Mothering...

This past summer has been one devoted to a LOT of reading.  Most of my reading fare has focused on the Holocaust, but I've also done some re-reading of some of my favorite books--specifically the works of Amy Tan.  Actually, I'm just now re-reading The Joy Luck Club.  Tan has written and spoken extensively about her troubled relationship with her mother.  Anyone who's read Tan's books knows that the mother-daughter relationship figures prominently in most of them.   I once heard her say in an interview about her favorite theme, "It wouldn't be much of a story if Ruth [one of her protagonists] and her mom had a great relationship."  The parent-child dynamic makes for some great storytelling.

The four moms and four daughters featured in The Joy Luck Club have struggles together which have their genesis in childhood.  Each of the daughters--June, Rose, Lena and Waverly--describes their mothers' expectations, secrets, and impositions on their children, and the longlasting impact they had on their children's lives.  I don't know if human children imprint on their mothers, but I know moms leave their mark on their children.

This morning, one of my Facebook friends posted a link to a "Mommy" blog with a provocative title:  "Motherhood:  The Big Fat F*** You".  The mom narrates a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" day, and expresses a LOT of frustration.  She acknowledges that day-to-day mothering can be fulfilling, but that often it is not.  Her story is a tale of aggravation--she feels like she's taken advantage of by her kids and by her husband (who's not often around to share in the daily parenting responsibilities), and that her plight seems completely thankless.  It got me thinking about what mothering mistakes "do" to kids.

I was not a stay-at-home mom--I have held a full-time job for the entire lifetimes of my kids.  My husband worked (and continues to work) from a home office, and HE was the one who was home when the kids returned from school.  He did a lot of the chauffeuring to games, to Hebrew School, etc.  He did the wash, and I folded.  We shared grocery shopping and cooking.  But, I was also a very active parent.  I drove the kids to lessons, I participated in homework, and I did a lot of the housework (until we hired a part-time housekeeper).  The bottom line is, I do not share the Mommy blogger's background. I wasn't alone; my husband was an active, participating parent.  Still, I had my share of frustrations and I'm sorry to say my kids were sometimes on the receiving end.

I am blessed to be the mother of four beautiful, brilliant, loving, wonderful children

all of whom have successfully reached adulthood.  Sometimes I wonder how that happened.  Reading Amy Tan has made me think about my mothering errors.  I've been reflecting on the really big mistakes I've made.  Jake can tell stories about the State Geography Bee; Nina has a story about Mono; Leah's situation involved not having the right address for a friend she wanted to visit; and Sam will share his conversation with me the night before his first (and only) run in the Grandma's half-marathon.  Unfortunately, there were more fails over the course of their childhoods (and even beyond). 

Still...I know my kids love me, and they know I love them.  If I could have "do-overs" you bet I'd aim not to make the same mistakes.  That said, I know I would make other egregious mistakes.  I just hope my kids can forgive my failings and learn from the errors I committed.

Night out on the town...in Berlin

When we were thinking about a place to go for dinner our second night in Berlin, our group leader Hilary persuaded a group of us to head to East Berlin.  Hilary told us we were headed for the "artsy" part of town.  There was a distinctive culture shift as soon as we stepped out onto the street.  This was a neighborhood of young people.  There was a seediness to the storefronts, but also a vibrancy.  We saw a number of Stopelsteine, but also empty bottles of beer.

We strolled down a number of streets before we settled down at an Indian Restaurant.  I was heartened because I saw a sign promoting my favorite beer, Flensburger.  It was during the World Cup, so there were flat screen TVs everywhere you looked.

We sat outside at a picnic table similar to those pictured here. 

Our host gave us some festive napkins which gave us a chuckle.

I think I have a pack of these cute little numbers tucked away in a cupboard.

The food was ...ok.  The beer was pretty good.  The people watching was...terrific.

After supper, we had a little "explore-a-thon".  We found ourselves in a warehouse district sporting some interesting grafitti.

This image of young Michael Jackson was a bit odd, but we weren't prepared for some of the other images just down the way.

We took to calling this one, "Weird, Creepy Baby."

Charles Manson is bad enough, but the Yves St. Laurent tattoo was bizarre.

This was the end of the road.  These images seemed to be produced by the same artist who made the "Creepy Baby".  The globular lamp to the right of the window suggested the building might have been a club.  We did see another decorated building/warehouse which was probably a nightclub, but we weren't the right audience.

