That Was Then...

JFK in Berlin
June 26, 1963

A few months before his assassination nearly 62 years ago, American President John F. Kennedy, standing before the Rathaus Schöneberg in West Berlin delivered what many consider his finest speech. In front of a crowd estimated at nearly a half million Berliners, Kennedy shouted out a clarion call of solidarity to the residents of that great city which at the time was an island surrounded by hostile neighbors who built a wall (sound familiar?) completely surrounding it. Here are some excerpts: 

I am proud to visit the Federal Republic (West Germany), with your distinguished Chancellor (Konrad Adenauer) who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress...

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "Civis Romanus sum", (I am a citizen of Rome). Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!"...

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in -- to prevent them from leaving us...

While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system for all the world to see -- we take no satisfaction in it; for it is, as your Mayor (Willi Brandt) has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together...

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

(It would be nearly another three decades before that day finally came.)

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner." *

Twenty four years later in a much different time, a much different American president gave another speech in Berlin. Perhaps not as eloquent as Kennedy's, but it's message of democracy, freedom, progress and especially solidarity with the people of Germany the rest of Europe, and indeed countries all over the world who would be our ally, rang clear as a bell. 

Standing before the most enduring symbol of Berlin, the centuries-old Brandenburg Gate which at the time stood permanently closed just east of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan delivered perhaps his own greatest speech. In the middle of his remarks, Reagan spoke directly to the leader of the Soviet Union:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! 

Then came the money quote:

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

But Reagan's speech that day was more than a collection of aphorisms, among other things it was a history lesson. Here are a few tidbits:

In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

Ronald Reagan in front of the Berlin Wall
and the Brandenburg Gate,
June 12, 1987

The American government and their allies learned their lesson after the Armistice following the First World War, where the victors imposed harsh conditions on the defeated, the results of which planted the seeds of World War II.  Realizing that winning the war against Hitler and totalitarianism was meaningless without winning the peace, the Marshall Plan was an initiative of the United States, to contribute mightily in both treasure and manpower, to the rebuilding of Europe, including its vanquished enemy, Germany. A similar plan was in place doing largely the same for Japan. Consequently:

...in West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

As Allied victory over Germany appeared imminent in early 1945, the leaders of the "Big Three" Allied powers, the U.S. (Roosevelt), the United Kingdom (Churchill) and the Soviet Union (Stalin) met in the city of Yalta on the Baltic Sea to outline the post-war map of Europe. That map was formalized after the war during another meeting in the German city of Potsdam with Harry Truman replacing the recently deceased FDR. 

In a nutshell, in exchange for Stalin's agreement to enter the war in the Pacific against Japan after Germany's impending defeat, Roosevelt gave in to Stalin's demands that Eastern and most of Central Europe, be brought under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, thereby sealing those nations' fate for nearly one half-century. **

It was also agreed that after Germany's unconditional surrender which would took place on May 8, 1945, the country would be divided in four, with each region occupied and governed by one of the main powers that formed the backbone of the alliance, plus France which would be brought into the mix. The capital city of Berlin was also divided into four zones, American, British, French and Soviet. 

Germany's four zones would be tenuously governed as one body by the Allied Control Council, made up by representatives of each of the four powers. However, trouble was brewing as the socialist Soviets balked at the plans of the other three powers to collaborate economically. In addition, the U.S., the U.K. and France all made known their intention to eventually leave the Council, entrusting governance in the hands of the Germans. For their part, the Russians were especially distrustful of an independent, unified Germany, not unreasonable considering the unspeakable devastation the war brought to the people of the USSR.

Another major sticking point became the divided city of Berlin which was located in the heart of the Russian zone. 

The city's precarious location and situation resulted in one of the first volleys of the Cold War as the Soviet Union, wanting Berlin all to itself, blockaded all land and water routes in and out of the city, literally in an attempt to starve its citizens into submission. That act was answered by the Allied nations who organized the Berlin Air Lift, which provided the city with the essential materials, most importantly food, to keep the city alive. It is said that there were nearly 300,000 of these flights in total over the period of one year, working out to about on plane taking off or landing in Berlin's Tempelhoff , Tegel and Gatow Airports every 30 seconds. 

