Wednesday May 18, 2016: The Memorial at Grunewald Train Station
Today our group went to visit the Gleis 17 Memorial in Berlin’s Grunewald Train Station. This site commemorates over 50,000 thousand Jewish people who were transported from Berlin to ghettos and concentration camps between the years 1941-1945. Before we reached the train track, another memorial greeted us. A large concrete wall depicted a physical loss of Jewish people through a series of carved silhouettes and remembrance of those individuals through the fossilization made by deep cuts into stone.
After walking up a shallow hill and the entire length of the memorial, we arrived at the beginning. While hovered along the edge of the track, across a total of 186 grated steel plates (each on e represented a separate deportation), we would read the dates and number of passengers for each deportation in numeric order. As years and months went on, the number of passengers decreased and made quite clear the Nazi’s intention to eliminate the Jewish population.
As I witnessed these memorials and attempted to digest the consequences from each, I found myself distracted by how I was occupying the same space where so many were forced to occupy. Our reasons for filling the same space were incredibly different – mine by choice, and theirs by force. Because of this disconnect, I chose to function within the site merely as an observer of the location itself and as an observer of my body, who wished to interact with the space as respectfully as possible. For me, this meant I would not touch any aspect of the memorials, and would leave a negligible footprint on the space itself.
While our guide relayed the history of the location, two children on bicycles rode by. I could hear sets of rubber tires grinding into the ground, but my initial attention was caught by a young girl moaning loudly over the loose gravel. Her voice mimicked the bumpy terrain and oscillated between various octaves. This small and seemingly unimportant moment became crucial to how I experienced the rest of the site. Whether or not the young girl was old enough to comprehend where she was riding her bicycle, she was occupying this space in her own way.
Contrary to my discomfort with engaging in the site via my body, she made herself present as she crossed our paths. She did not remain silent. She did not restrict her body language. And, she forged a new landscape by carving new (tire) tracks through the site. Without knowing so, this young girl helped me reinterpret my personal responsibility: bringing life to spaces of remembrance. Perhaps one of many ways we can respect these spaces is to replenish life where so many lives were lost.
By learning to occupy sensitive spaces in a positive way, we can help bring awareness and respect to hidden sites such as Gleis 17. After today, and after witnessing this young girl on her bicycle, I have changed my initial views for how to engage with a site. Before today, I thought the only way to fully respect a site was to observe and remember. Now, I believe bringing one’s life to a site is essential for showing respect to those who have lost theirs. Living shows we do not take this gift for granted. I believe by demonstrating our abilities to live and appreciation for life, we are able to show compassion toward victims of the Holocaust.
Carly Simmons, Hobart and William Smith Colleges ’16
The March: Bearing Witness to Hope 2016 