Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Credit: Getty Images
“I don’t get it, Sheldon. What’s the big deal? It’s just a bunch of blocks.”
“Great place to party, though. It’s like a maze in there, Linda. Get a bunch of people together, bring some weed, and no one can find you.”
“We didn’t come here to party, Sheldon. We’re touring Holocaust Memorials in Europe this summer. But this one in Berlin doesn’t even vaguely mention Shoah.”
“Quit living in the past, Linda. Loosen up.”
The young girl looked down at her shoes, fighting back the tears. “I can’t”. Her Bubbe died just four months ago. Linda could still hear her voice singing her to sleep when she was little. The image of the tattoo on Bubbe’s arm, the one the Nazis gave her when she was a girl, never left her.
Linda looked up and in the distance to their right, she saw a group of young Neo-Nazis laughing.
I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw photo writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google maps image as an inspiration to craft a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150. Today’s challenge takes us to the city of Berlin.
This news article at Haaretz explains the controversial history of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, so I won’t include the details here, except to say that we must never forget Shoah and we have a duty to not only remember the past but to make sure we never repeat it.
To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.
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Nice piece, James.
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Thanks.
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One more thing…I haven’t been able to comment on your blog posts in a few weeks. I keep getting some sort of error. Do you know if anyone else is experiencing difficulties and how to correct it? Thanks.
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Dunno why. I think it must be something on your end, since nobody else is having a problem. You might try logging out of WordPress and deleting all the cookies and then logging back in
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Dear James,
We often write in parallels, don’t we? I like this one a lot. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Thank you, Rochelle. I haven’t had a chance yet to read your piece but will do so in a bit.
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I have visited this memorial, I had rather mixed feelings about it.
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You seem to have plenty of company, Michael.
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Well told. The last line is a gut punch!
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Indeed it was. Many Holocaust deniers are rising up. The world is forgetting. As usual hatred of the Jewish people and Israel is on the rise. The world is heading once again into a bad direction.
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All I can say is “Beautiful!”
Did you see the video of the Jewish man in Holland who finds pictures of people who take selfies at this memorial? He photoshops scenes of Holocaust victims into the scene – people jumping over ditches filled with dead victims, or taking a selfie behind a pile of the dead. He will not “unpost” the pictures until the people who took them says they are sorry and will not do it again. Pretty moving.
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Wow Alicia. No, I didn’t know about that. It’s pretty amazing. Thanks for letting me know.
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