Seeing its futility in light of the resolve of the West Berliners and the Allies, the Soviets ended their blockade in the spring of 1949. But tensions between East and West only ramped up. While the three Western powers would remain briefly as an occupying force, on May 9th of that year, the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany was announced, with its capital city moved to Bonn. In response, on October 7th of the same year, the German Democratic Republic (DDR in German, popularly known as East Germany) became a reality. Its capital would remain in Berlin.

Despite all that, after the blockade and the airlift, Berlin would remain an open city with unrestricted travel between east and west for a decade. This proved to be a dire problem for East Germany as Berlin became the major conduit for the exodus of nearly 3.5 million East German citizens to the West. To stop the hemorrhage, East Germany built its infamous wall that surrounded with city of West Berlin. Construction of the first phase of the Berlin Wall began on August 12, 1961. It's fall coincided with the collapse of East Germany, on November 9, 1989, a little more than two years after Reagan delivered his speech in Berlin. During the existence of the Wall, at least 140 people, but probably more, lost their lives attempting to cross from East to West. 

The post-war tensions created by the Berlin Blockade, the creation of the two Germanys, and especially the division of Europe between East and West, all the foundations of the long-gone Cold War, have ramifications that are still felt today. 

To bolster the defense of the new western alliance against the increasing likelihood of Soviet aggression, 1949 also saw the signing of the North American Treaty, the defense pact originally signed by ten Western European nations, the United States and Canada. The most significant element of the treaty is Article Five which stipulates that all members of what would become the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), would be obligated to come to the defense of any other member nation, should they be attacked. 

While NATO has participated in numerous operations, mostly acting in support roles in European theaters of conflict, in all its years of existence, Article Five was invoked only once, after the September 11 attacks on the United States. 

Today there are 32 member nations, the last of which to date that have been admitted were Finland and Sweden which became members in 2023 and 2024 respectively, in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, itself not a NATO member. 

Finally, President Reagan in his speech in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987 invoked his predecessor: 

When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

Always successful or not, always sincere or not, promoting democracy, freedom and progress over the forces of tyranny, slavery and regression has been the stated goal of the Western Alliance which has held strong with the crucial membership of the United States as both its most powerful member and its greatest beneficiary for the eighty years since the end of World War Two.

Until now.

A couple weeks ago the current vice president of the United States addressed a group of representatives of the Western Alliance at their annual security conference in Munich, whose main concern at the moment was how to best support Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. He told them essentially the biggest threat to the world was not Russia, it was them. Then he said this:

In the United States, there's a new sheriff in town. 

But that's a story for another day.

*Once again, I have to point out that the phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner", one of JFK's most quotable lines, unequivocally means exactly what Kennedy intended, expressing solidarity not with a pastry, but with the people of Berlin. Looking like a fool, I learned this the hard way after bringing it up with German friends of mine in Frankfurt, one of whom a Berliner very much around at the time Kenndy delivered his speech. They both assured me the suggestion of the phrase being a malapropism was nonsense, mere urban legend, that no German then nor since, ever got a chuckle from the term having a double meaning. 

Here's the deal: "Ich bin Berliner" without the article "ein", which some suggested he should have said, means "I am from Berlin", which Kennedy obviously was not. 

**The United States' use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, made the Russin invasion of Japan a moot point.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

We are living in scary times. In my nearly sixty years on this planet, the world has experienced other scary times.  Just in my lifetime, we've seen war, the threat of global nuclear annihilation, economic collapse and terrorism, and those experiences pale in comparison to the things my parents' and grandparents' generations experienced. But I don't know of a time in the past century when Americans seriously questioned the future of this nation and its core values, as they do now. We have a president who appears to have zero respect for the constitution and the rule of law, especially when it comes to the restrictions it places on his office. During the campaign, he expressed a higher regard for the dictator of Russia than for the President of the United States. He and his administration have demonstrated time and again that they have no particular interest in freedom of speech, unless it is their own. The POTUS has made it clear he has no intention of giving up his huge stakes in worldwide business interests and the issues of conflicts of interest they will inevitably create. This administration's utter lack of regard, even contempt of facts is downright appalling. Perhaps most disheartening of all is the fact that many of my countrymen and women are perfectly OK with it.

