Ich bin ein Berliner

The next country on our tour was Germany, and more specifically Berlin. In Berlin we were going to be touring with a company/program called Germany CloseUp. It's a government funded program that brings North American Jewish young adults to Germany to educate them on current Germany. The goal is to have the students be able to separate their perception of WWII Germany from Modern Day Germany. When push comes to shove, it's about making reparations.
The entire time spent in Germany was incredibly fascinating to me. Studying the Holocaust is something I am incredibly passionate about, and I absorbed absolutely everything I could while being there. It was also a very thought provoking couple days spent with our group. Within the group here there are many grandchildren of survivors and people had very strong and averse reactions to being in Germany. That was also incredibly interesting to try and sympathize with. My thoughts on the Holocaust and being in Germany are incredibly extensive and too long to put up here, so I'll just share a sampling, and then I'll give the highlights of the time in Berlin.
First, I don't think Germany should be paying (for lack of a better word) reparations to our generation. They didn't do anything to us, and while it's important for us to have a more unbiased view of modern day Germany I do not think it's my generations right to forgive Germany. The people living in Germany now are not the people who committed the gross crimes against humanity, so while it is their role to not let it happen again why are they the ones left with the burden to make everyone forgive them? This goes along with the incredibly negative reactions to people within my group. I don't agree with everyone's reactions, but I do respect them, the Holocaust is an incredibly sensitive and personal subject and I have no right to comment or critique how anyone deals with it, but the people that are so holed up in their close minded perception that Germany was once bad and thus is still bad today is aggravating. Throughout our five day stay there there were people who were so angry we were in Germany that they spent the entire time shrouded with anger and resentment and didn't give themselves a chance to maybe, possibly, appreciate Germany the slightest bit. And my final thought for now, Germany has done an incredible job making reparations and making it so that Jews can be comfortable being in Germany and being open about being German. The country that has not done anything of that sort is Poland. Anti-Semetism in Poland is at all new high, it's worse than what I described in Hungary. You have to be so careful if you're Jewish there, and so wary of people finding out, and what is Poland doing about that? Absolutely nothing, the government may not be actively encouraging it, but they are certainly not doing anything to put a stop to it. During WWII while Poland did not initiate the persecution of the Jews, Homosexuals, and Gypsies they let Germany in with open arms, they got to be rid of the scum of society without being blamed for it. And to this day they have no huge fault in the Holocaust. Yes Auschwitz is on their land but it was the Germans who built it, not the Polish. There is no government funded reparations program in Poland and Jews go there all the time, without these incredibly negative reactions to the country. Instead when they see Auschwitz, they hate Germany.
The majority of our time in Germany was spent visiting Holocaust Memorial and learning about the Holocaust, and then the last day was spent learning about Modern Day Germany, the government and the Jewish life currently. The first couple days were far more interesting to me.
The first thing we did when we got to Berlin was to see the famous wall. The wall is divided into sections and each section is decorated by a different artist. And the artists change every couple years. Currently all of the art work is for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. It was beautiful, art as far as the eye could see.

The Berlin Wall

We also drove through Checkpoint Charlie (the checkpoint between East and West Berlin). Now it's sort of a merchandise extravaganza, you can buy all sorts of things with the checkpoint insignia on it, and you can even get your passport stamped.

Checkpoint Charlie

There are remnants of communism everywhere, the pedestrian crossing signals are the epitome of the perfect communism man, the little figure wears a suit and when you're not supposed to walk he stand upright and proper. The public follows the pedestrian crossing signals to a T. There is absolutely no jay-walking anywhere in Berlin. If there is not a single car coming and it's the middle of a night, and someone is waiting to cross the street, they will wait until the crossing signal is green.
My favorite thing in Berlin was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It was designed and installed within the last five years and it was an incredibly powerful memorial. It was the first time that there was not some overwhelming significance and symbolism to the memorial. The memorial is made up of, honestly, these coffin shaped rectangles of varying heights, repeated over and over and over again in rows and rows and rows. As you walk into the memorial these rectangles rise up on either side of you and you feel incredibly small. There are no names on the rectangles, nor is there any significance to the number of them there. The number is 2107 or something like that, and it does not correlate to the 6 million who were killed. At first I was really put off that there wasn't some significance but as I walked into the memorial I felt so much more than I expected and it didn't matter than the names and the places were not listed somewhere, the feeling was enough. One of the most powerful feelings was standing in the memorial looking down these alleys and rows, and people would suddenly appear coming from some other direction, and they'd be within your line of sight for a couple seconds and then they'd disappear, and if they were a stranger you would never see them again. An eerie sort of coincidence is the company that makes the graffiti resistant paint that coats each individual rectangle in the memorial is the same company that made the gas that used during WWII for execution.

