Berlin

I had never pictured myself in Berlin.
But this was our third visit in as many years. It grabs you. You are astounded by what you see then feel, but more by what you learn about remorse and transformation. The history is troubling, obscene. But the turnaround and sincere efforts of renewal are affirming.
Everywhere are signs of sorrow, defeat, and repentance in the numerous Berlin memorials. 
These memorials tell the story the Jews of course, but also to Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), homosexuals, defiers of the wall, politicians against Nazis, and protesters.

photo by Sarah Taus

The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe

There are 2,711 concrete slabs on almost 5 acres, varying in height.
The overall effect is that of a graveyard.

At Humboldt University. This is a sculpture of empty bookshelves below ground. Our shadows with umbrellas reflect in its ceiling.

Gleis 17

The departure track for Jews on their way to the death camps

photo by Sarah Taus
The Garden of Exile

Jewish Museum of Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind

exhibit by Israeli sculptor Kadishman

Wanasee Conference location

Rosenstrasse memorial
Christian wives of Jewish spouses protested their imprisonment

Memorial at Reichstag for political opponents of Hitler

photo by Sarah Taus

 straddling the footprint of the wall

Brandenburg gate

Vilnius, Lithuania

Of course. The Torah portion for this week was Noah where inhabitants of the earth were destroyed. It must have felt that way to the Jews of Vilnius with the ghetto liquidation and the massacres in the nearby forest at Ponar. 

Lithuania is a place where numbers and questions abound, playing pinball in your head.  Are the numbers real? Could 90% of a country’s Jewish population (220,000) have been murdered? Is it possible that out of 100 synagogues in Vilnius alone there is only one standing? Could the forest location outside the city named Ponar truly be the place where 100,000 (70,000 Jews) were gunned down and thrown into pits?

We saw Ponar, with its inadequate memorials, and stared into one of the infamous pits. Within the last few months, an escape tunnel built by prisoners was recently discovered, and will be the subject of a NOVA documentary in 2017. There, as at a few other sites in Lithuania, we lit memorial candles and said Kaddish (the prayer for the dead), but to memorialize so many others, how could we possibly get to the recognized 239 mass murder sites to do the same?  Does anyone go? And who knows how many other unknown, undocumented places exist? 

We did go to one, however, that recently the team who works with Father Patrick Desbois uncovered.  A 90ish farmer told the story of his parents who took in a family of 5 as workers.  Eventually the Nazis took them and another family of 5 on a neighbor’s farm to the fields and gunned them down.  

We trudged through the muddy field to the spot. Another Kaddish. Our group buried a small box with notes and prayers, as well as a wooden star. Some earth from Israel was sprinkled on top before covering up the hole. Underfoot in the field were wild strawberries.

Nearby at another mass gravesite, marked with a monument stone and fence, was at Anyksciai. A weathered old man agreed to give testimony to what he knew and saw as a 9 year old. The details are gruesome, however typical. The questioning by Father Desbois is gentle and nonjudgemental; he does not show any facial reactions, as if hearing a confessional. This encourages his subjects to unwind their stories as comfortably as possible, and perhaps reveal long forgotten details. This happened the day of our visit! The man mentioned the Jewish cemetery which neither Father nor his team knew existed. So, we got in the bus and went there. The burial ground was a level area on top of a very steep hill, and still had some stone markers. One more long forgotten GPS location to add to the more than 1,900 places Father has documented.

Spending a day with Father is a rare and precious privilege.  It is humbling to be in the presence of a true heroic soul. His dogged, conscientious, and relentless search for these witnesses and places comes from not only his religious devotion to an ethical "tikkun olam" (repairing the world) but as he explains, from growing up in a family where every human was important and you were expected to the right thing.

We spent an evening with him and his assistants after the long day. He told me he read Max's book! ( A Tale of Two Soldiers). This humble French priest is now not only rushing to find dwindling witnesses in eastern Europe to help document murder, but has now taken on Afghanistan.  There is no accolade too lofty for this remarkable man.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hidden-holocaust-60-minutes/

IN VILNIUS

A visit to a Friday night service run by a Chabad group; our men joined the service in front. The women sat behind a screen with a small group of exuberant and noisy children playing with matchbox cars. The intention was to experience the only synagogue, but due to a mechanical problem, we were relegated to a community hall. An "incident" which later required a police presence outside occurred when a disgruntled man interrupted the service in protest for a breech of religious observance. 