I call this one "Mutant Panda".  It was past 10 p.m. at this point, and getting dark, so we started heading for the train station.

The last wall we reviewed before climbing up to the street level feature this set of figures.  The woman looks like Susan Sarandon, and my friends agreed the man was Ronald Reagan.  The hooded figure, the saxophonist and the female figure weren't ones I recognized.  The language by the female figure at the bottom of the wall says "The angry girl always think [sic] she can do more than she can."

By the time we got back to our hotel, it was pitch black night.

Berlin's Bear greeted us with uplifted arms outside the hotel entrance, but flipped upside down in a handstand by the bar.

Clearly, it was time to pack it in for the night.

Our State Fair is a GREAT State Fair

I persuaded my friend Cindy to come with me to the Great Minnesota Get-Together, a.k.a. the Minnesota State Fair, so that she could join me at the UMD booth.  Fortunately for me, she agreed to participate.  Actually, she drove. 

As we approached Dan Patch Drive (the entrance to Gate 5), the traffic became more and more congested.  As is true every year, cars lined the streets and populated the yards of homes along Snelling.  We despaired of finding a parking space as we continued along Snelling, but then we saw a sign for Energy Park Park and Ride.  Frankly, this turned out to be a godsend.  We parked and caught a bus within just a few minutes.  The bus stopped half a block away from Gate 5.

Aside from our obligation at the UMD booth, Cindy's goal was to eat unusual food on a stick.  My goal was to go to the Dairy building to see the butter sculptures of Princess Kay of the Milky Way  and her court.  Before we headed off to the Dairy Building, we stopped off at the DFL tent.  Cindy wanted her picture taken with Hillary...

 AND Bo...

I scored a Notorious RBG button,

and then we were off to the Dairy Building.

We squeezed through the crowds and muscled our way up to the refrigerated, rotating case featuring Linda Christensen's sculptures of this year's Princess Kay, Jeni Haler.

According to the Midwest Dairy Association website, one of Ms. Haler's first duties was to sit for six hours while Christensen carved her likeness.  Twelve  young ladies  competed for the title by demonstrating "their general knowledge of the dairy industry, communication skills and enthusiasm for dairy."

We had only a short period of time to explore, and our next task was to make sure Cindy got her unusual foods on a stick.  It didn't take us too long (and admittedly, I had a bratwurst first) before we found the perfect option:

Cindy is a very considerate mother, and she was determined to bring something back to her daughter.  We saw many people walking around with buckets of cookies, and that seemed to be just the ticket.  We asked a number of folks where we could find the vendor, and were pointed in the direction of the Grandstand.  As we approached the Cookie Building, we saw huge crowds surrounding the building.

We started to walk back to the Crossroads building when low and behold, we saw another tantalizing food on a stick:

Cream cheese stuffed green olives, fried and on a stick.  I can personally attest to their tastiness.

We started our shift at 6:00 p.m. where we met up with our other partner at the booth, Betty Green of External Affairs. 

Our tasks at the fair included giving away UMD Bulldog "tattoos" and buttons.

Our tattoo technique involved peeling off the plastic sheet, pressing the adhesive tattoo on the willing recipient, and then applying a damp sponge to the area.  Once 30 seconds had passed, we then peeled back the cardboard backing and VOILA! There was the tattoo!

 Naturally, we were also there to answer questions about our university and to promote our programs.  We spoke with a number of family groups, and found it quite enjoyable.

Beyond dispensing information, we also asked our visitors to share their memories on a white board:

We packed up around 8:45, and headed back on the bus to Energy Park.

It was a long day, but we were both glad we came.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin

When my friend Cindy and I visited Berlin in January 2013, we stopped by the Jewish Museum

Photo from online photo bank.

by mistake.  We thought that was where we were supposed to meet a friend from Duluth, but the place we were supposed to be was the Denkmal.  As it turns out, the point was moot.  Our friend was unable to connect with us.

We had spent the afternoon on the on-off bus,

Photo from on/off bus Berlin site.

and then at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

We walked from there to the Jewish Musuem and arrived around 4:00.  After failing to connect with our friend, we thought we'd check out the Jewish Museum.  When we got up to the ticket counter, we learned that we should have budgeted four hours for a visit to the museum.  We decided we didn't have the energy for such a long visit, so we found our way to another on/off bus and hopped back on.  We ended up near the Staatsoper Unter den Linden,

Photo from online photo bank.

and then walked from the Brandenburger Tor

back through the Tiergarten (in the pitch black of a winter's night, as opposed to this spring day scene)

Photo from Tiergarten site.

to our hotel.