The Tops of the Rectangles of the Memorial

Within the Memorial

Another highlight of the trip was going to the Wansee House, where the Wansee Conference was held, which is where the Final Solution was decided. My favorite room here (it has since been turned into a Holocaust Museum) was a room with quotes from 2nd Generation people. But not just survivors, quotes from the daughters and nieces of S.S officers and people very high up in Hitler's regime. They talked about living with the guilt, and not wanting to acknowledge what it was that their relatives did. Even the quotes from the children of survivors were powerful. One man had a quote along the lines of; Every time I got poor marks in school and showed my mother she would sigh and say, "This is what I survived Auschwitz for?" Can you imagine living your life like that? Do well or make your mother regret surviving the Holocaust?

Partial Quote from the niece of a Regime Officer

It was such a cool concept and from all the Holocaust museums I have ever visited it was probably one of my favorite parts.

Also, we went to the Jewish Museum in Berlin and there was this incredible memorial here. It was this space filled with 10,000 metal faces and you could walk on them. And when you walked on them it made this incredible noise (of metal hitting other metal) and you could hear it throughout the building. The memorial was to all innocent victims of War.

Metal Faces (Not my Picture: Photo Credit: Lonnie Kleinman)

One final non-Holocaust related memory of Berlin was climbing to the top of the Parliament building. On the rood of the building is this huge mirrored, metal structure that you can climb and see a lot of the city.

Metal Mirrored Structure on top of the Parliament Building

Terezin

Before leaving Prague we went to Terezin, a concentration camp/ghetto during the second world war. It was really eerie to be there, I had never been to any camp in Poland or anywhere else, so that was a weird experience just being somewhere that people had been sent to and died at during the Holocaust. Also, Terezin is a fully functioning town now, with families and people who live there, so while we were walking by the crematorium there were people rollerblading. At first I thought it was incredibly rude, and while I don't think that they necessarily should be doing that by the crematorium and the cemetery, it is their home.
Terezin as a town now, has about 7,000 people living in it. During the was it held up to 70,000 at any point. Terezin was used as an intermediate camp. Those Jews that the German's didn't know what to do with, because they were so high up in society were sent there while the Nazi Regime decided. Poets, artists, high class members of society were the first people to be sent there. Also, it was not a death camp, 35,000 people died there from disease and sickness, but not from extermination.
Another unique thing about Terezin was that the leadership of the ghetto was Jewish, and those Jews were the ones who made the lists of transports out of Terezin, and to Auschwitz or another death camp. Could you imagine being the one deciding who got to go and who got to stay? Every so often the list of names would be posted and then people had a chance to appeal the decision. They could go in front of a board of people and tell them why they shouldn't be on the transport (family, life in Terezin, etc.). The sad thing is though, if you got out of it, someone would be sent in your place.
They told us while we were there that there were people who appealed to be taken off the list, but there were also people who went to the board and asked to be put on the transport, to be with a family member or a loved one. That is all incomprehensible to me. Knowing what we know now, about where those transports went and what happened to the people, knowing that some people voluntarily put themselves there is, I guess, uncomfortable.
We also went to the crematorium, where the people who died in Terezin were, well cremated, and there ashes were just dumped elsewhere. There was this room there in which the bodies were prepared for cremation, and it was run by people in the ghetto, and the bodies were prepared in a Jewish manner.
The whole experience was eerie, and heavy and got me thinking.

