On Monday, January 21st, we visited one of Berlin's last standing Synagogues. Before WWII, it was one of Germany's largest and most prominent synagogues, with a Jewish school and research center. It was burned and destroyed by the Nazi's before the war. It sat in East Berlin as a pile of rubble for forty years. At the end of the 1980's, the Soviet government decided to rebuild the synagogue as a symbol of resurrection. After the fall of the wall, the city of Berlin assumed the project and the rebuild was completed a decade later. The city salvaged as much of the original synagogue as they could. The building is only partially its original size, due to other buildings being built around it after the war. It is not a place of worship, only a museum and a monument. The reality is that there is not a Jewish community in Berlin to worship at the synagogue. The building stands as a hollow reminder of a community that once was an intricate and prominent part of the city only 70 years earlier, but is now nonexistent.
It was very sad to visit this place. There were policemen posted outside the building because antisemitism is still a very serious problem in Europe. After going through metal detectors, we walked through the museum filled with old artifacts and documents from before the war of the Jewish culture. This is what got to me. All the things I was looking at, I thought, shouldn't be in a museum. Jews still use these things and practice with this stuff every day. This is still relevant! And then it all clicked. It isn't relevant here, anymore. In America, we are removed from what happened during the Holocaust. We learn about it, but we live in communities with Jewish families. Jewish communities are still strong parts of American society. There are no real Jewish communities left in Berlin and many parts of Eastern Europe. Just hollow holes where they were, lifeless and silent imprints.
