A Day in Berlin

by Shel Gross – June 2024

It was a day when moments of magic opened like wildflowers caught on time-lapse video, their grace and beauty astonishing yet unsurprising; like—of course this is awesome, what did you expect? All you need to do is be there and be grateful.

The first moment: waking at 4:40am feeling refreshed, having slept through the whole night; although some would claim that 4:40am still is the night. But, Berlin being further north than Madison, the day was lightening and the birds beginning their chatter. Let’s just get on with it. It was the day of the Stolpersteine, the dedication of the stones; a day of remembrance and family.

Plus a poem was materializing in my mind; another moment of magic—an act of revelation that is still unfathomable to me. Like Athena fully grown, born from the head of her father, Zeus. I wanted to capture it before it disappeared into the day’s busy-ness. So I made some tea and wrote about the strands of history and memory that wove themselves together from the prior day’s travels. I was the scribe; I’m not sure who the author was.

History and memory: the former born from the latter, but so different.

The morning was beautiful but the forecast called for rain during the few hours we would be laying the Stolpersteine and walking in the footsteps of my mother-in-law, Roni’s, childhood in Berlin. It was the occasion for most of the family making the trip, coming from Cleveland and Madison and San Francisco and L.A. And, sure enough, as we left for the bus a soft rain began to fall. Knowing we would arrive early we hoped to find a café nearby the first house in front of which we would lay the stones at Alt Moabit Strasse 80. And not yet having realized that we were accompanied by magic that day, I was surprised that the café was right next to the building where the first dedication would occur, where Roni’s aunt and uncle and her aunt’s sister had lived before being sent to the camps.

As I sipped some coffee our ranks began to grow. Our hostess, Cathy, had come with us. A long-time resident of Berlin, she knew about the Stolpersteine—her neighbor volunteers to clean them–but had never attended a ceremony. The family arrived in bunches: Roni, my wife’s siblings, my nieces, my daughter, my son and daughter-in-law. And also the Stolpersteine volunteers: Theo, who made all the arrangements, and ­­­the architect who would be doing the actual installation.

And more. I knew that neighbors had received a flyer about the dedication welcoming them to attend. But what did I expect? I didn’t expect anything. I couldn’t have expected what happened. But they started to arrive; young and old. And as a crowd gathered on the street, passersby stopped and inquired. And stayed. This was one of the most moving parts of the day, these strangers who made themselves part of our extended family in that moment: those who lived in the building where Roni’s family had lived, one of whom was old enough to remember Jews being taken away; one young man passing by with a very happy baby in a stroller. But only in retrospect did I appreciate this as another incarnation of magic.

And, of course, as the ceremony began the rain subsided. And, of course, the café had a canopy and chairs outside for those who wished that shelter. Some would say that the Divine provides what we need. But it’s all just a mystery to me.

I had envisioned that there would be a portion of the sidewalk prepared, opened up with a jack hammer or such to allow the stones to be placed. But that is only because I hadn’t been to Berlin before. While there are some places that have slabs of concrete as a walk, many of the walks are cobblestones, and virtually everywhere at least part of the sidewalk consists of these. And so as we watched the architect dug out enough cobblestones to place the three Stolpersteine in front of Alt Moabit Strasse 80, made sure they were level, used pieces of stones of various shapes and sizes to fit around them and hold them in place, and poured in sand to finish. Stolpersteine literally means “stumbling blocks”. But no one would trip over these; but they would stumble upon the reminder of what had happened. They were small, maybe 4 X 4 inches, with a bronze plaque that had the name of the person, when they were born, when and to where they departed and their fate, most typically “Ermordet”: murdered. No one had to be told to be silent. It was understood we respect the memory that was being honored: the memory of Julius Jakob Rothman, Elisabeth Rothman and Margarete Proskauer. If there was noise from traffic I don’t remember it.

