Still Processing Berlin (a quick entry for class)

My art professor talked with us about our Berlin experience during class the other day. She seemed troubled that we had not spoken about it with anyone--a tour guide, or survivor, or even a local--and so she tried to pry our reactions out of us.

I responded with (pretty much) these words, relating my answer to the art exhibit we had just viewed:

Visiting Berlin was an intense experience. It's sort of like how, you know, Gustav [the artist] describes most of his pieces as an exploration into the "auto-destruction" or, for some, the "auto-creation." Walking around the gallery, though, I was struck by how inherently intertwined they are. Can you have one without the other? Destruction with out creation? Creation without destruction? Those elements were strikingly present in Berlin. They [the Berliners] destroyed a wall, but they created an open space and the beginnings of a new community... I was disturbed by the visit to the concentration camp, and the imprints left by Nazi Germany on the city. What must it feel like to live in the shadows of that camp? How do you cope with the Holocaust becoming a tourist attraction?...But at the same time, there is this wild night life, and there are so many young people, and there is all of the potential that goes with rebuilding... there was a powerful mixture of these elements...I don't know, I wouldn't ever want to live there, but it was a thought-provoking and, in some ways, inspiring place to visit--even if it was troubling at the same time.

My art professor followed up with an interesting response. She expressed that her parents were German Jews, and as a Jew, she was taught to see birth and death in a different way than many others do.  Her words, more or less, elaborated:

In my religion, we do not celebrate the birth of a child like you do. Birth is a somber time because a new child means new hardship. Birth means new pain. For us, death is valued as an escape from pain. We celebrate death in the way that you celebrate new life... Memory becomes everything. We remember what happened over two thousand years ago. Our meaning comes from what happened before us.  Part of Holocaust remembrance, part of the Berlin experience, part of the concentration camp tours, the art exhibits, the tourist sites...is the need to reflect on what came before--a need to understand who we are and where we came from. We, too, are all rooted in the past, and our interactions with the past shape how we view the present. 

Berlin nightlife

Standing outside the Berlin wall