On this trip, once again we got to the Jewish Museum in the late afternoon.  This time we had the advantage of the summer sun (it didn't get dark until after 10 p.m).

Photo from online photo bank.

Three buildings make up this museum.  It's really quite massive.  I was stunned to learn that the original building of the Jewish Museum was built in 1933, only to be closed in 1938 under the Nazis.  According to Daniel Liebeskind's site, "the original building [was] housed on the site of the original Prussian Court of Justice building ... completed in 1735 and renovated in the 1960s to become a museum for the city of Berlin."

Photo from online photo bank.

Another site claims the building remained vacant until 1975 when a Jewish cultural group "vowed" to reestablish a Jewish presence in the museum.  Regardless, in 1988 the Berlin government established a competition for an expansion of the Jewish Museum.  Architect Daniel Liebeskind won. 

After purchasing tickets in the old part of the building, visitors walk down steep set of stairs.  Once on the lowest level, we followed the "Axis of the Holocaust", the "Axis of Exile" and the "Axis of Continuity".

Liebeskind describes the path: "The first, and longest [of the lower level routes], traces a path leading to the Stair of Continuity, then up to and through the exhibition spaces of the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history. The second leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin. The third leads to a dead end — the Holocaust Void."  Personally, this was my favorite part of the museum.  It's spare and thought-provoking.

© Cyrus Penarroyo

The Holocaust Tower  is one of five "voids". Standing at the bottom of this tower was powerful and stirring.  Entering the tower, one has to open an extremely heavy door.  The space is dark and empty, except for a ladder built into the wall.  I felt the emptiness of the room, and the meaninglessness of the Holocaust.

Ten thousand iron faces cover the floor of another void tower.  Some sites have praised this tower as evocative of the lost Jews of Europe.  I've seen images on the web showing people walking on the faces.  I didn't see anyone doing this while we were visiting the museum.  It didn't seem appropriate.

A third void is the Garden of Exile.

This "garden" consists of 49 columns, somewhat reminiscent of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  The columns form a square, and feature olive willows growing from the top of the columns.  Walking through the columns, the ground surface is uneven.  The experience is disconcerting--I felt off balance and uncertain.


There are 11 tours of the permanent exhibit at an additional cost beyond admission.  These are the descriptions from the website:

The Jewish World in the Middle Ages offers a look at the Ashkenazi Jews.

Town, Country, Court examines the ways Jews took up business, trade and positions of influence within courts.

Jewish Life and Traditions explored cultural and religious behaviors, such as the laws of kashrut, and life events like circumcision.

Moses Mendelssohn and the Promise of the Enlightenment--focuses on the period of Jewish Intellectual development.

Between Assimilation and Self-Determination: German Jews in the Nineteenth Century-- an examination of Jewish emancipation, the socialist movement and political anti-Semitism.

Start of the Modern Age – Jews in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic

The Jewish Response to National Socialism includes descriptions of exclusion, expulsion and the increasing fear of deportation and extermination.

Women in Judaism reflects on the role of women throughout history.

Through the Museum in Seven-League Boots – An Overview of the Museum's Exhibition, "Two Millennia of German Jewish History, an overview of the history of Jewish settlements and culture in Germany from late antiquity through the present.

Architectural Observations

Judaism, Christianity and Islam: A Cultural Historical Comparison

These tours look terrific, but these descriptions suggest the need for at least eleven separate visits.  It is a rich museum with a great deal to offer, but it is impossible to absorb everything.  That, of course, is true of most every museum in existence.  Personally, I think I will make a visit to this museum on every visit I make to Berlin in the future.  Ideally, I'll be able to go back enough times to take it in with a greater sense of appreciation on understanding.

Berlin Memorials, Part 2

After leaving the German Resistance Museum, we headed over to the Große Hamburger Straße in Berlin's Mitte district.  The Mitte district was once a thriving Jewish neighborhood.  This was the site of Berlin's oldest Jewish cemetery, before it was destroyed during the Nazi times.

Across from the cemetery was the oldest home for Jewish aged in Berlin; there was also a school for Jewish boys located on the same property.  During the war, the Gestapo commandeered both buildings and used them as virtual prisons, detaining the Jews until they could be transported to camps in the east.  The Nazis destroyed the cemetery in 1943.  They desecrated the graves and used the gravestones to reinforce the walls of air raid shelters built on the grounds of the cemetery.  By April 1945, the grounds served as the final resting place for victims of Allied bombing.

