Berlin

Brandenberg Gate

Reichstag

Spree River and Berlin Skyline

Over 30 members of Congregation Shomrei Torah travelled as a group, we first arrived in central Berlin and stayed near the Spree River.

Berlin has accumulated many layers of history throughout the twentieth century as the center of the Prussian Empire, the Weimars, Nazis and at the edge of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Today central Berlin was thriving with busy professionals walking, biking or riding buses through the crowded streets.

President Macron of France made his first state visit while we were here and we saw his motorcade pass the Brandenberg Gate as we strolled by. President Obama visited and spoke at the Brandenberg Gate just a few days after we left town.

Our hotel overlooked Brecht Square with a statue commemorating the playwright and 'his' base theater - the Berliner Ensemble - that he established in 1949 and where he first produced Threepenny Opera, with music by the Berlin Jewish composer Kurt Weill.

In our few busy days in Berlin we also got to appreciate the eclectic architecture, stroll the Tiergarten and visit the Reichstag - Germany's parliament building and seat of government through it's regime changes.

Berlin Holocaust Memorial

Berlin Holocaust Memorial

Berlin Holocaust Memorial

Berlin Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a large field of rectangular concrete monoliths in the city center by the Brandenberg Gate, the TierGarten and the US Embassy. It is easy to get lost as you wander through the blocks. Schoolkids sit jump and eat lunch amidst the monuments, which evoke but are not tombs of the Berlin victims. There is a strong geometric order to the block arrays, but its still very easy to lose oneself once you walk within the taller blocks.

It was like walking among 2,711 sarcophagi, 2,711 souls awaiting judgement, in an ad hoc graveyard devoid of of markings or inscriptions.

As Chloe Aridjis notes, walking among these blocks, one sees and hears the the millions of ghosts that inhabit Europe, our ancestors as well as the people who tormented them - souls lost without graves or markers, without being honored with a burial or a memorial, often without their names being noted. As you scroll through this journey you'll encounter these ghosts just as we did as we walked by the gravestones, stoplesteins and museums of these city streets, forests and camps.

New Synagogue

New Synagogue

New Synagogue

The New Synagogue in Central Berlin was built by affluent Jews in the 1850s in the Moorish architectural style. It became the center of Jewish religious life in Berlin. It was partially damaged during Kristallnacht and then completely demolished by bombing in 1945.

These brass cobblestones, called Stolperstein can be found throughtout Berlin, Germany and Europe to indicate a former residence of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Each plaque is handmade by the German artist who originally conceived the project in the late 90's.

Berlin Jewish Museum

Berlin Jewish Museum

Pocketwatch given by Moses Mendelson to his son-in-law

The Berlin Jewish Museum has a very stark architectural design by Daniel Libeskind. Parts of the facade are angular copper constructions. Inside these become voids - huge concrete spaces with little light or content. The building itself is an art installation. Once inside these voids all you can do is contemplate.

The marble boy is the only remnant of a middle-class Berliner Jewish family. All of their possessions and property were taken and they were deported and later killed. They gave this statuette to their neighbors before they left.

Grunewald Station Track 17

Grunewald Station Track 17

Grunewald Station Track 17

One morning in Berlin we visited the beautiful tree-lined suburban area of Berlin called Wilmersford, large homes with leafy gardens and copper roofs. The local commuter train station, Grunewald Station, has a monument to the 50,000 Berlin Jews who were deported on trains leaving from Track 17 in this station. There is a series of plaques making up the platform that indicate a day by day tally of Jewish people force onto these trains to concentration camps.

Potsdam

San Souci Palace

Potsdam is the Versailles of Berlin, a town of palaces and hunting grounds overlooking the Wannsee widening of the River Havel. We toured the Sans Souci palace which was built as a mens-only summer retreat by Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm.

Potsdam is also the site of the Potsdam Conference held by Truman, Churchill and Stalin in July 1945 where the partitioning of Germany and Austria was agreed.

Potsdam is also the site of the Wannsee Conference where the Final Solution of the death camps was enacted.

Today Potsdam is the home of the world's most advanced climate research lab.

Berlin National Gallery

Berlin National Gallery

Berlin National Gallery

Berlin National Gallery

Berlin's major arts museums are on Museum Island in the Spree River.

The National Gallery is housed in a beautiful Beaux Arts building and contains an impressive collection of German and Impressionist paintings and sculpture. We spend a few hours with a wonderful docent exploring the major German artists of the twentieth century.

