First Day in Berlin

My first day in Berlin wasn’t very different from that of the other colleagues that came to the Centropa Academy. Everything I experienced on this day can be defined as my first: visiting Berlin, Germany, entering a synagogue, attending a mass – Shabbat, kosher food. In a word, everything was new and exciting…

My feelings were mixed, especially when we took a walking tour with Fabian and the other colleagues of the Jewish quarter of Berlin. I was admiring the monumental buildings at first but only later did I realize something. The real witnesses of that time weren’t the monumental buildings, but the metal plates with the engraved names of all the victims. They were like some kind of a mosaic that is unique only to Berlin.

I kept thinking of all the bloodsheds, of all the victims, of the Jewish different way of life, religion and beliefs. These feelings were with me during the entire day.

On every plate I was picturing the faces of the victims. I couldn’t help but wonder, if I was living in that period would I stand there silently without doing anything to stop this, or…

This was just one of the sights that we saw on our walking tour. Later on, when I saw the ruined synagogue, I realized that the Nazi tried to destroy the Jews not only physically, but spiritually as well.

The Jews and their suffering through history reminds me of my own people, the Macedonian people. A Macedonian writer, Petre M. Andreevski in his works symbolically compares the Macedonian people with “Pirej” or “Elymus repens”.

This type of grass, Elymus repens, also known as couch grass, grows so rapidly that no matter how much one tries to tear it out, it just needs to touch the ground and start growing again. Nothing can destroy this grass… In the same way, the Jewish people persisted, no matter how much someone tried to destroy them.

They can take everything away from you but they can never take your soul. The soul is an energy that just changes shape and never disappears…