Going to Germany with children brings up a question: How do you tell a child about evil? When is a good time to show them a concentration camp?
How do you tell a child that the place where he is dancing is the same place that the Nazi’s brought books to burn and try to impose censorship upon one of the most literate societies in the world?
And while JJ is taking photos of this church how do you show him the rest of it?
That those are real bullet holes in the church, from real guns that killed people, including children his age.
That this bombed out church, William Memorial Church, is one of the few structures that survived World War 2 when Berlin was reduced to rubble. That war results in this.
Or how do I tell him that a few feet away is a memorial to people who recently died. It is where another ideology killed innocent people by driving into a crowd. Another failed ideology- ISIS trying to strike terror.
Or that I am taking a photo of this bit of stone on the street because it represents a wall, the Berlin Wall, that separated East and West Berlin, separated families and friends.
Or that this is the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” a part of an evil plan to rid the world. A plan started in anti-semitism, like the kind he heard from a friend who said that Jews will go to “that place where monsters are.”
How do I tell you that this represents a Topography of Terror. That the rubble is the remains of Albrecht-Straße 8, headquarters of the Gestapo, and Security Service, and the Rich Security Main office where so many people were brought to, tortured, and never heard from again. Or that wall in the background was another evil regime keeping its people away from the evil “west.”
How do I tell my son that we are together, here, a happy family, yet so many happy families in this city were torn apart, never to see one another again?
JJ in front of war
How do I tell him that he is standing in front of war. The only times the US and USSR tanks were up against one another at Checkpoint Charlie?
A child lead them
I can tell him because he is a child, and a “little child shall lead them.”
Finally I can tell him about this man, his grandpa, who he knows now as an older man. But doesn’t know that when he was a young man he fought in Europe to make it free so his grandson could dance in a city that for a while had no reason to dance. That here, saluting his fellow soldiers who are buried in Omaha Beach Cemetery – a young man, and millions like him – fought for freedom.
