March, Day 1: Berlin

So on Sunday (May 13) I left Copenhagen and returned to Berlin.  I spent a couple days here in my lovely city.  Then today I started another small but significant chapter of my story.

This morning I met the group of 63 HWS and Nazareth students, Holocaust scholars, 2 Holocaust survivors, their child(ren) and grandchild(ren), the President of my college, and a few engaged community members to begin the week-long Holocaust remembrance trip called The March.  As I sat at at their gate waiting for them to get off the plane (yes, airports are designed intelligently here, it's quite nice), I discovered that I was incredibly nervous.  I'm not exactly sure of what, but part of it was that I haven't interacted with that many Americans since... last time I was at HWS in December.  And I'm not the most fond of social situations.  So that was and is definitely a difficult aspect.

But! As soon as I saw my awesome professor and he gave me a hug, the nervousness was almost instantly resolved.  I soon found out that my roommate for the trip would be Beth, who is a WS student who just graduated, and is on this trip as a "student assistant" type position. She did the trip last time, in 2010, and was asked back to be a student assistant.  I didn't know her before, but we have similar interests and studies, so it's been SO great to have her to have intellectual conversations about instead of complaining about we're hungry and tired (I'll leave my complaints about other college students at that).   So getting to discuss and process what we see and learn over the next 7 days with her will be invaluable, especially since she's been through it once already.

We also have such amazing individuals with us as I briefly mentioned before.  Our professor is just incredible, as is the professor from Naz, we have two survivors who now live in Toronto, and the tour group through which The March is run/organized is out of Israel. The 4 people from that group are all very diverse and uniquely interesting, and are SO knowledgable about all things history.  In typical Devan fashion I find these adults a much better/more informative/more interesting group of people to interact with than half-engaged college students, so I'm looking forward to some thoughtful and transformative conversations with them in the week to come.

One beyond cool thing that happened today: 

We were in the Berlin neighborhood of Schöneberg, which was a primarily Jewish neighborhood before WWII.  While our guide was talking to my small group about an interesting monument that's been scattered throughout the neighborhood to remember the history, this man and his wife were also examining the map before us.  While we were off discovering the scattered monument, he apparently approached our guide and told us that he is visiting this place for the first time since his family was forced out of the neighborhood by the Gestapo.  He wanted to share his story with us (how amazing is that in itself?!... the strength it took for him to do such a thing), so through tears he pointed to the apartment where he lived, and told how his grandmother was dragged into the streets by young Gestapo punks, and how his mother tried to bribe their way into staying in their home and not being sent away.  Miraculously as his grandmother was being dragged away, a Gestapo limousine pulled up and someone inside ordered the ones dragging her to stop.  Inside was the family's doctor.  Because he knew the family so well, he spared them his lives with a few short words.  They successfully emigrated to the US (which is VERY rare, because the US refused to take more than a few thousand Jews per year, even though they knew what was happening [albiet not to the extent we know now]).

So that was a "God moment", that this man happened to be at that street corner as this bi-annual March  passed through.

I'll try to keep you posted throughout this week, because I feel that each day will be so significant and memorable that I'll need to share these reflections with you.

Until then!