To say that I was apprehensive in returning to Germany for a third visit was an understatement. Up until this weekend, I had not had pleasant experiences in the German-speaking world. I assure you that the account to follow is true, however absurd it may seem.

My first footsteps in Germany came in May 2003 on my way back from the March of Remembrance and Hope. Because of a series of strange circumstances, we ended up leaving in small groups via other airports instead of the Warsaw-Newark direct. At any rate, after spending a week in Poland and wanting nothing more than to go home, my small group was sent on Lufthansa from Warsaw to Frankfurt to JFK. When in Frankfurt airport, we made our way through security and to my surprise, given the incredible and innovative airport, there were no walk-through metal detectors, every one of us was to be wanded. The short story is that the woman wanding me decided to see if I was carrying hand grenades in my bra, so she stuck her hands up my under wire and down my cleavage. I was shocked and out of sorts, which a short trip to the ladies' room allowed me to rearrange everything back in its proper place.

This ended up just being a rather humorous anecdote that I told from time to time. However, on my little journey through part of Europe last summer, it didn’t get much better. My second trip to journey began in the Dusseldorf airport. I arrived in the cold, rain, collected my baggage, and was ready to go into town. I had money to change and then I would be on my way. Well, not really, there’s no place to change money in Dusseldorf airport, only ATMs which I did not have a card for. I thought I’d walk into town; no dice, it’s an hour and 20 minutes away by bus. The realization dawned on me that I could be spending the rest of my vacation in Dusseldorf airport, which was frightening. Feeling resourceful, I tried trading US dollars or GB pounds for Euros with people by the ATM, which is how I almost ended up in a German prison. Some lady turned me in, the police were pointing at me and speaking German (apparently it’s considered black market trading), so I did what any respectable person would do, I hid in the bathroom for a few minutes until the commotion seemed to die down.

I eventually found out that you could spend pounds in the café upstairs and get Euros in change. I bought an orange juice and had just enough money to get into town. Once in Dusseldorf proper, I found that my plan had a flaw in it. I had planned to go from Dusseldorf to Paris. Nope, not by way of Dusseldorf, so I had to take a train to Cologne.

Once in Cologne, I hadn’t eaten or slept in 30 hours. I was tired, cold, wet, and had only one pair of trousers. I bought a ticket to Paris, which ended up being over twice what Lonely Planet said it would be and decided I’d see what Cologne had to offer. I went into the huge Dom Cathedral and proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. I holed up in a bar, drinking beer until I felt better. At this point, I found myself in deep conversation with a septuagenarian gentleman who bought me more beer to perk up my spirits. I felt better and the sun was out. I left in a bit of a better mood, was walking through the city, it started to rain, no storm rather. My umbrella broke; I was drenched, and unhappy once again.

This story continues after I return from France. I get into Munich from an overnight train and decide that I’m going to try this one more time. I see a bit of the town, the Glockenspiel, etc. I then buy a 3-day transportation ticket to go meet my host for the night. My first problem is that I can’t figure out how to validate the ticket. The machine for validation is about an inch too small for the ticket itself, so I basically just rode the transportation system of Munich illegally for three days.

It didn’t get much better really, I ended up playing soccer barefoot with some students out by a lake and in the middle of the game, I somehow stepped in a hole and my right ankle made this really awful, terrible sound. I didn’t want to appear weak so I kept on playing. Later that night, I had a beer spilt on my head and I got a Charlie horse in my right calf.

I woke up the next morning with an ache in my left thigh as I had apparently pulled a muscle from my knee to my hip, I had a throbbing right calf, and an ankle the size of a grapefruit. I was miserable. This was only exacerbated as I changed hosts and went to Christopher Street Day Parade (a gay parade) to see the sights as it were. I had a decent time, struggling not to move because to move was to be in pain. Anyway, upon leaving said parade, I felt a hand on my right side. No big deal, right? It’s crowded, no problem. At least, there wasn’t a problem until that hand went up beyond my side and groped me. I turned around to see the largest woman I had ever seen in my life. She was somewhere near seven feet tall, had spiky hair, and was speaking to me in German raising her eyebrows. I don’t think I had ever been so scared in my life. I left the crowd at the point almost being run down by three flamboyantly gay men in lederhosen on bicycles. I just hobbled away.

Some moments later as the largest part of the crowd was behind me, I noticed some kind of evangelical something going on. I walked too close and a woman jumped me from the crowd, wielding a bible, and proceeded to beat me with it while speaking in German. Others were also being beat around me. I tried running away, but given my citrus joint it was near impossible. I sort of waddled quickly away, looking behind me, seeing her follow. This continued until I realized I was rid of her. Of course, at that point, I also realized that I had walked into the middle of a Palestinian protest. There were angry women in birkas shouting with signs in Arabic. Again, I fished my way through the crowd, still worried that the giant lesbian or the bible woman were to find me. At that point, I walked smack dab into a fountain. Now, I was injured, terrified, and soaking wet. Munich had wounded me and I left for London immediately.

