sadness
by Batsceba Hardy
"Berlin is the modern-day Phoenix that has arisen from the ashes. People may think the city is now a mecca for culture and prosperity."
It is said that everyone in Berlin is happy. Yet if you walk the streets, and note people in the U-Bahn, you will find many sad faces: eyes that stare at the air, mouths that eat without tasting, hands that hold the void, a people profoundly unhappy.
One day I sat down for a coffee in a small sidewalk cafe, I was tired and I had not eaten. A young woman in front of me ordered a plate of gözleme, with tea. She passed me with a sad look, a face with dark, blank eyes.
The woman pecked at a doughnut, then answered her mobile and at the end of the 10-minute conversation was silent and inert, like a lobotomy victim.
When the woman stood to leave, I noticed her full plate. As she slowly receded into the pedestrians passing along the sidewalk like bored fish in an aquarium, she extended a sweet, demented smile to the two women who took her table, leaving an indelible sadness in the environment.
Moments later, I also left the café to make my way home. I passed through a nearby park, looking for a shortcut, when I started to follow a non-descript woman. She walked with a strange but sure step. I thought she would lead me to the exit, but instead she went to hide in a grove, at the top of a hill. The woman sat quietly on a bench and, with her hands in her lap, she stared upward at the infinite sky above Berlin.
It was at that precise moment, I felt all the pain and suffering of this city, the weight of the awful history from the last century, especially the mass deportation of German Jews to the living hell of Auschwitz and other equally unspeakable death camps for The Final Solution in World War II.
On that day a decade ago, I dedicated myself to photograph, every time I met them, the plates that mark the places where Jews were deported - because a city on whose sidewalks you can find the signs of a past so wretchedly terrible can never be carefree.
B.H.
In the first half of the 20th century, Berlin is bookended by the mass starvation from the British blockade of the Baltic Sea during World War I, and the utter savagery of the Red Army in May, 1945 when the Russians ended World War II in Europe by tearing the city apart brick-by-brick and raping the women in payment for the Battle of Stalingrad. Yet the stain of the Holocaust on Berlin will never diminish, and must be remembered reverently for all time. It is trite, but true: the cruelest animal is man.
thanks to Michael Kennedy
In Berlin more than five thousand 'stumbling blocks' on the pavement recall the Nazi deportations
Stolpersteine, the stumbling blocks of Memory in the streets of Berlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein
tutti parlano di Berlino. tutti la sognano. si dice che qui siano tutti felici e contenti. eppure se cammini per le sue strade, se osservi le persone nelle U-Bahn, trovi tanti volti tristi: occhi che fissano l'aria, bocche che mangiano senza assaporare, mani che stringono il vuoto. un popolo di infelici.
oggi mi sono seduta per un caffè, ero stanca e non avevo mangiato. la ragazza di fronte a me ha ordinato un piatto di gözleme, con un tè. mi ha oltrepassato con il suo sguardo triste. gli occhi scuri, caldi. ha mangiucchiato una ciambella, poi ha risposto al celulare e alla fine della telefonata è rimasta dieci minuti immobile. quando si è alzata, ho notato il piatto pieno. andandosene via, come tutte le persone infelici ha rivolto un sorriso dolce alle due donne che si sono sedute al suo posto, lasciando nell'ambiente la sua tristezza. anche io mi sono alzata e ho ripreso la mia strada. ho attraversato un parco, cercando una scorciatoia e mi sono messa a seguire una donna. camminava con un passo strano, ma sicuro. ho pensato che mi portasse verso l'uscita, e invece si è andata a nascondere in un boschetto, in alto, si è seduta su una panchina e con le mani in grembo si è messa a osservare il cielo. il cielo di Berlino, infinito e in quell'attimo impenetrabile. in quell'attimo ho sentito tutto il dolore di questa città. e anche il mio sguardo si è riempito di tristezza.
2007 B.H.
