BERLIN: JEWISH HISTORY

We met our guide Robert, an expert on the Holocaust, who has a book set to be published by Fordham University later this year. As you can tell, the guides we hire from Context are all highly knowledgeable individuals who enriched our experience beyond merely touring the sites. Jewish Berlin has a rich history dating back to 1671, though few physical reminders remain. Remarkably, in the 1930s, Berlin, with over 4 million residents, had about 160,000 Jews, of which 55,000 were murdered, while the rest escaped and survived the war. Poland took the biggest hit with almost 3 million Jews murdered, followed by the Soviet Union and Hungary. The Jews of Berlin were a clear minority and quite assimilated into the society, but that did not prevent them from becoming Hitler's scapegoats. On our walk, we saw remnants of the old Jewish synagogue, situated near a Lutheran and a Catholic church, reflecting their coexistence. We visited the newer Jewish synagogue, which once held 3,000 congregants but now has only a few hundred members.

The old Jewish cemetery is missing gravestones except for one. We also visited a site where a non-Jewish man employed blind Jewish people to shield them from the Nazis, saving four lives, and was honored by Yad Vashem as a "righteous among the nations" for his bravery.

Berlin now has a large and growing Jewish population, with people from Israel and other European countries, as Germany is recognized for its religious freedoms. Additionally, we observed many Turkish people in Berlin, who arrived after the war to help rebuild and stayed. Berlin is a melting pot of immigrants, and generally, everyone seems to coexist harmoniously.