'Memoirs of Hadrian': A Bygone Era, A Roman Emperor and a French Author

The gold standard for writing history, fictional and non-fictional, was set by two women writers. Marguerite Yourcenar's 'Memoirs of Hadrian' set the standard for history based fiction and Barbara Tuchman's 'Guns of August' set the standard for popular history telling. Neither work has been superseded in brilliance or narrative or sense of history. Interestingly neither Yourcenar or Tuchman are what we can call academic or professional historians. Where Tuchman was blessed with material and access Yourcenar was not and yet she brings to us, based on very fragmentary evidence, a vivid portrayal of a bygone era when an ambitious Roman emperor sought to remake Pax Romana only to see it all crash and burn in the twilight of an illustrious rein punctuated with a very poignant love story.

Yourcenar came across a passage in a correspondence from Gustave Flaubert in 1927 that provided her with a vision to pursue an idea that was already germinating in her mind. Flaubert wrote: "Just when the god's had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone". Yourcenar adds "a great part of my life was going to be spent in trying to define, and then to portray, that man existing alone and yet closely bound with all being". Aelius Hardianus Augustus, Roman emperor  117 AD- 138AD, was that man.

'My dear Mark', so begins this fictional memoir of Hadrian, written in the first person in the form of a letter from a dying Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius. The chapters are titled in Latin and the first one borrows the first line of a poem composed by Hadrian shortly before his death, 'Animula, vagula, blandula', 'sweet little soul traveling'. Hadrian is melancholic after visiting his physician Hermogenes and starts off by noting his current frailty and recalling the days of his youth when he hunted with gusto. In one sweeping passage making use of the fact that a Roman youth traveled throughout the sprawling empire Yourcenar pummels the reader with names of places where Hadrian hunted, Etrurian mountains, a Spanish forest, hunts in Tuscany, Bithynia, Cappadocia, woods of Asia, lions killed in Mauretania and even in Tibur.

Antinous. Image Courtesy Wikipedia

Yourcenar is master of the prose and glides from hunting to the joy of eating, to wine drinking, to a brief note on gymnosophists and lands on a rumination of whether it is fair to classify love as merely a physical joy. Each narrative is crammed with details that vividly brings out what a trading center the Roman empire was and how goods and ideas moved from end of the empire to another. At times it is indeed overwhelming and one does feel clobbered by information that one could lose sight of a fine metaphor or a subtle philosophical hint. This is a book to be read, re-read and re-read and digested.

Hadrian, born in Spain, is educated in philosophy and poetry. He learns grammar and rhetoric. Virgil, Ennius, Lucretius, Homer, Horace, Ovid form a part of his curriculum. Thanks to his Scaurus Hadrian studied Greek and confesses that while his epitaph maybe written in Latin it is in "greek" that he "shall have thought and lived". Overcoming the treachery of his brother-in-law Servianus Hadrian, in an astute move, becomes the bearer of the glad news that to Trajan that the emperor Nerva had died and that Trajan, therefore, will be the new emperor. A talented youth bringing good news no wonder finds himself endearing in the eyes of the recipient of the news.

Hadrian gets turned off by the brutality of Trajan's Dacian wars. He "regretted these dead whom Rome might have absorbed and employed one day as allies against hordes more savage still". The story of Hadrian and Yourcenar's narrative powers reach its apogee in the chapters describing the early reign when Hadrian brings stability, 'Tellus stabilita', and in the chapter describing his love for Antinous, aptly titled 'golden age', 'Seaculum aureum'.

Hadrian was a reformer at heart who is well that the Rome of his time will yield, in due course of time, to "other Romes", he may not live to see them but he would "have helped to mold". He resolves that she would "compose for herself from the words State, citizenry and republic a surer immortatlity". So saying Hadrian cuts superfluous laws, ensures more rights for slaves and women, even curtails slavery, reduces intermediaries in commerce and trade, expresses admiration for merchants, he sees in the army's diversity a blessing, he sanctions unions between Roman soldiers and 'barbarian women', their children get legal status too, curtails special privileges for officers, sympathizes with a plaintiff who scolds him that if he does not have time to hear her complaint then he'd equally have no time to rule but above all Hadrian wanted to be known as the Roman emperor who made peace and negotiations the corner stone of his reign.

