The Lessons of Berlin

Not far from the bunker where Hitler and his cronies, Eva Braun, Goebbbels etc. all these hideous nightmarish figures, committed suicide, not far from the German chancery, rises in the Berlin sky a wrought-iron profile of Georg Elser, the young carpenter who in 1939, foreseeing the destruction caused by the war that had just started, made an ill-fated attempt to assassinate Hitler. (Hitler didn’t die, Elser was caught and sent to Dachau where he was shot in 1945, for some reason spared until then.)

Under the avalanche of horrible news–the unconscionable tearing apart of families in the United States, the turning away on European shores of migrants fleeing impossible conditions in their own countries, the reelection of Erdogan whose unlimited new powers can truly crush the Turks and definitely do away with Ataturk’s legacy,  the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Kennedy to be replaced by who knows which Trump flunky, corrupt power-crazed strongmen coming to power in too many places we thought safe from extremism, we can only draw comfort from the “this too shall pass” thought. For me, indignant at the start of each day with the news, nothing good or consoling comes to mind as much as a recent visit to Berlin–my first, I’m ashamed to say.