Berlin Architecture

Berlin is a city of interesting buildings - there are clean and orderly Bauhaus design, Soviet-era housing blocks and cranes towering everywhere over the center of the city.

The Berlin TV Tower was built by the East Germans in the mid-1960s and is the 2nd tallest structure in the European Union. Big Brother is watching.

Dresden

Dresden

Dresden

Dresden

We spend an afternoon in Dresden, walking through the architectural masterpieces and we visited a Gallery at the Zwinger Palace. It is hard to believe that Dresden was firebombed into complete rubble by the RAF and all of this has been rebuilt since the war.

Prague

Prague

Prague

Prague

Prague

Prague was as enchanting as we'd always imagined. We stayed about a block from the Powder Gate, which we could see from our attic dormer window. We literally had to bend over to get around the room, but the views were great and bells rang out in the morning.

Prague Synagogues

The Old New Synagogue

The Old New Synagogue

The Maisel Synagogue

The Spanish Synagogue

The Spanish Synagogue

Tzaddaka

Pinkas Synagogue Prague

Prague's Jewish Quarter is a relatively small area which is somewhat intact with several synagogues dating from different eras and architectural styles. The Old New Synagogue has been the main synagogue in Prague for over 700 years. It's sanctuary is below street level as the quarter was built up from swamplands since the Middle Ages. It was the home of the Maharel Rabbi, the school for Rabbi Heller, whose grave we will visit in Krakow, and also the mythical home of the Golem.

The Pinkas Synagogue is Prague's second oldest synagogue and also still holds services as well as the permanent installation of hand-painted names of over 78,000 Jews deported from Bohemia and Moravia during the Shoah.

Prague Castle

Prague Skyline from Castle

At the Hotel

Prague Castle is a huge complex of palaces and buildings which were the seat of the Bohemian rulers as well as the St Vitus cathedral, which had been built using several different styles over the centuries. The cathedral contains several crypts of Bishops and Saints.

Prague Town

Astronomical Clock

Prague Skyline

Prague Skyline

Estates Theater

Estates Theater Balcony

Estates Theater

Prague is a fun town to wander through but somewhat overrun with tourists. We crossed the Charles Bridge and had lunch in the quieter distict across the river. We came across the wall that has been grafittied for almost 40 years to commemmorate John Lennon.

We went to the Estates Theater that evening for a performance of Mozart's Magic Flute. This theater was where Don Giovanni debutted.

Strakonice

Strakonice Synagogue

Strakonice Mikvah

Strakonice Cemetery

Strakonice

Strakonice Synagogue

Strakonice Synagogue

Strakonice Synagogue Ceiling

Strakonice Synagogue

Congregation Shomrei Torah has the recovered torah from the town of Strakonice hanging in it's entryway, so it was especially moving to visit the restored synagogue in this small village in Moravia. An elderly Jewish woman met us there and we held a short service and wandered the gravesites behind the synagogue. Even the building where the mikvah was held was still standing.

Auschwitz II Death Camp

Auschwitz Main Entrance

Auschwitz Electric Fence

Auschwitz Gate

Auschwitz Railway Car

Auschwitz Pond

Auschwitz Barracks

What the Germans called Auschwitz, now the Polish town of Oświęcim , is a large complex of several concentration camps, including work (slavery) camps as well as this one- the Birkenau Death Camp - designed purely to murder and incinerate people in a factory-like process for maximum efficiency. The town itself is inhabited by Poles today, including Katrine, our tour guide.

Even though there were so many tour groups, including school trips, international travellers and Jewish groups like ours, it was still possible to feel the desolation and emptiness of this place. Broken buildings - the crematoria - lie as they were destroyed in 1945 by the Red Army until it was decided to keep it all intact as a witness to its purpose.

We held a Kaddish service by the pond were the ashes were buried and today frogs croaked and storks flew over our heads.

Auschwitz I Work Camp

Auschwitz I Main Entrance

Auschwitz Fence

Auschwitz Museum

Auschwitz Test Gas Chamber

Auschwitz Test Gas Chamber

Auschwitz Test Crematory

The Auschwitz 1 camp was a slave labor complex which is very intact today and houses a museum or the Auschwitz camps.

