Day #5: Easter Sunday in Berlin, the Jewish Museum and off to Krakow

It's 6:15 AM and even though over half of the people on the trip are still asleep, it's time for a select group of 19 people to head over to St. Hedwig Church, near Humboldt University, for Easter Sunday Mass. "Der Kaiser" Dr. Carroll and "The Legend" Mr. Flynn lead us to Mehringdamm and we take the U-Bahn all the way to French Street. We get off the train, rise to the surface like a Wellington Phoenix, and start walking towards the church. We soon stopped, as we were confused about the exact location of the church, but luckily Der Kaiser is able to run yet another segment of "Conversation with the Locals" and we realize that the church is just a hop and a skip down the straße. 

The church itself has a unique construction, it's shaped like a cylinder and has two levels (a lower bowl, where the priest performs the mass, and an upper bowl, where more people could be seated if the lower bowl was filled up). We take our seats in the Lower Bowl, with Der Kaiser to my right and the Legend himself right in front of me, an argument could be made that I had the best seat in the house. The mass is quick, but also very interesting, because I know what is going on, but I don't have the language skills to really participate in anything but singing Hallelujah. 

After mass, a big group of us went out to get coffee and souvenirs, listen to my Canadian alter-ego's nonsensical stories about life as a Moose Hunter/Lumber King of Pembroke/Huge Hockey Fan, in Saskatchewan, and then take a bunch of awesome "family" pictures (Not meaning to brag or anything, but I think my "Mean Muggin'" pics with Der Kaiser and. the Legend, outside of Humboldt University, were some of the best of the bunch). 

Originally, I was worried about spending Easter away from my family, but over the past few days, the people on this trip have become like family to me, so I'm glad I could spend one of my favorite holidays with them.

Happy Easter (Bill H)

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Today was a superb day. I got up bright and early, put on my fancy pants, and scurried over to church for Easter Sunday. I almost fell asleep like 10 different times and I basically had to pry my eyeballs open with my fingers because it was so hard to pay attention.... Especially when the priest is speaking in German -___-. Anyways, I eventually made it through the church service and took my fancy-panted self outside, where we had 2 glorious hours of free-time! I ate an absurd amount of food and spent a solid €30 on random trinkets (ahem Katie/meg) aaaaaand I took like 2387462736428736423 pictures which is probably shocking, I know. 

We ate a few hours later at this lil place with outdoor seating and I had 2 bowls of gelato😊😊😊😊. We then went to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which was extremely elegant and personally moving. The entire museum is like a maze and it was very frustrating to navigate at times; I often felt lost and trapped. I took this confusing maze as a metaphor for the way the Jewish people must have felt throughout history- not just during the holocaust. There were two rooms that really got to me at this museum: the holocaust tower and the fallen leaves. The two senses that really came through in both of these rooms were my sense of touch and hearing. The holocaust tower was an eerie, dark room with no heat and no electricity. When I walked in, I got chills. The cement walls were a few stories high, making me feel totally trapped. The massive (and heavy) metal door shut behind me with an explosive bang that echoed through the tower for a few seconds. I sat with my bare back against the icy wall, feeling isolated and lonely. I just kinda got the feeling that there was no way out, no possibility of staying positive in this shady gray room. I felt like a prisoner... A peasant in the eyes of the walls. The walls belittled me, making me feel insignificant. The sounds in the room were terrifying. The paralyzing bang of the door was enough to send goosebumps running up and down my arms. The people talking on the other side of the room sounded like voices in my head, I swear this room could make someone go crazy. It was shocking to me that a room could make me feel this way.

Even before I entered the fallen leaves room I felt moved by it. From 2 rooms away, I could hear what I thought was the clinking of thousands of metal chains. I had to ask Liam what it was because I was so scared... I just didn't know what this noise could possibly be. I timidly entered the room and saw hundreds of metal disks with gaping mouths and open eyes scattered across the floor. The clinking noise was being created by the 30 or so people carefully walking on top of each face. The faces were scattered throughout the room: little faces and big faces both had the same horrified look on their face as we trampled upon them. These Jewish faces were literally being walked all over. I was walking with my face down so that I could stare at each persons face.... It was frightening. It says a lot that I was scared even before I walked in the room.