Central Europe Part I

My whirlwind slam bam bang tour of Europe being over, I certainly have a lot to report. First off, our trip managed to go smoothly and there was no interference from the volcanic ash that postponed and canceled a lot of other people’s travel plans.
So after some nervousness about arriving in Budapest we got there. We were only spending one day there so we had to cram everything in very quickly. We toured an old church that was this sprawling structure with turrets and courtyards and we spent some time walking around the downtown. The evening we spent there we got to meet some Hungarian young adults (twenty somethings) who shared their experience of being Jewish in Budapest. It’s not so good, you cannot say you’re Jewish or wear a Star of David for fear of inciting violence against you. That’s scary, coming from Israel and from the U.S where there is no fear about saying you’re Jewish, it’s really weird to think that it’s something you have to hide, and not be able to publicly declare. I know that they’re not ashamed of their Judaism, it’s still weird for me to try and comprehend.

The next day in Budapest, which we spent before heading to Prague we did the Jewish thing. We saw the Holocaust memorials, and saw the synagogue, that is not used so regularly, although on the High Holy Days it is filled with thousands of people. We also visited a Jewish School in Budapest.

The Synagoguge

The school, which teaches Hebrew and Jewish history, has a majority of students who are in fact not Jewish. The interactions between the two groups was a little bit difficult so it was hard to understand the reasons behind the non-Jews attending the school. After the school we went to see an incredible Holocaust Memorial. Along this one spot on the river Danube there are these cast iron shoes that remember all of the people who were killed and their bodies thrown into the river. There are hundreds of shoes, of all shapes and sizes, and rocks and flowers sticking out of them.

The Memorial

From Budapest we drove to Prague, with an hour stop for dinner in Bratislava, Slovakia. We finally arrived in Prague at about 2 in the morning, and after a confusion over which hotel we were supposed to going to, and a twenty five minute wait outside the right hotel, we finally got in, and went to sleep.

The next day in Prague was devoted to seeing the Jewish sites. Prague has a complex of Jewish Historical Museums, it includes one actual museum, several synagogues, a historic cemetery, and one Holocaust Memorial. The Museum wasn't all that interesting, at this point in the year the Jewish museums blend together a bit, so this one wasn't all that special. The Holocaust memorial was quite incredible, it was in an old synagogue and it was walls and walls of name, after name after name, of all the Jews from Prague and that died in Prague.

Holocaust Memorial

The cemetery was also incredible, it has been around since the 1400's and there's so many people buried there that at some point they ran out of space, so they started putting bodies, one on top of another. At the most concentrated point there are twelve layers of graves, and it's estimated that there are 100,000 people buried there.

The Cemetery; A small portion of the many gravestones

The rest of the synagogues were old looking, although they all had incredible thought put into their design and decoration.

We spent Shabbat in Prague, we went to services on Friday night at the Spanish Synagogue and the services were led by a Czech man, and the community there were mostly tourists. The next morning we went to another synagogue, called the Jerusalem synagogue, but the women sat in the back behind a big sheet and couldn't really hear or see, so we didn't stay there for to long.

While in Prague we went on Several walking tours. One on Friday night, and we say the city lit up at night, which was quite beautiful, especially along the river. The Charles Bridge (i think that's the name of it) is this huge pedestrian bridge that was really lit up and beautiful. The other walking tour was during the day, and that more historic sites, although we returned to the same bridge and saw a really peculiar site. It was Jesus on the cross with Hebrew words written in an arc above him (קדש קדש, קדש, and the continuation of the prayer). The legend goes that Jewish man defaced a previous image of Jesus and was ordered to pay for a new one, the entire Jewish community stood behind him, and so they left their mark on the statue.

