The Memories of the Holocaust in the Streets of Berlin

The Memories of the Holocaust in the Streets of Berlin

photo: Norman Poznan

How can you live in a building having such a history? One of my friends whatsapped me, after I told him about my neighbor, Flora Friedel Brandt. I get that a lot from people, how can I live in a city like Berlin, as a Jew, as an Israeli. How can I live in a city that didn’t want us before, that sent Flora away from here.

Flora Friedel Brandt was born as Flora Friedel Silber, on October 11, 1866. Flora was a Jew, a Berliner. Fire, she was living in Schöneberg in West Berlin. Then she moved to Wedding, “Little Turkey” of today. Finally, she had moved to Pappelallee 3 in Prenzlauer Berg at the east side of Berlin. Where she lived until Tuesday, June 16, 1942, when Nazi soldiers entered her building to take her. The soldiers evacuated Flora from her home, and sent her 260 kilometers south, to Theresienstadt Ghetto, in modern Czechoslovakia.

Theresienstadt Ghetto was flora’s new home for three months, until September 19, 1942. On that day, along with many other Jews, she was crammed into a beef freight train. The train was heading to a destination unknown to any of its passengers.

I find it hard to believe that Flora trusted the soldiers who told her she was heading to a new work camp, as she was boarding this crammed freight train, on a Saturday, going about 700 kilometers east, to the Treblinka Death Camp.

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Berlin is… Remembering

Berlin is… Remembering

photos: Anamaria Tatu

Oh what times we live in. Everyone is afraid, it seems. Afraid of each other. Some citizens worry for their life, though they should worry about their character. They’re hiding behind their fear of the unknown, wrapped up in a cocoon of convenience, shouting slogans that give them an illusion of unity – a unity they seem to lack within themselves. Concealing their racism through lies of frustration – frustration about their own lives that are so much safer than they realize. So worried, they don’t seem to notice that we all see what they really are. And we condemn.

We condemn all the angry eyes and furious words spoken unknowingly. All the fire thrown at shelters. We distance ourselves from their distance to life. And we remind them of where to never go again.

To learn from mistakes, you need to be aware of what has been. To move on to a good path, you need to know the past, with all its wrong turns. And the right way was not the “shift to the right.” Looking around now, it seems many of us have forgotten how far things have gone before, more than once.

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