Archive
08/07/12 - (1)
Street of Death
We take a four-hour walking tour, from the Hotel Adlon, Easterly, along Unter den Linden, Past Humboldt University, the statue of Frederick the Great, Beyond the Bebelplatz, where, in 1933, On orders from Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, Students and professors from the university across the street Burned twenty thousand books deemed verboten, Past the island of five museums, the Berlin Cathedral, And eventually to the Alte Synagoge's empty lot, Then on to the oldest Jewish cemetery in the city, On Groβe Hamburger Straβe, Which has come to be known as the Street of Death. Not far from this peaceful side street in the Spandauer Vorstadt, Viennese Schutzjuden settled, in the late 1600s, And soon, outside the city walls, allocated, here, a holy space Where they'd bury almost three thousand of their dead, Until, by the 1820s, they'd filled it up. Later, close by, they built a Jewish boys' school And an old-age home, both of which, during the 1940s, The Gestapo converted to internment centers to hold Jews Before trucking them to stations like Grunewald, for deportation; They also converted this cemetery, By appropriating its land, then desecrating its gravestones, Using them to line a slit-trench shelter, against Allied air raids. The two of us linger, beneath a convenient tree, Meditating on the graves, which are nowhere to be found, Not even in the air, which, as we stare into the sky, Turns suddenly cool, begins to swirl, ever so briefly, Into a gentle drizzle that lasts less than five minutes. Standing in the leafy shadows of this abiding tree, We listen to myriad whispers awakening from the earth, Lifting into the merciful isolation of this side street, Where, once again, a Jewish school is in session. As we leave, we hear the girls and boys at recess, Wiling away their hours, days, generation, As if nothing will ever disturb the equanimity of their play.
08/07/12 - (1)
|
|||
|
|||
