an extra day since we were going to Israel before going home. In the afternoon we tried to find my other grandfather’s practice which he had abandon under duress. On our way back we sat on a park bench. Ironic, isn’t it? After spending time alone in Berlin we started to get lonely. Here we were two souls alone in Germany and it was upsetting. We realized that as long as the group was there we were in a cocoon, protected. But now the protective shield was gone and we were left alone to fend for ourselves. A feeling of utter discomfort came over me. We couldn’t wait to get out of there. We went back to the room an packed. […]
Wednesday August 31 we had breakfast and got on each other’s nerves. We had a flight at 7:20 PM. We took a taxi to the airport at 3 PM just to get away from the city. The day I decided that I would probably never go back there. When one is in a group, in a cocoon, one is protected, as there is strength in numbers. But to be in a place where I don’t want to be in to begin with, makes me feel very, very uncomfortable. We were checking the watch every couple of minutes. It was just not moving. Every time we looked at the watch only a couple of minutes had passed. When we finally left the ground, we were both relieved and soaring into freedom, again.

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Jerry Gershon Alon
Chiffre 106101