In the lower right section of this photo it's possible to see the one remaining, "symbolic" gravestone of Moses Mendelsohn.  There's a sarcophagus filled with the remains of Jewish gravestones.  currently, the site holds the remains of 3,000 Jews and 3,000 other victims.

Outside the gates of the cemetery site (it was locked, and we didn't really have time to explore), there are a few other kinds of memorials.

These statues, with their elongated faces and bodies, reminded me of statuary I saw at Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt. The rocks at their feet are serving the same function as rocks on a gravestone at a Jewish cemetery.

There were a number of other memorials at this site.

Our last stop with Andy was Rosenstraße.  I learned about the women's protest at Rosenstraße by way of the film by the same name.   This is a compelling story about a successful protest by "Aryan" spouses of Jews.  Up to 1943, the Nazis had exempted the Jewish partners in these marriages from the "Final Solution".  The Nazis termed this the Schlußaktion der Berliner Juden.  Characterized as particularly brutal, the Gestapo rounded up the Jewish spouses from factories and homes.  Although 8,000 Jews were sent on transports to the east, about 2,000 of the Jews were imprisoned in a Jewish administrative center on Rosenstraße.  Their spouses, mostly women, congregated across the street, and raised their voices, demanding "Give us back our husbands."

Women Stand Here.

"Give us back our men!"

At one point the guards demanded the streets be cleared or they would open fire.  The women dispersed, only to return to the street and the protest.  There were a few other close calls, but ultimately this was an illustration of successful resistance.  

The "monument" is not particularly elegant--it's rather blocky--but the story is one of the most important of the war. 

The last set of memorials we reviewed were called Stopelsteine. These memorials were designed by Gunter Demnig. "Believing that a person begins to be forgotten when his name is forgotten, he installed such plates in over 500 places around Germany and Europe, documenting some of the many Jews, Gypsies, political dissidents, homosexuals and other groups of people who fell victim to National socialism."

I think these are very effective memorials.  As noted in the quoted passage above, these plates identify individuals by names.  We encounter in these plates people, as particular human beings, who lived in a particular place, who died in a particular place at a particular time. 

The downside of these memorials is that they are literally underfoot and can be overlooked.    Knowing they exist, however, one can "keep an eye out" for them.

The remainder of the day was focused on the Jewish Museum of Berlin--the subject of the next post.

Berlin's memorials, part 1.

We were blessed with a terrific guide for our second day in Berlin.  I believe his real name is Andreas, but he asked us to call him Andy.  He spoke with a nearly flawless British accent.  He had a great sense of humor and told very amusing anecdotes.  My favorite was a reference to the
Siegessäule, Berlin's famous victory column.  He noted that a number of British and American soldiers he knew referred to it as "the chick on the stick".

He told us he'd spent a good part of his young adulthood in Wales and  Ireland (I believe).  He shared that he had recently lost a great deal of weight and was anxious to get back into shape so he could play rugby.  He also mentioned that he had recently been felled by heatstroke.

We had felt that heat while in Poland and the Czech Republic.  The day we were touring about Berlin, the temperature had dropped well below 70.  It was drizzling, so it felt quite cool.  Frankly, that's just the way I like it--perfect touring weather.

What made Andy great was the plan he had for our day.  He was taking us to particularly meaningful Holocaust memorial sites.  We started at "Berlin: Levetzowstraße, I. The  Liberal Synagogue, Levetzowstraße, was one of the largest synagogues in the city.  It consists of metal tiles representing the destroyed synagogues of Berlin."

This obelisk contains the dates transports left from the Levetzowstraße Synagogue.

Although the Liberal Synagogue on Levetzowstraße was not damaged during the Kristallnacht pogrom, it did suffer bomb damage.  The site became a collection point where up to 1000 Jews a day were sent to concentration and death camps.

Today, beyond the obelisk, the site also features plaques identifying the 34 Berlin synagogues.

The plaques list seating capacities and other building facts for each of the synagogues.

This is the plaque for Synagogue Levetzowstraße.  I don't think I've ever seen a synagogue with seating capacity for 2,120.

The most eye-catching aspect of this site is the boxcar and blocked sculptures, both inside and leading up to the boxcar.