We were guests of another Chabad group for lunch.  It was difficult to tell what their community was like, as the room had barely a minyon of older men, and family of the rabbi. The rabbi, a cousin of someone we all know in Milwaukee told us about the  programs they have for schools and camps.  A woman, the head of the more liberal Jewish community, Faina Kukliansky dropped in to speak to us as well.  Clearly there is tension between the different factions and she was not shy about stating it there. It made us fairly uncomfortable, but it underscored the challenges in preserving the post-war Jewish community in Lithuania.

We were pleased to be visited by US Ambassador Ann Hall who was just appointed to her post.  She knew sister-in-law Joan Spero when they both worked for Warren Christopher in the State Department. We also had the privelege of meeting Amir Maimon, the Israeli Ambassador.

 A walk through the oldest Jewish quarter demonstrated why it is said that the Jews were never far from the shadow of a church. A community that had its roots over 500 years ago, certainly disappeared from these winding streets and almost vanished altogether. Whatever charming and picturesque presence these streets have now belies the horror they witnessed.

PARTISAN SURVIVOR: FANIA BRANCOVSKI

This barely five foot, 94 years young bundle of energy was our guide through the former Jewish Ghetto. 

In many places there is still Yiddish and Hebrew signage. Fania, as a 20 year old, escaped the ghetto the day before liquidation with a girlfriend and somehow safely walked a few days to the Rudicki forest, a swamp, to meet up with other partisans. From that bunker-like base the approximately 100 partisans went on raids for food and missions to sabatoge Nazis.  Her story is nothing short of amazing; she was fearless in her use of weapons and brave in the face of great danger. After the war she married a fellow partisan and remained in Vilnius as the librarian at the Yiddish library.  She is constantly harassed by the press, the government, and right wing groups for "crimes."

Vilnius: once the "Jerusalem of the North." There are sprouts of new beginnings, but the weight of the past tragedies hangs heavy.

We wondered if the skies are always grey and menacing in Vilnius. We even had hail.
But then, a rainbow. Was this a sign?

Next...Berlin

Ho Chi Minh City

The New York City of Vietnam, the happening place, is here where many young people want to go to school and settle. The central city and luxury hotel areas look no different from any cosmopolitan western metropolis complete with the high end Italian and French boutiques. Throughout the city are reminders of the war with helicopter or tanks displayed in front of buildings. The most poignant remembrance of the war is the War Remnants Museum. One cannot prepare for the emotionally devastating exhibits. The information was fairly presented: facts speak for themselves. Rooms of professional photographs of the results of agent orange and deforestation on Vietnamese troops and civilians, and US troops and civilians. The insidious effects continue to this day, as the poison perpetuates  through genetics. It was so disturbing that I went into the ladies room to sob.

Other rooms dealt with the political foolery and blunders by governments, mostly US. There was a 1953 photo of Richard Nixon and his pronouncements on the Vietnam situation. Another about governor Bob Kerry and his involvement in war crimes. A bright shining light was a quote from Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse who strongly cautioned our country from engaging in an immoral and problematic intrusion into war.

Cu chi tunnels

The Vietnam Cong resurrected and greatly enlarged tunnels used against the French west of Saigon. Visiting them is eerie. Hundreds of miles of narrow passageways, some barely tall enough to crawl through are camouflaged in the woods. Booby traps discouraged deserters and intruders. At times, thousands lived in the tunnels, used as bomb shelters. Some very thin members of our group crawled through the original tunnels, but the rest of us managed our way through the ones somewhat enlarged for western travelers.

 Afterwords we visited a private home nearby where we had a home-made lunch by the widow of a South Vietnamese soldier. Attending were two former Vietnam Cong vets in uniform and the father (92 yrs old) of a high ranking Government official. Apparently this open format with westerners took years to arrange and get approved, even so we were told to ask any questions, and we did. Like most Vietnamese, these vets are not looking in the rear view mirror at The American War, but concentrating on the progress made since. One man's thoughts on this were particularly poignant: his son, age 35, was born with effects of agent orange and will perpetually be an infant.

The land of LONG WHITE: clouds, glaciers and waterfalls

The Maori name for this land does not register properly until seeing those magnificent long white clouds. Everywhere. Enjoy the view.