Krakow - Kazimierz

Kazimierz Synagogue

Kazimierz Synagogue Cemetery

Kazimierz Synagogue Cemetery

Kazimierz Doorway Josefa Street

Krakow JCC

Shindler's Factory Gate

Old Town Krakow At Night

Old Town Krakow At Night

Old Town Krakow At Night

Kazimierz is the old Jewish Quarter of Krakow and was a center for Jewish life and learning through history and the home of Rabbi Isserlis in the 16th century. The Nazi-era ghetto was actually across the river in Krakow proper.

Tarnow

Tarnow Square

Tarnow Square

Tarnow Square

Tarnow Woods

We stopped in the southern Polish town of Tarnow as the clouds were gathering. Jews in Tarnow were shot right in the town square by Nazi snipers on the building rooftops. Others were taken out to the forest to be shot. By the time we got to the forest there was heavy rain and thunder, some tried to walk to the memorial spot but most of us stayed on the bus.

Warsaw

Warsaw Skyline

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery

I.L. Peretz Monument & Grave

I.L. Peretz Monument & Grave

I.L. Peretz Monument & Grave

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Polin - Museum of Jewish Poland

Remnant of the Warsaw Ghetto wall

Warsaw Orthodox Synagogue

Warsaw Orthodox Synagogue

Warsaw Orthodox Synagogue

Warsaw Orthodox Synagogue

Warsaw Orthodox Synagogue

Warsaw was a highlight of the journey, a bustling city with a gorgeous skyline and faint traces of the huge Jewish presence before the war and the seedlings of Jewish life there today. Ironically the cemetery was the best place to get a sense of the Jewish people who lived here over the centuries. The Polin Museum was impressive and very educational if not a little sterile. We met people from the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, and had a wonderful dinner at the Reform Beit Warsawa Synagogue hosted by its sponser Severyn Ashkanzi, the elegant LA hotelier from a family of Ukranian Jewish survivors.

Lubartów

Lubartów

Lubartów On the Square/p>

Lubartów Palace

Lubartów Cottage

Lubartów Churchbells

Lubartów Cemetery

Lubartów Jewish Cemetery

Lubartów Jewish Cemetery

Lubartów Jewish Cemetery

In Staten Island NY, the Young Levertover Society Monument to their murdered families and friends. The only memorial to the thousands of people from Lubartow who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Storks nesting at a farmhouse near Lubartów

Lubartów is the town where my grandfather emigrated from in 1907 at 23 years old. There have been people named Peretz living in this town since at least the early 1700s. The Palace was built by the Sanguszko Family, who owned Lubartów between 1739-1839. My great grandfather and his family owned and operated a large hotel, the Warshevsky Hotel, on the town square by the rail station.

The cemetery was in an empty lot next to the high school and filled with empty beer bottles, trash and high weeds. The gravestones were neglected but there was some attempt to save them by the wall constructed by the town in the 1990s.

There were many old cottages in the backstreets, some apparently abandoned, that looked just like those in the Shtetl photos of Roman Vishniac and Alter Kacyzne.

Passers, you have found yourself on the terrain of an nineteenth-century Jewish cemetery that is surrounded by care and memory of the inhabitants of Lubartow. Here, on the 11th of October 1942, German gendarmes shot and killed 300 Lubartovians of Jewish heritage.

The Jews of Lubartowa have been involved in the cultural, spiritual and material life of this land for centuries. Antique matzevot/tombstones with characteristic plaques are already the last remembrances of the followers of the Mosaic religion.

Passers of the future, respect this place.

The generations are lost and a new generation is born and so the Earth continues.

Parczew

Lubartow to Parczew

Parczew Synagogue - Factory

Parczew Synagogue

Parczew

Parczew is one town away from Lubartów and is where Laurie's grandfather emigrated from. His family, the Monchars, owned a distillery and mill in the town. Today, the building that was once the synagogue is now an abandoned factory. Nearby were several abandoned pre-war cottages, probably a remnant of the some of the thousands of Jews deported from Parczew to the camps.

Warsaw at Night

Warsaw Skyline

Warsaw Skyline

Warsaw Bridge

Warsaw Old Town

Warsaw Old Town

Warsaw Old Town

Warsaw Old Town

Firedancer in Warsaw Old Town

Laurie and I had a free night in Warsaw, we ate a decadent meal of wild game and shopped and walked through the Old Town streets. Warsaw is a beautiful place with magical skies.