The Statue

Walking Tour Views

Shabbat in Cordoba, and Madrid

The main attraction of Cordoba was our ability to spend Shabbat there. Spanish Jewry has all essentially disappeared since the inquisition. We had Friday night and Saturday morning services in a historical Sephardic home (it is now a tourist site) and we were the first group of any sort of Jews to hold a service there, and in all of Cordoba in hundreds, literally hundreds of years. Coincidentally there was a touring group of secular Israeli teens in Cordoba and they joined us for services on Friday night. On Saturday morning we read from a Torah that had been donated by the father of a man we had met and had services with in Morocco.
Spending Shabbat there was wonderful, it was peaceful and it was incredible to know that we were the first ones doing it in a very long time. There were several people on our program who had Aliyahs (the act of being called to a Torah, which usually happens on one's bat/bar mitzvah) for the first time. One girl had had a Bat Torah (celebration at the time of one's bat mitzvah without being called to the Torah). There was one girl (the one student from Mexico) who had had no celebration at Bat-Mitzvah age. She had an aliyah and read from the Torah, so she essentially had a bat- mitzvah in Spain. This was not only historical for her, but this was the first time possibly ever that a girl had had a bat-mitzvah in Cordoba let alone all of Spain.
After Havdalah we took a two hour bullet train to Madrid. The next morning we met with the Israeli ambassador to Spain. He was quite engaging. He's been a diplomat for several decades and has also been the ambassador to other countries including Chile. Then we spent a couple hours at the Prado then we flew home. The Prado was absolutely incredible, the time we were given was not nearly enough to see all of much of it. We had a guided tour and they focused mainly on the Spanish painters, Diego, Velasquez and Greco, the painting were unbelievable but there was so much else there that we didn't get a chance to see.
All in all Spain was absolutely amazing. It's somewhere I definitely want to return to and spend more time. But by far it was the best trip yet.

Bienvendios a Espana!

Spain was absolutely incredible. By far my favorite country we've been to yet. I understood the language, the culture was comfortable and the food was great. In addition the feelings of the group and the things we saw were unbelievable.
Our trip started in Toledo. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel right outside of the old city. The first full day we had a tour of the old city. We went to this incredible church that was absolutely gorgeous in it's over the top showiness. We also went to an old synagogue that has since been turned into a historical site. It is Kivunim's custom to sing when we are in synagogues around the world but when we were here we had to get permission from the people working there. They were worried of extra attention being drawn to us if we were singing Jewish songs. In the end we were able to sing though.

A couple views from around Toldeo

The Outside of the Church

The rest of the time in Toledo was spent on our own, exploring and eating at some of the local restaurants. The major food theme of my trip to Spain was seafood. Seafood paella, squid...etc. There was also ham and pork everywhere but I stayed away from that....although most of our program tried it, even though they normally keep kosher (among other things; no pig products).
From Toledo we went to Grenada, with a stop along the way in Jaen (pronounced Chai-en). In Jaen there is a large initiative on the part of the government to restore the historical Jewish sites around the city. There are old Jewish homes that are being restored, and the old Jewish quarter is being brought to people's attention.

Jaen

In Grenada the main attraction was the Alhambra mosque. It is arguably one of the most impressive examples of architectural supremacy ever. It was built in the 13th and 14th centuries when Islam ruled Spain. Every single piece of the mosque is created with enormous detail and care. There are several palaces, gardens, and many many buildings all within the Alhambra complex. Overall it was absolutely unbelievable.

The Alhambra

From Grenada we moved on to Cordoba. Along the way we stopped in Seville to visit the foundation of three cultures. It is an initiative between the Spanish and Moroccan governments to establish a coexistence organization in Spain. It includes Islam, Christianity and Judaism, although the foundation prefers to refer to them as cultures as opposed to religions. This is in part due to the stigma that the word religion carries and additionally their belief that these three different groups are more of a culture than a religion.

Foundation of Three Cultures

Also in Seville I saw crew! We drove along a river and there were several singles rowing down it. It was wonderful!
Then on to Cordoba. Here we stayed within the walls of the old city. We toured La Mesquita, which used to be a mosque but in the 16th century (I believe) it was converted to a Church. It has been used a mosque twice since it has changed over. This church was also incredible. Huge with grandiose decorations although it was not quite as over the top as the Cathedral in Toledo, I think because it was originally a mosque. Mosques in general are just as intricate and thoughtful as churches, just without all the paintings and art because Islam forbids imagery of Muhammad and frowns upon imagery of other figures.

