My trip to Berlin, part 3: I learn about Jewish Berlin

As promised, here is my third and final post about my recent trip to Berlin. In this post, I'm going to tell you about some of the things I learned about the history of Berlin's Jewish community.

I told you before that sometimes history can be difficult to learn about because bad things have happened, but that it's important to talk about them nonetheless. That warning definitely applies to this post. Therefore, I would encourage you to read this post with a teacher, a parent, or an adult you trust. I'm not trying to scare you, but I do want to share with you some difficult things that I learned on my trip.

In Berlin, Maris took me to the Jewish Museum, which houses displays about Jewish history in and around Berlin from the past two thousand years. Maris is a historian who studies ethnic and religious minorities, including Jews, in Central and Eastern Europe, so she was a great guide who could tell me a lot about all the things I saw in the museum. I enjoyed learning about daily life in Berlin a long time ago, including what food people ate and what kind of clothes they wore.

Here I am in front of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The Jewish Museum also had a much more disturbing section that talked about the persecution that Jews once faced in Berlin, in other parts of Germany, and throughout Europe. Throughout history, lots of people have disliked other people only on the basis of their religion or their race. When a more powerful group of people does bad things to a less powerful group of people solely because of their religion or race, that is called "persecution." Throughout history, Jews were often persecuted.

This persecution got particularly bad in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. The German leader from 1934 until 1945 was a man named Adolf Hitler, whom you probably know about. Hitler eventually got Germany involved in a massive war called World War II, in which Germany and its allies were eventually defeated by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and many, many other countries. Before and during that war, Hitler tried to eliminate many groups of people that he did not like, including Jews.

Many Jewish families were forced to go to buildings called "concentration camps." As the German armies conquered other parts of Europe, they forced Jews from those places to go to live in these camps. Not only had people been forced to leave their homes, friends, and jobs behind, but now they had to live in extremely difficult conditions. Many whole families were crammed together to live in tiny spaces. They generally were not given enough food. Sometimes they were forced to do hard labor. Often, family members were separated from each other. And, a lot of the time, people in the concentration camps were killed.

Here is a picture of me in front of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, which is located near Berlin. Touring the camp, I learned a lot about how devastating life was during this period of history. The persecution of many groups, including Jews, during World War II has been labeled the "Holocaust."

I visit the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

It was very difficult for me to learn about what happened in the places I visited. Fortunately, I was able to talk about what I saw with Maris, who helped me to understand it a little bit better. What I learned was how important it is to respect people of all religions and all races. I also learned that it's important to talk about bad things that have happened in history so that we can remember them and make sure that nothing like them ever happens again.

--Benny