The Philadelphia Lawyer

WIN 2015

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"Never Forget." The Eichman bus stop is not the only visible and dramatic Berlin marker of the Holocaust. There are many brass plaques embedded in front of buildings where Berlin Jews once lived before the Gestapo took them away. Each plaque is about the size of a cobblestone and it bears the name of a person deported to a concentration camp, the date taken, and the date and place of death, usually Auschwitz. Very few had death dates after 1945 because few Berlin Jews survived the camps and the war. The plaques bear witness to murder and to stolen lives, ordinary and extraordinary lives. Berliners walk by them and over them to enter stores and to go upstairs to flats to have dinner with families and kiss children goodnight. Residents, customers and passers-by can choose to know about Jewish Berliners who once lived similar lives in the same places until the police came for them. The metal messages give silent powerful testimony 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on holidays and weekday in good weather and bad. Some Berliners – I don't know if it is 1 percent or 99 percent, but some – are working very hard to remember Berlin and Germany's Nazi past and Nazi crimes. They are trying to ensure that Germans, and maybe the rest of the world as well, never forget. Such efforts, always important, may be even more important now given the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, Germany included. Thousands gathered at the Brandenburg Gate recently to demonstrate against harassment and attacks against Jews in Germany. The fighting in Gaza seems to have given an opening not just to those who might criticize and debate in good faith. It has also provided an opportunity for the haters to come out of the shadows. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at the demonstration. Addressing demonstrations is something she almost never does. She said there was no place in Germany for anti-Semitism, that it disgraces all Germans and it was every German's duty to fight it. Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The bus stop, the brass plagues, and the Chancellor carry the same message: Never Forget. Michael J. Carroll (mcarroll@clsphila.org), a public interest attorney, is a member of the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Lawyer. the philadelphia lawyer Winter 2015 17

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