As I can remember exactly where I was upon learning the news of nearly every horrific event in world history that took place in my lifetime, I will never forget the moment I read the statement made by a top advisor in the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway, when she used the Orwellian term "alternative facts" to describe blatant lies the president made through his press secretary, to over-inflate the size of the crowd at his inauguration. It was at that moment when it occurred to me that this nation might very well be doomed. If this administration could so overtly lie about trivial, easily verifiable stuff, imagine how they plan to deal with the important issues that take place behind closed doors. I didn't feel much better last Sunday when this same advisor lamented the fact that to date, no one in the "mainstream media" has been sacked for criticizing her boss.

It's becoming clear that the division in this country between supporters of the POTUS and everyone else, is becoming deeper and deeper as we speak, which seems to work to the advantage of his administration. Like so many totalitarian wannabes, this administration seems to draw its life-force from the ability to create a home grown enemy. And that enemy is anyone, wherever their political leanings may lie, who has the nerve to criticize them.

This leaves those of us with misgivings about the current administration in a quandary. Do we openly protest the administration, thereby fueling the fire in the bellies of the president and his supporters who are looking for any excuse to repress the liberties of their detractors? Do we do so subversively much like the bumbling, crazy (like a fox) Good Soldier Švejk, the eponymous character from the series of novels written by the Czech author Jaroslav Hašek? Or out of fear of retribution do we just keep our mouths shut, hoping the storm will pass over our heads without causing too much damage?

This is not my paranoia speaking, I know people who have chillingly called for marshal law to suppress the demonstrations that are taking place throughout the country. The president himself has expressed his enthusiasm for using strong arm tactics. In a tweet last week he threatened to "send in the feds" to Chicago in order to control this city's growing murder rate. This weekend he signed an executive order to ban the entry into the United States, of people from specific nations, including many green card holding legal residents of this country. Even small children were not spared, one of whom was reported to have been handcuffed for several hours during his detention at Dulles Airport in suburban Washington DC last weekend. Amazingly, the president's press secretary told the country that it is perfectly acceptable to handcuff a five year old child, who turned out to be a US citizen. After the incident, the press secretary, Sean Spicer said this:

To assume that just because of someone’s age and gender that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong. 

You read this stuff, at least I do, and wonder if there are no ends to which the administration would not stoop in order to achieve their objectives.

Yet there are folks who are perfectly happy with the way things have been working out since the president was inaugurated a scant twelve days ago at this writing. It's not something new in history, that people of a nation, fearful of the unknown, would choose security over liberty. These arrangements seldom work out well. The current administration is only happy to oblige the fearful, taking advantage of an existing atmosphere of anger and resentment, and blowing it completely out of proportion. One school of thought has it that the protests that have taken place since the inauguration, especially the very small handful that have erupted in violence, only work to the benefit of the administration, as for them it would be justification for the use of force to quell the violence. Once that begins, where will it end?

An even more cynical, but not outrageous viewpoint, is that the administration is well aware that, rather than promoting safety, its actions over the weekend, suspending the arrival of refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya, will only exacerbate anti-American hostility in the Muslim world, making terrorist attacks all the more likely. The resulting crisis would then justify the suspension of constitutional rights in the name of "national security". Steve Bannon, the president's right hand man (or is it the other way around?) has written that he is in favor of the need to tear down society in order to rebuild it, which in his world view it would seem, would mean an oligarchy ruled by Caucasians, with a few useful Christian values cherry picked out of scripture thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure but perhaps non-Caucasians could live here if they wished, they would just have to tow the line, and bow to the master in charge.

How things have changed in a mere generation. Judging from the following words advocating understanding among the people of the world, and an open door to this country, you might think the man who spoke them was a progressive, liberal Democrat. You would be quite wrong:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace - a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here." --Ronald Reagan

Eighty four years ago, a president on the verge of a new administration, facing a much more difficult challenge than the current president as he entered his new administration, told a struggling nation that:

...the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself, - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Until now, for 228 years, American presidents have told their country not to fear, that by working together as a nation, there is no problem we cannot solve. In the meantime, dictators have told their subjects to fear everything, but leave it to them, in their hands, and in their hands alone, they will solve all the nation's problems.

The struggle against the current administration is not a struggle between the left and the right, between Republicans and Democrats. It is a struggle for liberty, truth, and common decency, in other words the values that Americans of good will have shared for over two centuries. Fed by the fear and anger inspired by a handful of opportunistic demagogues who draw their very breath from our division, many of us seem to have lost those values over the past year.

But we as a people are better than that. We protest out loud whether it be on social media, in the halls of Congress, or out in the streets, over the injustices of this administration. We do so not because we are crybabies and sore losers, but because we are Americans, and because we love our country.