So, as you can imagine, when I discovered the ‘Genocide: Forms, Causes, and Consequences’ conference as held in Berlin, I cringed. At the same time, I really wanted to see Frank Chalk, Israel Charny, and Sam Totten, so I bit the bullet and decided to go for it. Jaime, fearing for my life (given my luck thus far) and the lives of unsuspecting Germans, decided to accompany me.

When we first arrived after our hour-long flight, it was hard to believe that we had just jumped countries. We patiently waited for our host Marcin, a Pole now living in Berlin with his German girlfriend Nina. They were to play host to us on our trip. Marcin gave us a brief overview of Berlin while we made our way back to his flat in East Berlin. The funny thing is, that up to that point, I had completely forgotten about the whole East/West Berlin situation in the 1980s- funny how things slip your mind every now and then, only to startle you in their rediscovery later. Once dropping our things off, we headed out for a little nighttime sightseeing.

Our tour through Berlin began near Brandenburg Gate. Marcin paused to show us the Holocaust Memorial currently in the process of being built. I have to say I’m not terribly impressed. While I appreciate the abstract, I felt as if the abstract had gone beyond that to something that is so barren to make it unappreciable. There has been much controversy over the memorial itself from idea to implementation. I can only hope that the memorial can serve its purpose. From there, we headed on to see the infamous Brandenburg Gate or Brandenburger Tor. It wasn’t quite as large as the Arc de Triumph in Paris, but it was amazing nonetheless. Placing this symbol outside the history to where I associate it gives it a completely new meaning. I am also amused that there is a Starbucks on the other side of the gate.

We took a little walk near where the new governmental buildings are. Marcin pointed out to us the multitude of glass facades. He commented that there is a feeling in Germany that the government must be something that the people can see, that the government is for the people. You can look into the buildings from the river, seeing the empty conference rooms and parliamentary halls. You can also see into empty offices. Marcin says this is all symbolic of the way in which the German government wants its people to see it. I thought that was incredibly interesting.

Before moving on, we couldn’t resist going up into the Reichstag building. There is glass dome on the top of the Reichstag building, reconstructed after WWII. You can walk the spiral ramps up to the top and see a busy panorama of Berlin. What’s even more impressive is that you can look down through center of the dome to see another parliamentary hall. The openness and the design I still find incredibly fascinating. I looked out on Berlin with its lights still blazing. Cars busily passed by and the lights from monuments around the city shone like beacons of their own significance. For just a moment, it was like being on top of the world.

When brought down from these dizzying heights, we walked on to see a remaining fragment of the Berlin Wall. As you walk along the invisible line that used to separate East from West, there is a discernible strip of different pavement or cobblestone that show you where this line once was. You could just stand there and ponder about this, walling straight down the foot wide stone or swaying from one side to the other. I began thinking of the people who would risk their lives to cross that wall and the televised newscast of the coming down of the wall in 1989. There were crosses along the way, in memory of people who had died coming from East Germany to West Germany by scaling the wall. We walked past the surviving piece of the Berlin Wall, and there was a definite sense of struggle emanating from what this once was and what it stands for now. Now, it is only a reminder, albeit a stark one.

Our last stop past the Berlin Wall was Checkpoint Charlie, the former US Army point where East and West Germans were checked going through each side to visit friends or family. Now, a museum stands there, not just dedicated to the history of Checkpoint Charlie but also to the importance of coexistence. There was just something humbling about all of it. In a place where there was so much sadness, there is now so much hope.
The major point of our trip to Berlin was to attend the conference. With a theme of the Namibian War in Historical Perspective, I was enthralled at the prospect of learning about something completely new. Since I know that this will be dull to many of you, I will only hit on a couple of highlights. First, there were some world-renowned speakers that simply delivered as expected. Second, one of the most important lectures pointed an idea that I am still thinking over, the idea that ‘Genocide is learned,’ from a lecture by Jan-Bart Gewald. He pointed at the development of German soldier mentality and how that evolved from their presence in Congo and China in the earliest of the 1900s to the genocide by the Germans in Namibia. His point still resounds. Third, there was the creation of the European Network of Genocide Scholars (ENoGS) and all that entails. However, I don’t want to talk about the network now, but I do wish to make a small point.

Before the last session on Friday, I noted to Jaime how few women there were in the audience. We hadn’t seen a single woman speaker and there were too few women at the conference, in my opinion. We had a short discussion on possible reasons this was so, but before we could go any further, the foundational meeting for ENoGS had begun. With the election of the executive committee members, one brave gentleman pointed out that the committee was too ‘phallocentric.’ I nearly exploded, that had been my point before. There was no diversity to this committee; it was four white German males. While others pleaded to diversify, the cries fell on deaf ears with only a promise that the seven-person committee under those four could be anyone. Someone else bravely pointed out that all the important positions went to men. There were no female presenters at this conference, only one female chair of a panel and one discussant. I’ve taken all of this to heart and made it part of my personal mission. When I present in Boca Raton in June at the International Association of Genocide Scholars Conference, I hope that the situation will not be the same.