Cathedral in Toledo

The Sahara and an extended bus stop

So after a very very very very long day of traveling on a bus and then a bumpy Jeep ride we arrived at this hotel in the Sahara. It was incredible. Each room was painted a different color and had these huge beds, with these netted canopies across them. And the stars there as well were amazing. Just not quite as much as the night before in the Berber Village.
The next morning we woke up early and most of our group took camels, I walked, along the sand dunes to the peak of this one from which we watched the sun rose. At that point it didn't matter that it had taken close to ten hours of traveling to get to this point, it was incredible, impressive and one of if not the best moments of the trip. At dinner the night before Peter Geffen (the director) had told us it was our choice if next year's Kivunim would make this trip. At that point we were all thinking, what kind could be worth so much traveling, and such a long day.
The next morning was more than worth it. We were all covered in sand and tired because walking along sand dunes is quite tiring, but the sunrise was incredible.

The Sahara, the dunes, the Sunrise and the camels

After we saw the sunrise, we packed up and left the hotel, and had the same bouncy jeep ride out of the desert. Today though we could see where we were going, and the jeep ride was a lot more fun. Our task for the day was to head to Warzazat, the Hollywood of Morocco for a night, before making the trek back to Casablanca the next for the flight home. In Warzazat it was a pretty relaxing night, nothing much to report on there. The next morning was our final full day in Morocco, and the only task for the day was to make it to Casablanca, which was a four-five hour drive. About two hours into it the brakes on our bus overheated while we were stopped at a rest stop. We had to wait several hours for a new bus to come. We were stuck on the side of the road overlooking mountains, and fields and beautiful scenery, but we were still stuck there for about two and half hours. We ended up arriving in Casablanca about two hour later than scheduled, and we were supposed to have a dinner with Jewish youth there, but seeing as how we arrived after ten o'clock they were all asleep. We had a quick dinner, then made our way back to the hotel for a brief night's sleep before boarding a late (TurkishAir is always late) plane which stopped in Istanbul en route to Israel.
Overall Morocco was absolutely incredible and wonderful and amazing.

A Berber Village, the Sahara and the Hollywood of Morocco

The last couple days of the trip were the most crazy and involved the longest time sitting on a bus, but they were also the most incredible. From Marrakesh we made out way to a small Berber village called Tillhouette. Along the way we had been invited to attend a Hillulah in another small village. A Hillulah is a celebration that occurs on the day of the yortzeit (anniversary of the death) of a Rabbi or another important Jewish figure. Unfortunately I don't even remember the name of the Rabbi of the one we attended. I do remember the village though. It was a very small village, donkeys were everywhere. We wound our way up to the crest of this hill, on which a small Jewish club resided. The main feature of the Jewish club was the graves of these two Rabbi which had been built after a donation from a wealthy Jewish man in Marrakesh. A (now) old woman, who was there, was told in a dream that this was where the graves had to be put, and thus they were built there. After the Hillulah when we were making our way back down to the bus, I and two friends got caught in the middle of a sheep herd. We thought there were going to run into us and we were going to be doing a hot potato dance to avoid being trampled but it was like oil and water, they just moved around us giving us a wide berth of space.

The Sheep Herd

From there we traveled to this village; Tillhouette. It was a very long bus ride and then another hour or so in these rickety vans because the roads became to narrow for the bus to transverse. We arrived in this small Berber village and because of the trek it took to get there I am sure it is not a popular tourist spot. We toured a Cashbah (castle or fortress) which was honestly just a really really cool old building.
Then we sat around a fire with many of the local villagers. The Berber women performed dances and songs, and encouraged/forced all of the Kivunim females to join them. It was quite unreal, it looked like something you'd see in a movie.

Local Berber Child

Cashbah

There was this one hotel, I guess you would call it there, and that's where we all stayed. They made us a home cooked meal very similar to the one we had had the night before, soup and couscous. And then the evening was hours. There wasn't much to do in this village but oh my, the stars there were magical. There was no light pollution from anything, so just a black sky and an absolutely gorgeous array of stars. It was so amazing. I could have lied there forever, if only it wasn't so cold.
The next day we packed up early, took the vans back to the bus and settled in for the longest bus ride of the trip to the Sahara. Along the way we stopped at a gorge, which was quite striking. A small stream ran down the center, and on either side loomed these huge cliffs.

The Gorge

But it was nothing to what were going to see in the Sahara. The extensive day of travel ended with an hour Jeep ride in the desert to the hotel we were spending the night at. It was pitch black and we could not see where we were going in the slightest.