Berlin

"You know what the fellow said, in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Harry Lime - The Third Man

The famous line written and delivered by Orson Welles* in Carol Reed's film The Third Man could be considered to be the ultimate cynic's view of the world, especially coming from a character who is using the argument to justify his ghastly crimes. Yet in a broader sense there is a germ of truth to it given that conflict and suffering define the human experience in ways that peace and contentment do not.

Consider the fact that the Divine Comedy of Dante is popularly referred to as Dante's Inferno, not Dante's Paradiso, even though the story deals with both Heaven and Hell, not to mention Purgatory.

Nothing captures the imagination more than misery.

This is true of the urban experience. Cities contain both the best and the worst of humanity, the great cities only more so. This goes all the way back to Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, part of the cradle of civilization, center of art, law and science. But Babylon still has bad connotations to this day implying the degenerate behavior found in big cities.

The great cities of the world all have had their share of decadence, heartbreak and misery.

Of all the cities that I have visited, none has had to overcome more of all three in the course of one human lifetime than Berlin. What is remarkable about Berlin is that while its rebirths have been wildly successful, the city has done very little to obfuscate its troubled to say the least, past. Everything is out in the open for all to see, scars (especially the scars) and all. And Berlin is all the better for it.

If you say that you were in Berlin at some point in your life you would have to specify exactly when, as there have been so many Berlins over the past century.

Those lucky enough to have been there in the 1920s and early 30s experienced a magnificent city during its golden age. Berlin was the center of cutting edge painting, literature, architecture, film, science, design, music, philosophy and education, just to name a few.

Harry Lime's comment certainly holds true for this period as much of the fervent creativity was born out of war and the sense of desperation Germany faced with enormous reparations owed to the victors of World War I. Staggering inflation wiped out the savings of most Germans. There was a kind of "let's face the music and dance" atmosphere that swept over the city at that time.

The music ended in 1933 when Hitler came to power. The cosmopolitan, irreverent, and slightly decadent Berliners were never very supportive of the Nazis. But their city was Germany's capital and it became the center of the storm during the one of the most horrible periods in human history, an enduring symbol for the most abominable regime the world has ever known.

Where pre-1933 Berlin will be remembered for the Bauhaus, Einstein, German Expressionism, Threepenny Opera and Marlene Dietrich, pre-war Berlin will always be remembered for Nazi Rallies, the Reichstag fire, book burnings, and Kristallnacht. During that time the talented but morally bankrupt Albert Speer was as Hitler's hand chosen architect, busy making no little plans of his own, redesigning a Berlin that was intended to be the imperial capital city of the Third Reich. "Take a good look, " Albert Einstein said to his wife as they left the old Berlin for good in 1932, "you'll never see it again."

Speer's imperial city never took shape as his plans were forever shelved when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Beginning that year the look of Berlin would change drastically as impenetrable bunkers were built throughout the city in anticipation of war. It's look would forever change a few years later.

The British began areal bombing as early as 1940, but Berlin remained more or less intact until late 1943 when the Battle of Berlin began. The Americans got into the act in February, 1944, and the Russians helped finish the work starting in January, 1945.

The bombing continued until April, 1945 when the Red Army marched into the city. All in all, somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 civilians died in Berlin as a result of the bombing, a small amount compared to other bombed cities, due in large part to the bunkers. But the city was reduced to rubble. The death toll brought upon the world by the mass murderers who took their lives in their bunkers near the Brandenburg Gate will never be known, but estimates range between 50 and 70 million.

The spoils of war were split between the Allied powers as Germany was divided into four parts, English, French, American and Soviet. Berlin was situated, in the middle of the Russian sector, but since it was the capital and most important city, it too was split in four. Eventually the split became two as cold war tensions arose between the Soviet Union and the West. The part of Berlin not under Soviet hegemony became an island in the midst of Soviet controlled East Germany. Disputes with the West led the Soviets to blockade what became known as West Berlin. The western allied powers organized an airlift to supply the material needs of West Berliners. The Berlin Airlift was to last three years, from 1946 to 1949.

