The history itself is massive of course, and it all started way before holocaust; even their persecution. It's sad really that the only first evidence of Jews in Berlin occurred 40 years after Berlin was founded in 1251. All it was a boycott on Jewish threadwork and a ban placed on Jews from participating in craft guilds or Christian ceremonies. After that they got kicked out of the city at least 4 times in the following 400 years. The first time was from 1348 to 1354 because they were being blamed for starting the black plague! Guess the department of health back then was a little lacking...
They got kicked out three more times between 1446 and 1671, and banished for 100 years until 1771. The reasons this time all revolved around alleged ceremonies the Jews would hold where they would take the blood of Christian priests and children to reanimate the suffering for Christ or something. Whether these were all just rumors or not is uncertain... I mean after all, the Christians did plenty of their own crazy stuff back then. The problem for the Jews though in doing weird religious rituals was that they were a minority, and easily blamed, persecuted and banished very easily, especially since they were so good at making money, and the city took any opportunity they could to seize their property.
Things were pretty good for the Jewish community from 1771 until the Nazis went all crazy on them. They had some significant historical figures like Moses Mendelson, who tried to create a secularist branch of Judaism so they'd finally start integrating with Christian society. I guess we're pretty good at that in the US... it's so hard to compare really. I mean, we have so many different minorities, with very different religions, and they somehow seem to get along together much more successfully than I've seen even in modern day Europe... not sure how we do it really... not to say we don't have bigots or government enforced persecution in our history... Each country has a very unique sensitive history relating to different populations being repressed... we're learning how to be more fair as day go by... slowly but surely, so that's a good enough conclusion on all that!
Anyway, I also visited a four-hundred year old castle during my trip across Berlin. It's in Spandau, which is also where the first Jewish settlement was. They even have a "Jewish street" there, though I have no idea if there's still any Jewish families living there... currently there's only about 20k Jews in Berlin, when in the turn of the 19th century there were about 90k. The funny thing about this Citadel though is that they've turned it into a big nightclub! Korn had played there last week... wow. It was a very pretty place still. They had a woodwork center and a blacksmith as well... along with tons of really creepy modern statues. See my facebook album by the way for more photos than what I've put up here.
hope you all enjoyed this cultural/historical experience
I also check out Grunewald track 17, which is a memorial for the 50k Jews that were transported out of Berlin to the extermination camps. The strange thing was that there was a film crew there doing a documentary, and they filmed me checking the memorial out... very odd, but I'm definitely going to check and see if I'm in it when it comes out! lol.
with me... lol... I'll try to do more exciting stuff for the non-scholars out there I swear!
PS the final picture of the creepy faces is called "Fallen Leaves" in the Berlin Jewish museum.
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