It turns out that the trains in Germany don't always run on time. As Lena and I set off at the end of November for our second ASF seminar in Berlin, we had no fewer than three delays and did at one stage end up going back through Weimar, having left it over an hour beforehand.
After this (and spending another while wandering through the streets of Berlin looking for our hostel...our own fault this time), though, we did arrive just as everyone was sitting down for dinner so we weren't too bad off.
Above all, the seminar was a great opportunity to catch up with all of the others. As I mentioned before, we are a group of 18 international volunteers living and working throughout Germany, and while we of course keep in touch on Facebook, it was good to have the whole group together again - and for the first time since our introductory seminar in September.
We started the seminar that evening by each presenting one or two photos that symbolised how our initial impressions of Germany had changed over our first three months of living there. I chose a map of Germany to show how the naive idea I had in September that I would spend my weekends travelling around the country visiting all the different cities had gone completely out the window once I got here and realised how big it actually is (and how expensive it is to travel around).
It felt a bit odd saying that in a room with several people from Russia (earlier that day, while we sat waiting for one of our many trains, Lena had said 'Germany is so small!') and the United States, but I suppose I can't help the fact that I come from a small island!
The following morning, we broke into small groups and each had the opportunity to present our work to the other volunteers. I really enjoyed hearing what the others do, because, while some of them also work in memorial sites, many are doing things that are completely different. For example, there are people working in the ASF office, others who work with elderly people and there is one volunteer in a youth club. Despite the variety of work however, we're all experiencing the same issues in terms of settling in and finding our feet in a completely new environment.
We spent one day visiting the House of the Wannsee Conference, exploring many of the issues relating to anti-Semitism and the Final Solution. The exhibition at the site is excellent, charting the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and helping to explain what led to the ultimate decision to exterminate the entire Jewish population of the continent.
That day ended with a visit to a synagogue for a Friday-evening service, which, as many in the group remarked afterwards, was quite refreshing after spending so long speaking of Judaism in the past tense. The exterior seemed a bit unwelcoming, with two police standing at the door and another keeping an eye on the security cameras (something which I have often seen outside the synagogue near my house in Dublin on a Saturday morning too) - a sad reminder maybe that some things haven't changed - but once we got inside, the atmosphere could not have been more different.
It was my first time ever inside a synagogue; I have to admit that the one I just mentioned near my house is somewhere I have passed thousands of times, but have never actually considered going in to. I immediately felt very welcome, with many people asking us where we were from and what we were doing in Germany and there was a group of old men sitting nearby who kept showing us where we were in the prayers and hymns, even though it was all in Hebrew anyway!
There was also a great sense of community: everyone was catching up with friends after the week's work and finding out all the news and gossip, just like many people do in Ireland after mass on a Sunday. As someone who is quite critical of religion in general, this gave me a different perspective on the role it can play in people's lives in terms of bringing them together with their neighbours and creating a sense of belonging.
And religion is a theme that came up again and again throughout the seminar, in particular when we talked about the meanings behind some rituals and festivals (mainly Christmas and Hanukkah, given the time of year) and the ways they are celebrated throughout the world.
Unlike our first seminar, this time we did everything through German. It was difficult at times, and I found myself getting quite tongue-tied when speaking in front of the whole group, but there was definitely a determination among those of us who had mostly spoken English in September to stick to German this time.
In comparison to the first seminar, which was geared primarily towards providing us with an introduction to the whole programme and our work, this seminar involved dealing with a much broader range of topics. As well as everything I've mentioned above, we also talked about many other things, including the concept of 'identity' and how we label ourselves and other people, the issues around how our perspectives of our own lives can change over time and even the most feared topic of all: what we're going to do once our volunteer service is over.
It was strange to be thinking of what comes next already when it seems like we've only started, but as I thought about it on the train home (perfectly punctual this time, thankfully) I realised I've been here for almost four months now and I'm well beyond the stage of 'just starting'!
Sunday 18 December 2011
Saturday 17 December 2011
Nothing in particular
It's a long time since I've posted here, and I suppose it's partly because, since my orientation phase finished up at the end of October, I've just settled into my weekly routine, with each day not being as exciting or new as during the first few weeks. That's not to say that things have got boring though - it's more so that we now have the time to devote to the specific things that we want to work on.
In fact, one of the things I am finding the most challenging is learning how to manage my time properly as I have nobody peering over my shoulder and virtually no deadlines to meet. We work here as volunteers and, apart from a few things like working in the information office, there is very little that we HAVE to do, so it is up to us to make what we want out of the year.
And with so many different projects that I want to work on, I initially found myself like a bit of a headless chicken sometimes, running between all of them and getting nothing done, though I think I'm getting better now at disciplining myself to focus on one thing at a time!
I have spent much of the past few weeks transcribing a set of interviews in English with former prisoners of Buchenwald who were children or teenagers when they were in the camp. While it took a long time, and while transcribing can be a very monotonous process, it was both fascinating and sad to hear the stories directly from the mouths of the people who experienced them.
In general the interviewers would let the men just speak freely about their experiences, but it was sometimes frustrating when they would butt in with a question and interrupt the flow of thoughts - I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the men to talk about these events which, as well as being horrific, happened over sixty years ago.
In terms of gaining an understanding of the brutality of what happened, I had the same feelings when I was doing this work as I do when I'm in the archives: the sheer scale of the Holocaust makes it impossible to contemplate the human aspect of the suffering, but by hearing individual stories, I think we can begin to get a better sense of just how awful it really was.
