HER MANY FACES
Tourists in Berlin will find horrifying history, but also the fun, food and freedom of a forward-thinking capital. By Peta Scop
THE boy flew past me, his violin somersaulting through the air. He had tripped over his Justin Bieber fringe, so heavy it was on his small forehead.
A gang of tykes took his schoolbag, one fetched his instrument. They all looked dizzy and off kilter. They all had big Bieber hair. They ran through the Waldorf school gates. From all sides, on skateboards and bikes and on foot, kids were arriving. There was not an adult in sight.
I wondered about the schoolboys while looking at an exhibition documenting the rise of Hitler and the atrocities of World War 2. Built on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, the Topography of Terror exhibition won’t spare your feelings. You will see ghettoes and corpses and death camps; you will hear the barking orders of soldiers; you will feel horror as the over-filled trains leave the station.
I try to see the Waldorf kids’ faces in the faces of the Hitler youths, their arms outstretched in terrifying salute. I am surprised to discover their hairstyles pre-date Bieber’s short back and sides with combed-over fringe, and am suddenly full of doubt about the future.
Berlin comes at me like a train. I am stuck on the tracks.
It’s autumn in the city, the leaves spread out under the trees like burnt orange carpets. The wind carries the ghost-ends of conversations in its wake. I hurry from place to place as if to catch up with history.
Inside the Otto Weidt Museum Workshop for the Blind is a backless cupboard where Weidt hid a Jewish family after the deportations to the ghettoes and extermination camps began in 1941.
I try to imagine how people lived here; how they passed the time; what they ate; where they went to the toilet. I wonder if they knew whether it was day or night. The space is too small to pace.
It’s hard to ask directions to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe — people look away at the mention of murder, and it sounds strange when spoken aloud — but I am lost in the Tiergarten and the light is fading. A man kindly sends me in the right direction.
On my way, I pass the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. Inside a concrete cube, a video shows two women kissing. An inscription reads: “A simple kiss could get you in trouble.” Men in pairs or small groups wander past; some look happy, others look and hurry away. I also hurry away.
The Holocaust Memorial rises suddenly from the pavement with its 2 711 grey concrete slabs. There is no sign telling me where to go or what it means; I know that I know, but what about the children — and their parents — playing hide-and-seek between the stelae? Do they know the truth behind this place that rushes at you like a wave?
I had feared it might feel like a graveyard, but it feels more like a playground; more