A Trip To Berlin-Grunewald Station
Berlin-Grunewald station is not far from Berlin-Spandau on the S-Bahn.
According to my easyJet guide. it is a pleasant place to walk and you might even see wild boar.
But I went to pay my respects at Gleis 17.
Wikipedia says this about the infamous platform.
Starting on 18 October 1941 the adjacent goods station until February 1945 was one of the major sites of deportation of the Berlin Jews. The trains left mainly for the ghettos of Litzmannstadt and Warsaw, and from 1942 directly for the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps. On 18 October 1991 a monument was inaugurated at the ramp leading to the former freight yard. The Deutsche Bahn had a memorial established on 27 January 1998 at the historic track 17 (“Gleis 17”), where most of the deportation trains departed.
I wonder how many of the Jews from Germany, with whom I share a common ancestor perished in the various ghettos and camps.
Gleis 17 is a sombre place and there was only one other visitor; a German actor.
I’ll Go Along With This Quote
With a memorial service for Sir Nicholas Winton today, I make no apologies for publishing one of his quotes.
I believe in ethics, and if everybody believed in ethics we’d have no problems at all. That’s the only way out; forget the religious side.
I doubt I can live long enough to see religion, become something you read about in history books.
But the world would be a better place, if everyone followed Sir Nicholas’s advice.
The Memorial To Sztehlo Gabor
This sculpture was outside the hotel.
It is a memorial to Sztehlo Gabor, who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Holocaust. There is a short biography here.
Anne Frank
I said in the piece on Robert Fisk, that the next time I returned to Amsterdam, I would visit the Anne Frank House. Strangely later I went over the library at the Hotel Ambassade, where I saw a signed book by Fisk. It was one of many hundreds, by lots of famous authors!
I first visited the Anne Frank House in 1968 on my honeymoon. This was my second or possibly my third, as I can’t be sure that we didn’t visit, when we came to Amsterdam with the children around 1980. It was very different then and a much smaller museum without the new building to the right as you face the original house. This was added in 1999.
Perhaps, the building has lost some of its impact. When it was just the house it was smaller and this added to the claustrophobia, that Anne and her family must have suffered. But there is now a lot more information.
As I said in the original post, “when we forget the story of Anne and the diary, then we will probably have lost our humanity.”
Robert Fisk
There are few writers in the modern world of newspapers to rival Robert Fisk.
His piece today in The Independent on Lebanon, the holocaust, Anne Frank and the relationship between Israel and its enemies is a gem.
Read it!
Anne has always had a strong place in my heart. Whether it is because I have a small amount of Jewish ancestry or just because I hate injustice so much I do not know. Here’s what I wrote after a visit to Amsterdam in April 2008.
Everywhere in Amsterdam, there are posters of Anne Frank.
Not exactly Anne Frank, The Musical, as I really don’t think that would be the ideal work, but a symphonic tribute is being performed in Amsterdam based on her life and the famous diary.
It is quite right, that a little Jewish girl, her family and her diary caught up in the tragic events of the Second World War still hold the world in their thrall.
Her diary has now been translated into fifty-five languages and has sold over 20 million copies.
When we forget the story of Anne and the diary, then we will probably have lost our humanity.
As I write this book Cyclone Nargis has just devastated Burma or as the dictators prefer, Myanmar. Those dictators are ignoring offers of help from outside preferring to distribute the aid themselves, as letting others in might undermine their cruel regime, with thoughts of freedom and full stomachs.
Having read Wages of Destruction, by Adam Tooze, a book which describes the economic methods of Nazi Germany, I feel Hitler would be proud of their actions.
Because of the festivities the Anne Frank House was closed.
But next time I return to Amsterdam, I shall visit.
The festivities I spoke of, were the Queen’s birthday celebrations.
The Anonymous Widower 