The Parthians' chief concern, Hadrian understood, was only to reopen the trade routes between the Roman empire and India. It is interesting to see how many times the name 'India' or things connected with India are mentioned. He even has a 'Hindu servant' who prepares rice. Negotiating between Greeks and Jews he tries telling "the Greeks that they are not always the wisest of peoples, and to the jews that they were by no means the most pure". He ruefully wonders, "these races who had lived side by side for centuries had never had the curiosity to get to know each other, nor the decency to accept each other". Hadrian could be speaking very well for Gandhi or Nehru during India's partition riots. He realizes that "orders on the frontiers was nothing if I could not persuade a Jewish peddler and a Greek grocer to live peaceably side by side".

"To build is to collaborate with earth, to put a human mark on a landscape, modifying it forever thereby". Of the many landmarks created by Hadrian that survive even today the most famous is "Hadrian's Wall" that he constructed in today's England. Seeking to keep away invaders and thereby avoiding the necessity of going to war the wall, Yourcenar's Hadrian boastfully thinks, is a symbol of his "renunciation of the policy of conquest". Walls keep away enemies from without but what about enemies within? Hadrian will realize the limits of pacifism in Judea.

With a sense of achievement coursing in his veins Hadrian scoff at the stoic Epictetus for renouncing life and a Brahman who "was rejecting life itself". Hadrian perceives his relationship with a 'deity' as being 'different'. He sees himself "seconding the deity in his effort to give form and order to a world", he was a "unique force caught up in the multiplicity of things; I was eagle and bull, man and swan, phallus and brain, all together, a Protesus who is also a Jupiter".

In the 'age of gold', 'Seaculum Aureum', Hadrian's tragic homosexual love for teenaged Antinous is narrated lovingly. It should be noted that Yourcenar herself was openly lesbian and it was her partner Grace Frick that translated 'Memoirs of Hadrian' from French to English. Staying in Bithynia Hadrian meets Antinous, who slept "like some daylight endymion", Arrian of Nicomedia who wrote history and philosophy and was a good soldier too, Euphrates, who committed suicide with Hadrian's permission, Phlegm, poet Pancreatus who entertained with musical instruments that included 'delicate Indian flutes' and a Mithraic initiation ceremony that is bloody and terrifying to the greek boy Antinous. Antinous tragically commits suicide and Hadrian decided to commemorate him by deifying him and starting a cult around the catamite unlike Alexander who mourned the death of his lover Hephaistion by slaughtering many.

Finally it was the issue of whether to permit practice of circumcision that brings Hadrian's Pax Romana crashing to reality. A Roman emperor who swore to establish peace and renounce conquests presided over the bloodiest suppression of a revolt that had its beginnings in whether or not a man can slice of the foreskin from the male organ.

Judea was always restive and the peace that was so uneasy erupted into rebellion under the leadership of one Simon who called himself Bar Kochba, Son of the Star. It was brutal guerrilla war that was finally won, after 3 years, at great cost to both sides. Yourcenar who sensitively portrayed Hadrian's love for Antinous and its tragic end becomes a master for historical detail in portraying the Jewish rebellion. From the surreptitious way Jews gathered arms, to the guerrilla war style, to the brutal suppression she gives, in a few pages, a telling portrayal of the rebellion and what its end meant, not just to the Jewry of Rome but to Hadrian himself. The Jewish rebels were an "enemy could be exterminated, but not conquered". The Temple was destroyed and Jews were expelled from the city. The wailing wall was constructed. "Judea was struck from the map and took the name of Palestine by my order".

So, how much of all that is fiction and how much holds up to historical scrutiny? There is little fiction in the above and Yourcenar's Hadrian, much to the chagrin of academic historians, is considered very close to factual history over half a century since its first publication in 1951 in France.

Yourcenar traveled widely and studied volumes in the Yale university library to write the book. She practically reconstructed the library of Hadrian. The litmus test for a fiction based on history is to compare it with a non-fiction actual history book. So let's compare key points of Yourcenar's Hadrian with historian Anthony Everitt's 'Hadrian: Triumph of Rome'. While comparing we should take care to note not just parallels in incidents cited, that's unavoidable given that both Everett and Yourcenar were referring to common materials, chiefly ' Historia Augusta', but similar incidents being identified as key events for the same reason by a fiction writer and a historian attests to the historical acumen of the writer. Let's identify a few such incidents.

Yourcenar and Everitt identify Hadrian's dash to convey the news of Nerva's death to Trajan, the murder attempt by henchmen hired by Servianus notwithstanding, as a pivotal moment in Hadrian endearing himself to a man about to become emperor.

When Hadrian ascended the throne he wanted to be known as a negotiator but Attianus executed summarily four senators who were seen as a threat. That, to Hadrian was a blot and one which though he had no direct hand he knew that he'd be blamed for it. Where Everitt blandly narrates the significance and what it meant, exactly like Yourcenar, he misses the nice fictional narrative that Yourcenar could give using the guise of fiction. Yourcenar's Hadrian recounts in his letter how he decided to chide Attianus and how derisively Attianus looked at him: "He let me run on, smiling meanwhile like a grammarian who listens to his pupil making his way through a difficult recitation".

