Jewish History Museum

Thursday, June 28.

Today we had an excursion to the Jewish history museum.  The museum was a lot different than I expected, and a lot different from the more classical style museums at Museum Insel.  At this point though, I was very museum-ed out, having been to a lot of different museums in Berlin over the last week.  One similarity of the Jewish museum plus other museums was the importance of the architecture to the space.  We went on a guided tour, where the guide explained how the architecture of the building really correlated to the museum and subject itself.  The number of stairs related to important numbers in the Jewish culture.  The beginning of the museum had three pathways, one leading to the lighted museum above, one leading through a doorway, and one leading to a dead end, relating to the different endgames to the Holocaust.

The tour was really quick, only about an hour, but it was informative.  The tour was mostly concerned with Jewish culture, including information about the Sabbath and Bar Mitzvah.

 Lanna dressed as  Jewish boy at his Bar Mitzvah.

My favorite parts of the museum, by far, were the memorial structures.  Below is an image from the Holocaust Tower.  After walking through a dark doorway, we are in a large, cool, dark well-like room.  There is one slit of light coming from the very top of the room.  The room was haunting, everyone could not look away from the light at the top.  When the room finally emptied of loud tourists, the silence of the room consumed you, as everyone was still drawn to the light.

Next was the Garden of Exiles, which was a lot like Eisenmann's Holocaust Memorial.  The Garden had the same large, gray, rectangular structures, with small trees/plant growth sprouting from the top.  The floor was not just uneven and bumpy, like the Holocaust memorial, but completely tilted to one side, increasing the sense of disorientation.  The Garden of Exiles did on a small scale, what the Holocaust memorial did on a much larger scale, possibly even more successfully.  While the Holocaust memorial depicts the immensity of the Holocaust massacre, the Garden depicts the utter confusion and disorientation of the disaster, as it was literally hard to walk a straight line with out holding onto the structures for support.  In this way, the viewer is forced to touch the rectangles, while at the Holocaust Memorial the viewer has the choice whether they want to touch them or not.  Some of the pillars were worn down where people had placed their hands over and over again.  Here, touch is as important as sight.

After the museum I got packed for Munich and went to the Brandenburger Tor for the Germany vs. Italy semi-final.  Unfortunately, Germany lost, but it was fun to experience the crowd one last time.  The quarterfinal vs. Greece was by far the best sporting event I have attended, so good memories will always be there! Remind me to come back to Berlin for Euro 2016.