Stone and Concrete, Flesh and Blood

by Genevieve Schiesser (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Germany

"The city of bullet holes," that’s what I think, as we take our tour through Berlin. I had travelled eight hours from Amsterdam to get here – to the coldest day of the month on record, to things I had never once expected to see. My diary entry from the bus journey had been written nervously; unsure, wondering, "had he been here?" As for now, though, I stand amongst the sobering cold, amongst the bullet holes. Our guide begins, "These bullet holes come from the Battle of Berlin, when the Soviet Union freed the city." "Freed," I think. I expected, "liberated." It’s an interesting choice of word, one that reminds me of a few days ago, at Dachau Concentration Camp and those big words hanging above me: "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" – work sets you free. "I’m ashamed of my history," I remember texting my mother that day, beneath the doorway sign. "I don’t want to be here." But I was, and so was he; years and years ago, when the air smelled of bodies and the sky was Burning, Burning, Burning. I walked through the yards, many buildings now gone. They had been replaced with religious monuments, including a memorial bell. The place was quiet; mournfully so, as if history had taken that violent voice of Dachau and replaced it with breath. I headed around the back, to where a percentage of those Holocaust victims, the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and prisoners of war, were shot. "Was he there?" I had imagined. Gun cocked. Trigger readied. "Bang." The bell sounded. I return to the present, as the tour guide continues through Berlin. We see the Neue Wache and, inside, the statue of "Mother with Her Dead Son." She cradles him in her arms, grief turned to stone. "All around Berlin are memorials to victims of the war, of violence and of the Third Reich," he says, leading us away, to another mournful site. Eventually, we get there, and I see it: The Holocaust Memorial, pulling me, consuming me into its apocalyptic grip. "Keep going," it says. "Come closer." I can do nothing but nod at the amass and walk towards it. The sorrow is enormous, and it echoes in the massive, concrete blocks that make up the memorial. I touch them, and I imagine it all: those gas chamber scratch-marks at Dachau, the World War II bullet holes in civilian buildings around the corner. While Berlin held its misdeeds in stone and concrete, I was flesh and blood, restless in the thought of my Nazi roots. I had asked Oma a few times who her father had been in the SS. "A cook," she would say, but I knew. She had been angry at him for years. I release my fingers from the concrete wall. "We want to acknowledge our past," the tour guide says, when we convene, at last. "But we also want to move on from it." It is hard for anyone to acknowledge the history they’re connected to when it is linked with tragedy and violence. It is harder still to follow it with apology, with understanding and sensitivity, but Germany had managed to. I will never know how much of my great-grandfather was true, but metres away from the memorial, I decide to follow the city’s example. Nothing will ever undo the past, but we can own our future. I smile, at last. In the city of bullet holes, I never expected to find it - not closure, no, but something similar. It was hard to say. I look behind me, at the memorial. I stare it in the eyes, like the world had stared at Berlin, at Dachau. "To move on, as Germany has," I think, "is truly something."