We began our day visiting a modern memorial to the Holocaust in a section of Berlin called the Bavarian Quarter, so named because many of the streets were named after towns and princes in the German state of Bavaria. In this middle class section of the city, once lived an estimated 16,000 assimilated German Jews, most of whom would be murdered by the Nazis.   One very famous Jewish resident was physicist, Albert Einstein. He had moved to Berlin in 1914, lived in the Bavarian Quarter and taught at Humboldt University. He emigrated to the United States in 1932. Approximately 70-80% of this residential area was destroyed during the war, so it is now largely comprised of modern apartment buildings and stores.

The Bavarian Quarter memorial reflected the first phase of the Nazi policies towards Jews, the legislative phase. In the 1980’s the city council decided to put up a memorial in this area. Olaf told us the memorial is comprised of over 80 signs, about 10” x 14” attached to poles throughout the quarter. On one side of each sign is a city ordinance or law which had been enacted against the Jews during the period of 1933 to 1943, and on the other side is a picture or symbol which depicts the essence of that ordinance. These memorial signs are scattered, and we encountered several on our walk around the quarter, noting that they were not in any particular order and not chronological.

In years past we have visited the Loecknitz Elementary School in the Bavarian Quarter while it was in session so the students could view a project which has been ongoing for more than 25 plus years relating to the Holocaust. Our students learned that this project is a graduation requirement including the opportunity for 6th graders to research and decide who they would like to represent from the former Jewish community in the Bavarian Quarter. Since school was on spring break, we were able to go inside the gate and see the memorial the students add to each year honoring the memory of a Jewish victim from their neighborhood.

Our next visit was to the train station in Grunewald, Track 17, a very wealthy residential area of Berlin. It was from this train station, beginning on October 18, 1941, that most of Berlin’s Jewish residents were to be deported. Olaf showed us three memorials at Grunewald to the deportation. The first memorial was a cross section of railroad ties in front of the entrance to the train station, established by a local group of Lutheran women in 1987, with a plaque commemorating the beginning of the deportations. In 2011 a Polish artist brought birch trees from around Auschwitz to several places in Germany which were part of the Holocaust, planting several here at Grunewald train station as part of this memorial. This was the first time in many years that we had seen the birch trees in bloom.

Olaf pointed out that across from this memorial stood an old phone booth which had been turned into a free lending library. The lending library had books about the Nazi period and included Hebrew writings explaining the library. In August of 2023 the lending library had been set on fire in an act of hatred by a 63 year old man who apparently had made many attempts to desecrate memorials in Berlin. The lending library was opened again in February 2024 and along side the library exists a photo reminder of the destruction.

The second memorial Olaf showed us was a wall which depicted figures as they walked up the hill to the train platform to be deported.

The third memorial established by the German Railroad, was consisted of two train platforms lined by plaques which represented each deportation train from Grunewald, listing the date, the number of Jews and the destination of the train, including Theresienstadt, Lodz, Riga and Auschwitz. The train left October 18, 1941 carrying 1,251 Jews to Lodz and the last on December 10, 1944 carried 31 Jews to Auschwitz. The largest transport carried 1,758 Jews and the smallest carried 13.

Mr. Barmore noted that officially, the decision to stop the annihilation of the Jews was made on November 27, 1944, according to documents. Yet transports continued to be sent to the east. What do these small numbers signify at the end? Where do they find them?   Mr. Barmore spoke to us about an event toward the end of the war called the “Jew Hunt” in which there continued to be a concerted effort to track down all Jews, showing the extent to which this whole racial policy was important to the Nazis. He spoke of it being a bureaucratic search whereby bureaucrats went back into old census lists and other records in order to locate any Jewish names. Another method they employed was hiring Jewish informers as bait to locate Jews who were hiding.

After a lunch at the famous Spinner-Brücker, known as the ‘biker deli’ because it has served as a meeting place for motorcycle enthusiasts for years we made our way to the Wannsee Villa. The villa is located on the banks of lake Wannsee, which on this clear day seemed such an incongruous setting for a meeting on January 20, 1942, called by Himmler’s deputy director of the SS, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolph Eichmann, bringing together representatives of many bureaucratic agencies for a luncheon meeting over which they would discuss how to implement the plan known as the Final Solution.

As we navigated this very new exhibition which at first was very surprising because the entire exhibit was handicap accessible. On the opening monitor was a sign language interpreter who gave directions on how to locate apps for signing the exhibit. It was also pointed out to us that the building was fully accessible to the blind with cane markings on the floors and braille for each exhibit. The students noticed the progressive nature of access to the disabled in Germany.

The new rules at the Wannsee Villa require us to take a museum guide. In the past Mr. Barmore was allowed to guide us and we were on our own. As we complied with the new rules, and a new version the exhibition, the Wannsee guide first spoke about the history of the villa which included the site becoming an official museum in 1992 and in the years since the war it had been a youth hostel. The original exhibition included a room and conference table with the documents of the meeting in which the Final Solution was created. The guide indicated that they took the table away because they still cannot verify if the meeting actually took place in that exact space. The villa had gone through renovations over time and there was no way of verifying the exact space.

The students had the opportunity to examine two photos on the Nazi Boycotts of Jewish businesses which took place on April 1, 1933. The students went back and forth discussing what they saw, what was not evident, what might be occurring in these photos and what was the possible intent of the photographer. One photo showed a women in front of a boutique smiling and the Nazi guard smiling along with her. The other photo was of a Jewish store owner, Richard Stern, who came out to protest the Nazi boycott wearing his World War I medals – indicating his long standing support of Germany and how could this happen to someone who had served his country?

In the last room the students learned about the individuals who participated in this January 20, 1942 meeting of the Final Solution. They learned their backgrounds and the high level of education that these individuals had acquired as German citizens.

The students left the Wannsee Villa talking about the the evil that had been perpetrated in such a beautiful place – having trouble reconciling January 20, 1942 with the surroundings. As we walked toward the exiting gates we saw a sign as we left pleading for the return of Israeli hostage Alex Danzig who is a victim of the October 7th attacks on Israeli citizens – he happens to be a personal friend of Mr. Barmore’s. This added to the heaviness, reality and necessity for studying this history.

We ended the evening with a beautiful dinner at a favorite restaurant in Berlin – The Restaurant Nolle. We said goodbye tonight to Olaf as we leave tomorrow morning for Prague with a stop in Dresden for lunch!