Remarkably through the tension, West and East Berlin remained one city with free access from one end to the other. This uneasy co-existence lasted through the fifties as over three million East Germans emigrated to the West through Berlin. To stop the hemorrhage, the East Germans constructed the infamous Berlin Wall that encircled West Berlin in 1961. Watchtowers with armed soldiers ensured that escape attempts would be met with deadly force. Between August 13, 1961 and November 9, 1989, 171 persons were shot while trying to cross the Wall.

This period marked two notable visits from U.S. presidents. John F, Kennedy visited Berlin on June 26, 1963 where he delivered his beloved show of solidarity.*

Ronald Reagan on June 12,1987 standing before the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate directly addressed his Soviet counterpart when he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Two years later, Mr. Gorbachev did exactly that.

The reasons for the Fall of the Soviet Union are numerous and will be debated forever but on November 9, 1989, the extant East German government announced that its citizens could freely visit West Germany. Thousands took the opportunity to chip away at the wall as a shameful period in history came to an abrupt end.

What followed was a period of tremendous exuberance on both sides as two cities became one again. Germany officially reunited on October 3, 1990.

The exuberance did not last long. The forty four year period of division between the two cities was profound. East Berliners flooded into West, looking for opportunities that never existed for them. Economically the Easterners were far behind their counterparts and the German government was forced to create some kind of equilibrium, work that goes on to this day. Not long after the wall came down, chants of "put it back up" could be heard all over town, at least under people's breath.

That of course did not happen. What did happen was a tremendous construction boom. Tower cranes sprouted up like weeds all over the former East Berlin, especially in the formidable area once occupied by the Wall where complete desolation was replaced by new buildings, parks and boulevards.

Today Berlin is back to its prominence as one of Europe's cultural meccas. It is also the capital of Germany once again.

My father and I were both in Berlin. He spent much of the war there as a conscripted laborer from occupied Czechoslovakia. I was there in 1993 four years after the Wall came down. We were in two entirely different cities.

I had very personal reasons for visiting beyond being a tourist. All through my childhood my father made me very much aware of the war and its aftermath when the Soviet Union dominated Central and Eastern Europe. Going to the city where my father spent a formative part of his life was a pilgrimage of sorts.

The first thing I did in Berlin was go for a long walk. The walk I took would not have been possible four years earlier as my route would take me through the Brandenburg Gate from West to East Berlin.

Everything that I passed along the way held tremendous historical significance.

• The Tiergarten, the enormous park in Central Berlin that was stripped barren during the war as the trees were used for firewood.
• Strasse des 17 Juni, the grand boulevard through the Tiergarten, named after an uprising of East Germans on that date in 1953.
  
• Siegessaule, the winged victory monument standing atop a massive column, an iconic symbol of Berlin.
• The Russian World War II Memorial, which strangely enough is in West Berlin.
• The Reichstag, the former and now current home of the German government whose burning was significant in the events that led to the rise to power of the Nazis.
• The Brandenburg Gate, the last remaining entrance gate into the old city which ironically was closed when the Wall was built around it.
• Fragments of the Wall itself.
• Hitler's bunker.
• Unter den Linden, Berlin's most famous street named after the trees that line it. Along UdL are some of Berlin's most important pre-war buildings, many of them by the city's preeminent early 19th Century architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
• Humboldt University whose alumni and faculty list reads like a who's who of German philosophy, political thought and science.
  
• Museum Island, one of the world's greatest collection of cultural institutions.
• Alexanderplatz, the great public square, once along with with Potsdamer Platz was one of the great nightlife centers of the city. Today it is the home of the Fernsheturm, the giant TV tower, pride of the East Germans as it is the tallest structure in all of Berlin.

All this during only my first two hours in Berlin!

In crossing from West Berlin to East Berlin through the Brandenberg Gate it becomes immediately apparent that the area directly east of the Gate, along Unter den Linden is the heart of the city. The area west of the Gate was once the suburbs. As a parochial comparison, think of a wall built along North Avenue in Chicago that would prevent anyone living north of it from access to the Loop. A mere inconvenience when you consider the real tragedy of the wall, the permanent separation of families and loved ones.

My most vivid memory of Berlin was a visit to the lovely neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin. The neighborhood was traditionally working class and bohemian is atmosphere. As it was slightly off the beaten path it didn't get much attention from the Nazis, even the bombers left it pretty much in tact. I stumbled upon the Jewish cemetery. The caretaker and I were the only people in the cemetery. He provided me with a Kippah to cover my head. It was a cold and clear December morning, the only day during my trip when the sun shone, but it barely cleared the tops of the surrounding buildings. I walked in this sacred space among the earthly remains of the people who belonged to a culture that was destroyed after their departure from this earth. Being among the inhabitants of a magnificent city in a magnificent time made me forget for a moment about the abject terror that their descendants experienced. I was filled with a sense of peace that had escaped me during the rest of my trip.