The Franz Josef Glacier. We walked 1 hour along the riverbed to view the lowest point reached by the ice sheet. A heavy rain had flooded the small town a few days before which made it inaccessible for awhile. The flood ran through a local hotel, prompting discussion of moving the town!

A waterfall on the way to the glacier

The scraped boulders imprinted by the advance and recession of the glacier left fascinating patterns.

A fond farewell to the white water, snow, clouds, and of course...

New Zealand's South Island

Christ Church

Devastating earthquakes in 2010-12 hit this city of 380,000  and has left much of the downtown in shambles. 184 people died in those quakes, and unfortunately, smaller quakes continue. However, the central business district is rebuilding slowly; the resilience is evident everywhere. On a tram ride through the part of town that was cleared, we marveled at the positive energy, and took in our breath in thinking of the 30 billion dollars it will take to get it done. All in a fault zone.

A shopping center made out of containers for now.

Typical shoring up of many buildings

Queenstown and beyond

The view from our hotel in Queenstown

Queenstown is an Aspen-like vacation get away town, an epicenter for winter skiing and summer nature adventures. A compact CBD (central business district) shouts to young, athletic, risk taking, well outfitted Mates and Shielas : you are welcome. Business names such as Hydro Attack, Torpedo, Shotover, Canyon Swing, NZ Skydive, and Ziptrek, to name just a few, lure the fit, beautiful, and probably fool hearty 20 somethings from all corners of the globe to test their resolve and nerve. The drop dead gorgeous bay on a volcanic lake with perfect mountains as a backdrop couches the lively city harbor teeming with restaurants, cafes and outdoor gear shops on every block. It is oh so sublimely civilized.

Sunrise in Queenstown

Did they or didn't they?        NO way!

Flax plants. The leaves are stripped then woven into baskets. 

The South Island is a bit of the Wild West. OAT builds in to every adventure an opportunity to discuss controversial  topics in each country. We visited with Peter Bushman,  a one man Erin Brockovitch/mountain trapper type who has a crusade to save the  environment from the ravages of an insidious lethal chemical, 1080, that is dropped by the government to kill the possums. Unfortunately it also kills many other animals, including those in the human food chain.

The small seaside town of Hokitika was our home for two days. It has become a mini destination for art enthusiasts with some galleries and jade carving businesses. The one movie theater was showing The Hunt For the Wilder People, a NZ film that had some buzz at Sundance. Our guide, Jane, is somehow related to the writer so we went to see it with her, which was the night after the opening. Apparently the dog stars walked the green carpet then.

A highlight of the trip for me was a visit to a sheep farm. Not only did we witness a shearing, but a masterful sheep herding demonstration by "Pete" a canine sheep wrangler extrordinarre. 

The directives of his steadfast eyes coupled with agile body language had that unruly mob of future sweaters and lamb chops clustered like a school of frightened fish waiting for the teacher's yardstick to smack. I could have watched all day.

Wellington

Wellington is the capitol, and the epicenter of the NZ film production industry. The film studio and production company WETA, which have made the artistry for Hobbit films, Avitar, Mad Max and many more have extensive studios for filming, creation of creatures, and computer operations. 

Greetings in the Wellington airport.

A tour of an art studio gave us an appreciation of the complicated process for making objects in the films from sketch to computer program to e printer to hand work. Months go into each object, or costume, or character face, any of which might be in a film for just seconds. The fastidiousness of Peter Jackson is evident down to the skin dimples and hair. It might take a week, for instance, to make eyebrows on a Hobbit.

Related is an extraordinary exhibit at the Te Papa museum in Wellington, the most imaginative and exciting natural history museum I have seen. Besides the fact that locally they have a lot to work with (volcanos, glaciers, and earthquakes) the current exhibit, created by WETA is about the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) during the WWI Gallopoli battles. There are no creatures, instead you follow several real soldiers which have been created at 2 1/2 times their size. They are so artfully created; you see beads of sweat, and seeping blood from wounds.

 Computer illustrated battles, sparsely staged artifacts, and photographic essays in winding dark corridors (to simulate the trenches) beacon you while dramatic but subtle voice and music pulls at your heartstrings. The experience offered a thorough education of the tragic folly that was trench warefare, and a condemnation of foolish wars and personalities who create them in general.