The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was a stop I felt Pam had to see. This maze of grey granite blocks are hip height at the outer edges but get taller as the ground sinks down in the center of this multiple city block memorial.
Pam wandered off to explore the information center while I sketched. The information center was one of the most impressive exhibition we had seen in Berlin.
It was a grey day and it had been raining all morning. Groups of tourists would gather at the outer periphery of the memorial before walking into the stone maze. Green moss has already started to grow on the shady side of the blocks. I limited my view to maybe one eighth of the memorial. When My sketch was done, I texted Pam multiple times but she wasn’t getting reception since she was under ground.
I decided to wander inside the memorial. It was fairly bright as I walked down a single row. I limited myself to the single row so I could walk back and sit under the pine tree which is where Pam would know I was sketching.
Deeper down the row it grew darker. The morning rain left long streaks of moisture dripping down each column. The drops slid downward like tears. Some tourists had run their fingers through the moisture creating horizontal meandering trails. You couldn’t see it others were walking perpendicular to your path so I would pause at each corner and glance down the rows that ran east and west. When I returned to my sketching spot, a family sat beside me. The children ran up and down the aisles playing hide and seek.
Pam found a spot with reception and she suggested I meet her at the information center. The exhibits were brutal and overwhelming. One room was full of the storied of families. A large photo should show the whole family and then there was a panel that showed what happened to each person in the photo. More often than not, the epitaph would read murdered in Treblinka or Dachau or any number of other death camps. A few did survive in hiding or by escaping the country. Their stories were also corroborated with primary sources. The Nazi’s kept precise documentation.
One small boy lost both his parents to disease in a ghetto and then his three brothers and sister were deported and murdered at death camps. The boy had to endure medical experiments but he ultimately survived the torture.