eine Nacht in Dresden

Standing at the station, waiting for a train, our itinerary expired. We had only been given directions up to this point. While there was an itinerary waiting for us at our destination, there was a fleeting moment where 53 students and staff were lined up and entering a world of unknowns. By way of a train.

One short train ride later, and we had entered the source of decades of stories that have surrounded my community, family, and life. The Jewish image of Germany as I had been taught ended in 1945; that is the story of the Jews of Germany ended, as well as the narrative of Germany. Few events were relevant enough to bring Germany back into the Jewish history books, such as Munich. What Germany is today, most American Jews don't know or care to find out.

My only visit to Germany up to this point had occurred during a flight and layover on my birthday, on the way to Morocco. I was pleasantly surprised by the generousness of the flight crew. We lit candles for Hanukkah in the smoking zone. That was it and clearly, that was not a very educational visit.

It was time to take the Germany that American Jews have been taught to boycott, to never forgive or forget, and to match that up face to face with the real Germany, as it is now.

We arrived in Dresden and were met by a staff of three 20 year-olds, part of a special program for American Jews called Germany Close Up. Together, they would introduce us to Dresden and Berlin, the present, as well as the past. What made this program special was that while it is for Jews, and there is a careful awareness of religious observation, it is not, as far as I'm concerned, a Jewish program.

Our time is Dresden was limited and we were waking up early tomorrow to ride to Berlin, but we took off soon after landing in the hotel for a tour of the city. I knew little about Dresden, and judging by the spontaneous recall of Slaughterhouse Five, I was really uninformed. All I knew was that the Americans firebombed the whole city in World War II. I was expecting to be shown significant places that had since been reconstructed. So when we passed by a monument with a menorah on it and arrived first at a Synagogue, I was pretty surprised. This place, the "Semper Synagogue," built by a famous German architect named Gottfried Semper (who has a statue nearby), was a century old before it was destroyed on Kristalnacht, or "the Night of Broken Glass." As our tour guide explained that the Jewish population of 5,000 was reduced to 100 during the War, she used the word שואה, Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning calamity, destruction, or annihilation, now used to define the Holocaust.

Wait.

A German tour guide is using Hebrew words to describe the Holocaust? What is this place? What has it become? And just how do Germans think about what happened here?

Pictures of Dresden


She went on to discuss the modern Jewish community in Dresden. Approximately 600 Jews, mostly Russian, have rebuilt the Synagogue. The architecture was done so as to twist the building and orient it to the east. It's now known as the New Synagogue, and next to it is the Jewish Community Center, and Cafe Schoschana.

We continued our walk around the city and the guide painted a picture of what Dresden used to look like, occasionally sharing pictures of buildings before the firebombing and comparing them to today's form. Dresden was the capital of Saxony, what is now a German state. We passed Churches that resembled Catholic cathedrals but were really Protestant, as well as the longest ceramic mural in the world, conveying the monarchical line of Saxony through the centuries.

The history lesson I never received was brief: the British attacked the city center on February 15th, 1945, and the U.S. came and bombed what was left. Dresden was targeted because it was one of the few German cities left untouched. The British were retaliating after the Germans bombed London. The citizens of Dresden were hopeful their city would survive because it was an art city, and the war was almost over, but on the night of the attack, 25-30,000 people died.

At one point on the walk, a student came up to the tour guide and apologized for the U.S. bombing of Dresden. She replied that it was Hitler's fault, not ours.

That night I enjoyed a nice dinner in a vegetarian (meaning that there was meat) restaurant, complete with a two page menu of hot chocolate and drinking chocolate! Some way to wrap up a day that began in Prague.

Willkommen in Deutschland. Tomorrow, me meet the Berliners.