One man spoke of a time when he was living with his family in a Ghetto and they were told that they had to choose one member of the family to be sent for deportation. Not knowing what would happen to the person chosen, they agreed that his older brother would go as he was the most likely to be put to work and not murdered (by this time there were rumours of gas chambers beginning to reach the Ghetto, he said) and thus had the best chance of survival.
Another spoke of how he and many others he knew got sick in the weeks after liberation because they ate more food than their systems could handle at the time. They had become so used to having almost no food, and they couldn't believe how much they now had, that they ate as much as possible in case it would be taken from them.
On the 9th of November, the anniversary of Reichspogromnacht (or Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass), we participated in a ceremony to commemorate the German Jews who, on this and the following days in 1938, had their property and synagogues destroyed and who were rounded up en masse and sent to concentration camps as a means of intimidating them into leaving Germany.
Our role was to read out quotes from some of the men who were sent to Buchenwald at this time; I read out two quotes, one in English and one in German. Needless to say I was quite nervous about having to read something like this out loud at a commemoration ceremony, and we spent most of the preceding two days rehearsing our German pronunciation.
Thankfully it all went well, and the ceremony itself was quite simple and informal. As well as the quotes we read out, the head of the memorial site and the site's chief historian spoke about the events of November 1938 and the mayor of Weimar laid a wreath at the location where temporary barracks were erected to house the men brought to Buchenwald as a result of the pogrom. Ceremonies like this took place all over Germany on the same day and I saw wreaths and flowers in many different towns and train stations over the following weeks.
Towards the end of November, I spent a full day working with a group of school students from England who were visiting Buchenwald as part of a trip through Germany. I accompanied them on a tour around the site and spent the afternoon running a workshop with some of them about the use of photos as sources on the history of the camp.
I found that the students were very engaged in the issues and were far more willing to contribute their opinions than I ever was when I was fifteen. While this was of course only one group, I was happy with my first experience of working with the students and this has encouraged me to work a bit quicker at putting together my own tour, so that hopefully I can start doing it more often myself in the new year.
Other than this, my life outside of Buchenwald has been greatly enriched by the arrival of glühwein and waffles at the Christmas market a few weeks ago and I am happy to report that the freezing German winter that I have been dreading since September hasn't arrived...yet.
In fact, one of the things I am finding the most challenging is learning how to manage my time properly as I have nobody peering over my shoulder and virtually no deadlines to meet. We work here as volunteers and, apart from a few things like working in the information office, there is very little that we HAVE to do, so it is up to us to make what we want out of the year.
And with so many different projects that I want to work on, I initially found myself like a bit of a headless chicken sometimes, running between all of them and getting nothing done, though I think I'm getting better now at disciplining myself to focus on one thing at a time!
I have spent much of the past few weeks transcribing a set of interviews in English with former prisoners of Buchenwald who were children or teenagers when they were in the camp. While it took a long time, and while transcribing can be a very monotonous process, it was both fascinating and sad to hear the stories directly from the mouths of the people who experienced them.
In general the interviewers would let the men just speak freely about their experiences, but it was sometimes frustrating when they would butt in with a question and interrupt the flow of thoughts - I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the men to talk about these events which, as well as being horrific, happened over sixty years ago.
In terms of gaining an understanding of the brutality of what happened, I had the same feelings when I was doing this work as I do when I'm in the archives: the sheer scale of the Holocaust makes it impossible to contemplate the human aspect of the suffering, but by hearing individual stories, I think we can begin to get a better sense of just how awful it really was.
One man spoke of a time when he was living with his family in a Ghetto and they were told that they had to choose one member of the family to be sent for deportation. Not knowing what would happen to the person chosen, they agreed that his older brother would go as he was the most likely to be put to work and not murdered (by this time there were rumours of gas chambers beginning to reach the Ghetto, he said) and thus had the best chance of survival.
Another spoke of how he and many others he knew got sick in the weeks after liberation because they ate more food than their systems could handle at the time. They had become so used to having almost no food, and they couldn't believe how much they now had, that they ate as much as possible in case it would be taken from them.
On the 9th of November, the anniversary of Reichspogromnacht (or Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass), we participated in a ceremony to commemorate the German Jews who, on this and the following days in 1938, had their property and synagogues destroyed and who were rounded up en masse and sent to concentration camps as a means of intimidating them into leaving Germany.
Our role was to read out quotes from some of the men who were sent to Buchenwald at this time; I read out two quotes, one in English and one in German. Needless to say I was quite nervous about having to read something like this out loud at a commemoration ceremony, and we spent most of the preceding two days rehearsing our German pronunciation.
Thankfully it all went well, and the ceremony itself was quite simple and informal. As well as the quotes we read out, the head of the memorial site and the site's chief historian spoke about the events of November 1938 and the mayor of Weimar laid a wreath at the location where temporary barracks were erected to house the men brought to Buchenwald as a result of the pogrom. Ceremonies like this took place all over Germany on the same day and I saw wreaths and flowers in many different towns and train stations over the following weeks.
Towards the end of November, I spent a full day working with a group of school students from England who were visiting Buchenwald as part of a trip through Germany. I accompanied them on a tour around the site and spent the afternoon running a workshop with some of them about the use of photos as sources on the history of the camp.
I found that the students were very engaged in the issues and were far more willing to contribute their opinions than I ever was when I was fifteen. While this was of course only one group, I was happy with my first experience of working with the students and this has encouraged me to work a bit quicker at putting together my own tour, so that hopefully I can start doing it more often myself in the new year.
Other than this, my life outside of Buchenwald has been greatly enriched by the arrival of glühwein and waffles at the Christmas market a few weeks ago and I am happy to report that the freezing German winter that I have been dreading since September hasn't arrived...yet.
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