These sculptures of the train car and the carved block of marble represent prisoners huddled together as they ascend the ramp to the car.

Perhaps the most meaningful site on this tour was Platform 17/Gleis 17.  The Deutsche Bahn site states, "without Deutsche Reichsbahn, the deportation of the European Jews to the extermination camps would not have been possible."

This memorial was established by the Deutsche Bahn to commemorate the deportations of Jews from the western district of Grunewald (which, by the way, is not too far from the Wannsee Villa).  The Deutsche Bahn site says that for many years, the rail systems in East and West Berlin did not acknowledge the role of the railroad in facilitating the Holocaust.  The memorial was not established until 1998.  Some 50,000 Jews were deported from this location starting October 18, 1941, and ending in February 1945.  The first group of 1,251 prisonsers was sent to Lodz.

There are similar "grates" positioned up and down the length of this segment of the platform detailing the date, the number of Jews on the transport, and the destination.  Altogether, there are 186 such plaques.

The designers made a purposeful decision to allow the track to disappear into overgrowth.  The message is:  no more trains will ever leave from this platform.

I seem to recall Andy pointing out the uneven height of  platforms.  I think Andy said that one level was designed for human passengers and the other for livestock.  As one might anticipate, the Reich assigned those to be deported to leave from the livestock platform.

Beyond the end of the track is another sculpture wall.

The forms scooped out of the wall suggest absence and shadow.  I found the emptiness to be haunting.


Our next stop was the German Resistance Center.  We had time only for a quick stop, so we didn't go in to the Museum itself.  This is definitely a site I'd like to visit when I return to Berlin.  According to the website for the Memorial, this is "the site of Hitler's speech of February 3, 1933, on "Lebensraum (living space) in the east." Yet the site is best remembered as the center of the attempt to overthrow the National Socialist regime on July 20, 1944."  The German Resistance Memorial Center is located in the Bendler Block.  This is where Hitler's would be executioner, Claus von Stauffenberg, was executed.

These are the names of the officers executed on this site.

The museum is the site of the original coup attempt in 1944.  As mentioned above, I didn't go in to the permanent exhibit, which covers 18 topics centered on the theme of resistance.  It's interesting that this was one of the first Holocaust-related museums in Berlin.  Commemorations on this site began as early as 1952.  The Berlin Senate voted to establish a memorial at this site in 1967.

We then drove to the Denkmal fur die ermodeten Juden Europas--the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. 

My friend Cindy and I had visited the Denkmal in the winter of 2013.  The museum under the ground was one of my favorite on that trip.

We didn't have time to visit it this time.  Instead, Andy had us stand among 2,711 steles (each with the same horizontal dimensions, and ranging in height from eight inches to 15 feet tall) and asked us to describe how we felt.  I think it's worthwhile to do such reflection.  We don't usually take such moments in the middle of touring.

We also walked across the street to the Tiergarten Park to see a Memorial to Homosexuals who perished during the Holocaust.

The motif of the Memorial for Homosexuals is based on the Denkmal.  The "twist" is that there's a peephole through which visitors can see a film of a kiss.  According to the website, the memorial is intended as "a lasting symbol against exclusion, intolerance and animosity towards gays and lesbians."

We drove by the Bebelplatz on the plaza by Humboldt University.  Only Sura and I were really interested in this site, so we decided to make the visit on our own.

We didn't get to return until the day before we departed.  This is a fascinating exhibit commemorating the Nazi book burning.  I found it very moving, but it was a complicated experience since there was construction on the site.  It was also difficult to get good images in the middle of the day (which means I recommend visiting in the evening) and the number of visitors crowding around the relatively small space.

The memorial contains empty bookshelves.

This photo is from "A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust."

There's a plaque featuring the famous Heinrich Heine quotation.

The 1820 Heine quotation is in the upper left hand corner:  "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo Man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt Man am Ende auch Menschen. (That was merely a prelude. Wherever they burn books, eventually they will burn people too.)"  The quotation on the right hand side reads:  "In der mitte dieses Platzes verbrannten am 10. Mai 1933 Nationalsozialistiche Studenten die Werke hunderter freier Schriftsteller, Publizisten, Philosophen und Wissenschaftler. (In the center of this square on the tenth of May, 1933, National Socialist students burned the works of hundreds of free authors, publishers, philosophers, and scientists.)."

All of these visits took place before we had lunch.  We really packed in a lot on this tour.  I'll finish up discussion on the Berlin Memorials in the next post.