Upon my return my father was anxious to hear what Berlin had become. He asked me two questions:

"Did you go to Potsdamer Platz?"

Potsdamer Platz back in the day (along with Alexanderplatz) was the commercial heart of the city and the center of nightlife, sort of like Herald Square and Times Square combined. It was probably the busiest intersection in Europe, the birthplace of the electric traffic light, or so it is said. My father was very candid late in his life about his time in Berlin. He was a young man in his early twenties living in a city where most of the young men were off at the front. You can fill in the blanks from there. Clearly he spent a lot of time at Potsdamer Platz. Life goes on, even during a world war.

Potzdamer Platz was hit particularly hard by the bombing due to its location in the vicinity of the Reich Chancellery and other government buildings. Unfortunately, after the war its location happened to be right on the border of the English, American and Soviet sections of town. When the Wall was built most of Potsdamer Platz was smack dab in the middle of the no man's land between both sides of the Wall. Literally nothing was there for 45 years. There is a particularly moving scene in Wim Winders' poetic film Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) where an old man in a dream like state wanders around the site of Potsdamer Platz where he recounts memories of his lost youth, "Where is Potsdamer Platz, it used to be here" he says. The man could have been my father.

When I was there the area was fenced off and tower cranes were abundant. Plans for the future were mapped out on the construction site. Today P.Platz is once again a happening place although from what I read and see in photographs, has not yet returned to its former glory.

"Did you see Anhalter Bahnhof?"

My father left Berlin as he put it, "on the last train out of the city." From the way he told it I always pictured a scene right out of Casablanca where my father as Rick waits in vain for his Ilsa as the train pulls out of the station. I don't know if there ever was an Ilsa in my father's case, my guess is there were many of them. Anyway the station where he hopped the last train was Anhalter Bahnhof, the tracks of which led him back home to Czechoslovakia.

Which is precisely why the station doesn't exist anymore. the headhouse of the grand station was in West Berlin and the tracks led to all points east, rending the station pointless. It stood as a hulking ruin until 1960 when it was demolished. The entrance portico of the once proud station survived and was preserved as a reminder of the Berliners, mostly Jewish, who embarked on their last journey, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

I stuck up a conversation with a gentleman who was walking his dog (a pitbull named Trudi) in front of ruins of the station. He told me a little bit of the history of the area, pointing out in particular the bunker near the site. "They've been trying to get rid of it for years, " he told me "but to do it they would have to blow it up and if they did that, they would take with it the rest of the neighborhood!"

Unbeknownst to me at the time was the fact that this was the very bunker that protected my father during the air raids. After my return home he recalled a time when a woman began singing Stille Nacht and was soon joined by the entire group of people huddled together for safety as the bombs fell one Christmas Eve.

Here is a scene from Himmel über Berlin that shows the ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof and what I believe is that bunker:

How do I begin to describe my feelings about Berlin? I must say that I have never felt such ambivalence for a place, loving it and hating it at the same time. Berlin is a city of exuberance and of ghosts, a progressive city that can never escape its past.

Reminders of the past are everywhere, be they monuments, photographs of the city before the war displayed in storefronts, plaques that describe terrible events, museums entirely dedicated to atrocities, architectural ruins that were preserved as reminders, or physical damage that was simply never repaired.

Yet the past flows together with a thriving, very much alive city that remains cutting edge in so many ways. That is the allure of Berlin. It's not an overtly beautiful city like Paris, or Prague. To find the beauty you need to dig beneath the surface and look in unexpected places. Through it all it remains a city of life that triumphs over tragedy, of good that transcends evil. The beauty of Berlin lies in the faces of the children of many cultures living in neighborhoods like Prenzlauerberg and Kreutzberg. And it lives in the fervent hope that the future will be better than the past. There is a spirit and vitality in Berlin like no place else.

Nelson Algren wrote: "Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may find lovlier lovlies, but never a lovely so real."

Of course he wrote that about Chicago. Add a broken arm and a black eye and you could say the same for Berlin.