Jewish Quarter in Berlin

Hour-long walk through the neighborhood. We were in the former Jewish quarter. Saw a Berlin synagogue which was oddly built/designed by a Christian architect. Interestingly, Otto von Bismarck (possibly Germany's greatest leader) attended the inauguration. It was rescued during Kristallnacht despite everything else around it being destroyed, by a police captain who claimed the building as a national landmark, thus granting it protection under the law. For his courageous act, he was released from the police force, but the building does stand today.

We saw the site of a Jewish school. We thought the barrier in front of the building was for construction but turns out it was an anti-terrorism measure. The first female rabbi ever was educated there.

Walked through a park and saw a memorial entitled "The Room that was Left Behind." It was a metallic sculpture of an upright table with chairs in disarray (one having fallen down). It was to commemorate the expulsion of the German Jews from Berlin, and the memorial had a poem around the edges. The piece was about interruption.

We came across the Jewish cemetery in Berlin, which unfortunately is no longer intact. The Nazis used the gravestones to reinforce gutters so almost the entire graveyard was essentially destroyed, except for a few gravestones, one being that of Moses Mendelssohn, founder of the Berlin Enlightenment (and a Jew). Outside, there was a memorial to the female victims of Fascism, with no reference to the fact that it was placed in front of a Jewish cemetery. Strange.

Ty Huynh and I tried pho for dinner. It did not qualify as pho.