Ok the planes about to land in Krakow. Hi/Bye momma & bubba :)

(Claire D)

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After everyone regrouped following Easter mass, we all walked down to the judische  Museum. 

On the walk down, I had a discussion with a few other students about one of challenges in learning about the holocaust: our inability to understand and identify with the victims of the war as 'humans' and not just 'victims'. Reading in books, watching videos, we see all the bodies piled up or the emancipated figures, and they seem so far removed from our lives that we can't really imagine them having lives similar to our own before the war. 

I think that the main message among the exhibits, that these peoples' pain was real, but their humanity was real as well. 

There were two exhibits that struck me the most. Fallen Leaves was a single, long, tall room, where the floor was covered in 10,000 hand-cast bronze faces. The faces were about an inch thick, cartoony, just two dots and a mouth that seemed to be open... In a scream? A cry? Open to interpretation. We were encouraged to walk on them, and it was eerie, hearing the bronze clang together in all these discordant tones. We figured out that if we took 100 of these huge rooms, it would only begin to near the number of people who were victims of the war. 

The other exhibit, directly outside, were the pictures taken by a famous Jewish photographer. Seeing these mundane and intimate moments with random people struck me even more. It's not like these pictures were all of holocaust victims or anything. But in that combination with the other exhibit, which dehumanized the victims into these cartoon faces, the contrast in just how relatable, how extremely human these people were, really gave me chills. (Amy)

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We went to the Jewish Museum on our last day in Berlin. Even though we were in a rush after a hasty lunch of doener im brot, we managed to grab onto the main points the museum had to offer. First, we went to the tower where we entered into a dark "room" with high walls of different lengths and a smallish crack in the pointed ceiling that let in a bit of light, not nearly enough to lighten the space. When sitting down, it made you feel small and hopeless like there was no chance of escape. It was completely silent in that dark space when suddenly the door slammed, leaving nothing but empty frightening reverberations that mimicked the sound of a gun shot, leaving little to the imagination given what kind of room we were in. 

Then we proceeded to the garden of exile which was a slanted slope filled with leaning blocks of stones in equal rows and columns. As we passed through, we began to feel slightly off balanced and even disoriented, soon realizing the purpose of this garden. The victims of the Holocaust, even after liberated, were still "in exile" from their neighbors and towns and felt like they didn't belong anywhere. They ran around in meaningless circles until they were dizzy but still felt like outsiders in their own homes. 

Last but certainly not least, we traveled to the fallen leaves exhibit where we entered another dark enclosure, but this time there were circular discs of metal cascaded on the floor in the crude shapes of screaming faces. We walked on them (a weird enough experience because we were in a way stepping on these "people" causing their pain) and with every step the screams of clanging metal echoed around the room and bounced off the walls. We tried walking quietly, but in a way it was almost worse because it was like we had silenced their screams and they were already dead. It was an incredibly bizarre disembodied experience.  (Ariadne A & Jessica K)

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The Corner of the Holocaust Tower

Entering the Tower was one of the most chilling experiences of my life. Only one heavy metal door separates the Tower from the rest of the Jews' Museum, and as soon as you walk in you find yourself inside a huge triangular prism. The walls stretch higher than you can imagine, and I felt so small staring up along them. Most people sat down. 

It was chillier in the Tower than it was anywhere else. It was never the same at any given moment. A glowing fluorescent (so it seemed) light lit up the sharpest corner and brightened the entire Tower, but sometimes it would dim to almost nothing and the people I had recognized before - Nora, Daniel, Claire - would become shadowy still figures crouched along the walls, as if they were part of them now. 

Before I entered the Tower I met Sirine, who told me to walk to the sharpest corner and listen to people talk. I could only go there for a minute or two, but even in other areas of the Tower it sounded like those voices were in my head, and the sound of the heavy door slamming shut stayed with me long after it would close. I didn't like it, didn't like the way the voices in my head sounded in that cold place that seemed to swallow you whole.  (Jane)