And when this was completed Roni made some remarks. And then we were done. One of the women who now lives at Alt Moabit 80 told Roni that she would tend to the stones; clean them as needed. How sweet was that? There was some more conversation and then we gathered to move on to Flensburger Strasse 20/22 to remember Roni’s grandmother, Minna Lewinsohn, who was deported to Riga in January 1942, six months after Roni and her parents had been able to leave Germany unable to arrange for her grandmother to accompany them.

The stories of those who left and those who didn’t are part of the history and the memory of the Nazi era. People needed sponsors in other countries to accept them. Many countries did not want to open their borders to Jews from Europe, just as immigration remains contentious to this day. Some who could, fled as soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933, the writing on the wall being clear to them. Others, like Roni’s uncle and aunt and her sister, had a business, a life that they could not recreate elsewhere at their age. They stayed hoping for the best, finding the worst.

On the way to Flensburger Strasse we learned another piece of this story; one that even Roni did not know. When Julius and Elisabeth and Margarete were removed from Alt Moabit 80, they were detained in another apartment around the corner until their transport to the camps could be arranged. Theo pointed this out to us. Those involved in this project have done an incredible amount of research to document this history.

Flensburger Strasse 20/22 is not the same building that Roni’s grandmother lived in. But Roni saw the past clearly in her mind. After the stone was laid there and as she spoke of her grandmother the sobs came. Roni is not one who shows much emotion, but she did that day. Most of us had never seen her cry in that way; maybe teary-eyed but not deep sobbing (except that Vicki remembers Roni crying when her father died). Is this another kind of magic; a witnessing that connects us as individuals and across time?

Our next stop was by the Bellevue S-Bahn (elevated train) station. The apartment building Roni grew up in is no longer there but she showed us where it was next to the station, told us how she would stand by the window and wave to people on the platform or on the train. In listening to her story Theo remembered something. Bellevue is his regular station as he lives in the area. He took us up to the train platform and showed us some pictures there, pictures of the station as it looked many years ago, pictures which included the building where Roni grew up, where she could show us the windows of her apartment. The revelations just keep coming.

Here, too, Roni told us stories. History informs us that in 1938 the Nazis prohibited Jews from entering certain establishments. But what did this look like? Roni told us how she would go to the ice cream shop across the street from their home. While she was no longer allowed to enter, the policeman on duty would go in and buy the ice cream for her. And the first time her mother went to the grocery and saw the sign saying “No Jews Allowed”, she returned home only to receive a phone call from the proprietress. “Mrs. Lewinsohn, why didn’t you come in, I saw you?” she asked. When her mother explained about the sign, the woman said “Oh, don’t pay attention to that sign, it doesn’t mean you. You come anytime.” And she did, but she would use the back door.

And finally we moved on to the Levetzostrasse Memorial not that far away. This marks the location of a transport station from which the Jews were sent to the camps. A tall metal sculpture documents the dates and destinations of the trains. Inlaid in the ground are plaques commemorating the synagogues that existed in Berlin before the holocaust. Berlin is a city filled with memorials to those killed, not just Jews but Romas, homosexuals and those who took part in the resistance.

Was this a walk through history or a walk through memory? Yes. The Stolpersteine transform Roni’s memories into the growing documented history found in the sidewalks of Berlin and, indeed, across Germany and other countries where Jews perished. But history only hints at the depths of all the personal stories. Even this story captures only a small portion of the memories. Some memories never make the transition to history. Here is one…

On our last night in Berlin we traveled to the northwest portion of the Tiergarten, a large extended park, reminiscent of Central Park in New York, spreading west from the Brandenburg Gate. Roni’s home across from the Bellevue train station was only a few blocks from an entrance to the park. And walking but a short way in you come to the Englischer Garten; the English Garden. And in that small plot is a sculpture of a pony and a young person. Roni recalls her parents bringing her here and she would pretend to feed the pony the petals from the flowers lying on the ground, lying there as they do that night in June 2024. A long way from the 1940s, yet not so far away in one’s memories.