Berlin residents are taking part in an initiative called Denk Mal am Ort (Open Jewish Homes), which pays tribute to persecuted and deported Jewish families who once lived in their apartments. Silke Ballweg reports.
Image: openjoodsehuizen.nl
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"Follow me," says Rachel R. Mann, as she goes down a few steps into an old cellar. "I hid back there for several months," the 80-year-old says, pointing to an old wooden door.
The little basement hideout now filled with mattresses and junk, located in an apartment building in Berlin's Schöneberg district, saved the woman's life 70 years ago. The then-7-year-old Jewish girl hid there during the final months of World War II, evading deportation by the Nazis.
On May 8, the anniversary of the end of World War II, the Denk Mal am Ort (Open Jewish Homes) project in Berlin is paying tribute to families who once lived in the German capital. Around 55,000 people were deported from Berlin between 1941 and 1943. Usually new tenants moved into the apartments shortly after the Jews had been driven away.
The project is based on an idea by Denise Citroen of the Netherlands, who started the "Open Jewish Homes" project in her home country in 2012. Project participants researched the history of Jewish families in their neighborhood. A few years ago, people in Berlin took an interest in researching the history of their apartments. "Denk Mal am Ort" presents several of the personal stories that have been uncovered.
Journalist Hugh Williamson has opened his flat to interested visitors - its previous tenants fled to ArgentinaImage: DW/S. Ballweg
The 'star apartment'
For the project, Holocaust survivors and tenants who live in apartments where Jews once lived open their homes to the public on selected weekends to honor the former inhabitants. Survivors like Rachel R. Mann recount their own experiences.
"We lived in the back building on the third floor," Mann tells the roughly 30 visitors who came to hear her story. "At the time, a big yellow star was stuck on our apartment door to show that Jews lived here, so I always talked about the 'star apartment' when I was a little girl."
The elderly woman only survived the Holocaust through luck and the help of others. Mann happened to be visiting a neighbor when the Nazis came to deport her mother. After her mother's disappearance, that same neighbor took Mann in and cared for her. At some point, however, the neighbor feared the situation had become too risky and she then hid Mann in the cellar.
Holocaust survivor Rahel R. Mann sought refuge from the Nazis in a Berlin apartment basementImage: DW/S. Ballweg
"She brought me something to eat every day, and sometimes she brought me up to her apartment so I could take a bath," Mann recounts in the dark, cool cellar 70 years later. "I was down here until the end of the war - until the Russians invaded Berlin in April 1945 and then found me in the hideout."
From Berlin to Buenos Aires
The journalist Hugh Williamson has extensively researched the history of past tenants of his apartment. The flat where he now lives with his wife Anke Hasse was once home to the Katzenellebogen family in the 1930s. "I feel deeply moved knowing who lived in these rooms and had to experience so much suffering," he says.
A telegram to the Katzenellenbogen family, who fled to ArgentinaImage: DW/S. Ballweg
In 2011, Williamson, originally from England, found out more about the fate of the former tenants. "The family owned three household supply stores in the city; one of them was just around the corner," he explains. "In 1939, they fled to Argentina where they then lived in poverty." He said he was glad to have found out a bit about the fate of the family and to share the knowledge with others who were interested in the story.
In their apartment, Williamson and his wife displayed copies of documents they found about the Katzenellenbogen family in Berlin's city archives. Among the documents are a list of items confiscated by the Nazis and a letter in which the family demanded compensation from the German state after the Second World War.
"It is very touching to see the apartments from which Jews were driven away," says Hiltrud Lupjahn, a visitor who toured several other apartments that day. "It is something you can touch. You can openly view the people's old apartments; you can see everything they lost."
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
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Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
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Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
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Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
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Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.