Although it is hard to pinpoint one monument, museum or activity that I saw or participated in Berlin as my favorite, I would have to say that the most breathtaking monument was Kathe Kollwitz’s “Mother with dead son” monument. It was by far one of the saddest, yet appropriately
You begin by walking up to what looks like any other small museum. The pillars and steps in the front of the building do not look out of the ordinary next to Humboldt University which sits just feet away. Once you had made your way to the top of the steps, however, the view looks quiet different. Inside the cold stonewalls rests only one sculptor. It is a sculptor of a woman holding her dead son who has died of Nazi aggression. The plaques outside are quiet powerful. They read:
“We remember the millions of Jews who were murdered.
We remember the Sinti and Roma who were murdered.
We remember all those who were killed because of their origin, homosexuality, sickness or infirmity. We remember all who were murdered whose right to life was denied.
We remember the women and men who sacrificed their lives in resistance to despotic rule. We honour all who preferred to die rather than act against their conscience.”
The power of the lone sculptor sitting beside those words literally took my breath away each time I visited the location. Surrounded by stone walls, guarded bars and one small circle cut into the ceiling just above the woman and her son, the statue is literally stuck like so many before her were with no way out.
What struck me as interesting, however, was that they choose to remember those who died, but to honor those who stood up for what they knew was right knowing that their beliefs would cost them their lives. This was something that no other monument that I had visited in Berlin had been bold enough to say. Is it not enough to lose your life, or the lives of your loved ones? I thought about this again at the Wannsee conference memorial site. There I watched for about forty minutes as a movie played in front of me of a woman who had survived multiple concentration camps including Auschwitz. Her sister, however, had not made it. She died just two weeks before the camp was liberated. In that tape, the surviving woman spoke about food rations. She was young and on one of her first days at the camp set down her ration of bread. After looking away for just a second, someone had taken it. She could not understand how someone could possibly ever take something that was not his or hers. She learned later that hunger could force an individual to do just about anything. The will to survive and the willingness to leave one’s ideals at the backdoor did not end with stealing a ration of bread though. What struck me about the sculptor and now this tape was my own self wondering, would I have remembered my own ideals or would I have stole the bread or otherwise done just about anything to save my own life?
My trip to Berlin was an incredible experience that taught me more than I could have hoped to learn both inside as well as outside of the classroom. I learned not to sweat the small stuff, to enjoy the time that I had while in Berlin and most importantly, I found new friends who I hope to keep for a long time to come. I am glad that I was able to go on this trip. If anything, not knowing the language made me more independent. I could not always rely on someone else to get me where I was going, and I ventured out into the city multiple times alone knowing this (and actually quite comfortable with it, which would not have been like me in the past). The history of the city, the Kathe Kollwitz monument and the woman’s accounts of her experiences in the concentration camp, however, forced me to step back and really evaluate the person I have become. One can never know their own strength until they are forced to put it to the test. I hope I will never truly have to know my own, but if I ever do I will remember the things I saw in Berlin.
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