This was our last day of our short trip to Berlin, and so we wanted to spend the afternoon shopping and milling around in the shopping centre before we got on our flight home, and so there is not a lot of content I have to share with you about that. The morning however, we spent at the Jewish Museum of Berlin, and I can honestly say it was one of the best museums I've been to! I keep mentioning how much I enjoyed the architecture in Berlin throughout this trip, and this museum did not disappoint. In the cleverest way, the designer of the museum had split the building into sections, and the first part was laid out in a style that tries to represent the struggles of the Jewish population throughout the Nazi regime and especially in the holocaust, although the museum is not solely dedicated to the Nazi persecution of the Jews only, but to the struggles of the Jewish race through history.
The ceiling of the first part of the museum was all black, which created a sense of being vulnerable as the Jewish people may have felt. Additionally, none of the walls were actually straight, nor was the floor completely even and the different corridors got smaller or wider as you walked along, all contributing to the sense of confusion and uncertainty which represented the struggle. The lights on the ceilings represented what the museum called 'the axis of the Jewish struggle' and the ways in which all the Jews came in, but all came out in different ways, and in fact of course, not all of them did come out. At the end of one of the corridors was a room pictured a couple pictures above. This room had four completely black concrete walls, with no design or pattern. They were extremely tall, it was very cold and dark, and in the highest corner there was a very small slit in the wall, through which light from outside the museum was streaming through. This was there to try and recreate just how lost the people who suffered in the holocaust felt, and how although they may have had hope, they ultimately knew that the chance of their survival or freedom was very limited, and there was no possible way they themselves could do anything to reach that hope; their lives were completely under the control of others.
We then made our way upstairs following our tour guide, and stopped off half way up the stairs. I didn't take many pictures of these rooms as I was quite engrossed in the tour itself, but generally speaking this museum was not only one of the most fascinating museums I have been to, but was also very well laid out and presented all the information easily and interestingly. On this floor we saw and heard about more stories from the Jewish perspective of the Nazi regime, including some personal stories from young children. We then wandered up stairs and viewed some of the other parts of the museum which were focused on the history of the Jews before the 1900s and way back into biblical times which was although irrelevant to our course, quite interesting.
After we had all finished roaming the museum we returned to the entrance where there was also a really lovely café. I don't know about you, but the one thing that makes a good museum even better, is a real good café... with real good cakes..
As I explained for the rest of the day we mostly did some shopping and then got our flight home very late at night, only arriving home at around 1 or 2am. All in all, my trip to Berlin was so wonderful, and not only did I learn a lot and see some amazing sights, but I got to do it all with some of my closest friends too. I would definitely recommend going to Berlin if you have an interest in history (the history geek in me woop woop) as it was so interesting, but also a very nice city to visit and I wish I had slightly longer to visit more of the city area too.
Hope you've enjoyed reading about my little trip, and thank you so much for taking the time to be here! See you soon!
P H O E B E. G R A C E //
