Today we took a free tour. Only catch is, it was offered only in Russian. A woman asked us during the tour if we were from Israel. Haha. Then she said that I have beautiful eyes. I was moved. Do I look Israeli?

I broke down and cried like a baby today about Germany and the war, and all the Jews who left their former Soviet countries for this country because it was the only place they could go. I cried about the mass graves in Hungary, the way Hungarians pass them every day on their way to work, without a thought. I am not used to thinking of people who were sent to camps on the train tracks I saw today. In America nothing like this, to this degree, occurred--Not in California... We walked through a cathedral that took a participating role in the holocaust, spent hours learning about its architecture, its art, its measurements...And the Israeli and Russian Jews learned all about its "beauty" and seemed genuinely respectful of it on the tour! I tried over and over to see Germany as modern, Koln as a new, rebuilt city, but everywhere in the air, I felt war all around!

We learned German folk stories and myths, to make a wish on a statue's nose, the ages of the buildings, about the Reine--But it always returned. There, in another square, a tiny little square, difficult to find, practically hidden, was a small simple fountain dedicated to the children who died in the holocaust. The tubes were only copper. It was only about a meter in diameter, and the artist was American anyway. It seemed too little too late.

The Jewish people here seem so forgiving. You'd have to be. What choice do refugees have?

Despite all of this, I try to remember Jenz, the German I met in Sorrento, Italy. He sincerely assurred me that he was not racist or anti-semitic. (It had mattered a lot to me to hear him say so.) We spoke for hours, and his peaceful demeanor and sincere wish to erase my ethnocentric fears comforted me, and assured me that hate is not a genetic German trait. Making a friend made me believe that I ALSO must guard against swift judgement against cultures. I must not let my imagination control my better judgement of individuals. I don't have to like their history. It is healthy to despise it, and I do. As long as I remember not to crucify people for crimes they have not committed. I am not my grandfather, and neither are they.

departure - arrival