Finally, my last point about this conference was a bit of embarrassment and shame. During the last session ‘The Future of Genocide Studies,’ there was time for open comments by the audience. One man stood up from Never Again International in Rwanda, pleading to the conference participant on the situation in Rwanda. He stated what his organization stood for and then went on to talk about the situation in Rwanda today, with episodes of racial violence still breaking out from militants. These militants had escaped in 1994 and were hiding beyond the border, sneaking in to Rwanda from time to time to murder Tutsi. There were 11 attacks like this last year, but there was no press and no recognition of it. While I was moved by this and was curious to find out more, the rest of the conference participants dismissed it and talk resumed on nonsense (comparatively anyway). I spoke with the man from Never Again personally later. I must say though that at that point, I was ashamed and disappointed in the academics that were there. Where was the heart and soul at this conference?

With our only free day in Berlin, Jaime and I decided that we wanted to go to the Jewish Museum. We had both read about the museum’s design and lots of commentary on it, so there was a burning curiosity to it. The design itself is amazing. An aerial view shows the lightning shaped building housing the core exhibits. On the bottom floor, the slight grade of the floor and the crisscrossing axes make it confusion and disorientation, precisely the building’s purpose. The axis of continuity takes you across the others toward the main exhibit while the axis of exile intersects it and takes you to a history of immigration, ending in the Garden of Exile, a small garden with 49 pillars on slanting ground. It was beyond words. The other axis tells the story of the Holocaust through personal stories of life and the abrupt stop of that life. With photos and documents, it was definitely one of the more different exhibits like this I had seen. This axis ends in the Holocaust Tower, a cold, empty tower with no windows. You just stand out there looking up and around in a void.

Once proceeding toward the main exhibit, we were sidetracked again in an exhibit on the American Jewish Joint Distribution Commission. The history with photographs talked about what the commission did do and what it does now. Beyond that, there was a section called ‘the memory void’ or something like that. There are several open spaces in the museum by design and the memory void is one of those. While I have forgotten the artist’s name, the exhibit was called ‘Fallen Leaves’ and occupied the entirety of this space. There were thousands of faces cut out from inch thick metal scattered about the floor and you were encouraged to walk on them. Given that they were loosely strewn about the floor, every step clanked one against another and the sound reverberated throughout the concrete space. When stopping, there were a few moments of sound leftover before the vacuum reestablished itself. Reaching down and touching the faces, the cold metal seemed so pained. While I know too little about the exhibit, I still found it marvelous and stimulating.

The main exhibit itself is monstrous. Tracing Jewish history back from traders and settlers in the 4th century, there was simply more than one could take in. The multimedia and diverse presentation made it a more hands-on experience. I had two favorite parts however. First, the pomegranate tree. There is an artificial pomegranate tree where you can write your wishes for the world on paper pomegranates, climb a spiral staircase through the tree and hang your wish on the tree somewhere. There was an explanation of pomegranates and their significance but I simply though this was a clever way to begin the exhibition. Second, I was absolutely tickled to death with the section on Hebrew and the Talmud. One of the multimedia devices had a flat screen where you could see original text and then an explanation to the right. When you had read that, you blew (literally blew) on the screen and it changed. There was also a place where there were torso sized foam Hebrew letters that you put into a display to spell certain words. I think if I had giant letters like that I could learn Hebrew better. Having realized we spent 5 hours at the museum, we realized that there was no time to go to the Ethnological Museum, which broke my heart. Next time I suppose.

Our evenings were always busy- chats with Nina and Marcin on a variety of topics, a poetry reading at the ‘Polish Losers Club’ and then dinner at an Iranian restaurant where I had life-changing hummus. So much excitement, so much fun, I was sad when I realized that our trip had come to an end.

I had low expectations of Berlin really. I didn’t want to be groped, beat, or injured so anything that would happen would be fine. In reality, I really had an amazing trip. There was the conference, which has given me more fodder for my research, but there was also culture, good food, and new friends. Will I go back to Munich again? Not on your life. Will I go back to Berlin? You can count on it.

Links:

My Blog
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/april/

Berlin
http://www.berlin.de/english/index.html

History of the Berlin Wall
http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/

Jewish Museum
http://www.jmberlin.de/

Never Again International
http://www.neveragaininternational.org/

Quotes for the week:
George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.
Al Gore - during 1992 Vice Presidential debate

The reason there is so little crime in Germany is that it's against the law.
Alex Levin

Latin Phrase of the Week:
Numquam obliviscaris tua tela facta ab eis qui minima liciti sunt.
Never forget your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.