At two points Yourcenar's sense of history is stunning. The Jews plotted their revolt very methodically by bribing the suppliers of Roman army to manufacture faulty weapons that were no doubt discarded by the army. Such discarded weapons were then remedied for use by the Jewish plotters. That a french novelist and an academic historian would both identify this only attests, emphatically, the novelists eye for history.

The other more telling incident is what Hadrian does in the aftermath of Antinous's suicide. Everitt cites the incident of Hadrian striking a man with his stylus and inadvertently blinding him. Hadrian offers to pay compensation but the victim refuses it and merely asks for the blinded eye back. There ends Everett's narration but in Yourcenar's hand the device of fiction make the incident come alive. "I raised my hand to slap him; unhappily, I was holding a style, which blinded his right eye. I shall never forget the howl of pain, that arm awkwardly bent to ward off the blow, that convulsed visage from which blood spurted". After the man turns down the compensation Yourcenar's Hardian retains him in service to serve "as a warning and a punishment perhaps. I had not wished to injure the wretch. But I had not desired, either, that a boy who loved me should die in his twentieth year".

The device of fiction is to be used with extreme caution when re-creating history. If one only lists a litany of incidents with insufficient fictionalization then one could very well write non-fiction but if one fictionalizes too much where the fictional Hadrian has no relation to the historical Hadrian then one could dispense with calling it fiction based on history. The charm and danger in fictionalizing history is in identifying a judicious mixture of history and fiction. Where to let history speak and where to embellish is what would distinguish a Yourcenar from lesser lights of that genre. A good fiction writer will use the device of fiction to fill in the gaps of history, to create hinges and to lubricate the narrative. Yourcenar's finest moment is when she enters the mind of Hadrian in ruminating over the rebellious Jewish people. What Yourcenar's Hadrian think of the Jewish rebels is not only in sync with the character but could reflect, possibly, the thoughts of the real Hadrian himself because given who the real Hadrian was the fictional rumination is so much in line with that reality.

Yourcenar's Hadrian disapproves of the militant monotheism of the Jews: "harsh Mithra admits himself brother to Apollo. No people but Israel has the arrogance to confine truth wholly within the narrow limits of a single conception of the divine, thereby insulting the manifold nature of the Deity, who contains all; no other god has inspired his worshippers with disdain and hatred for those who pray at different altars".

Disillusioned by realizing how it is the Roman legions that keep pax Romana Hadrian muses "if sixteen years of rule by a prince so pacifically inclined were to culminate in the Palestine campaign, then the chances for peace in the world look dim ahead".

Yourcenar wrote the novel in the aftermath of World War II and possibly the Holocaust was weighing in her mind when she wrote these lines for Hadrian: "Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave....the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror".

In George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' the ultimate parody is when the pigs start walking like men. In lines that echo Orwell's prose Yourcenar's Hadrian comes to the end of his memoir saying "If ever the barbarians gain possession of the world they will be forced to adopt some of our methods: they will end by resembling us". Then in cascading prose Hadrian presages: "bishop of Christ may implant himself one day in Rome....in his turn one of the universal figures of authority. He will inherit our palaces and our archives, and will differ from rulers like us less than one might suppose". More prophetic words were rarely spoken.

Hadrian bids good bye with "let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes".

Marguerite Yourcenar was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy. For a lesbian who considered it is impossible to have made a woman the axis of the narrative because "women's lives are much too limited, or else too secret" it was indeed high honor.

The extent of Yourcenar's research is evident in the well captioned set of photographs that are provided.

References:
1. Marguerite Yourcenar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Yourcenar
2. Memoirs of Hadrian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_Hadrian
3. Emperor Hadrian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian
4. New Yorker article of Yourcenar's research for the book http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/becoming-the-emperor
5. Antinous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous

My Pilgrimage To Auschwitz And The Tragic 'Uniqueness' of The Holocaust

I am not a religious person and therefore the idea of a pilgrimage has never appealed to me. My journey to Auschwitz should aptly be called 'pilgrimage'. It is a trite cliche to say that it is the journey that matters not the arriving. I experienced it as my flight was about to land in Krakow.

As the flight from Berlin entered the airspace of Poland I could see that it was chillier than Berlin. As we landed in Krakow I could see snow. Krakow airport looked like a suburban airport in India. I was now worried whether my light jacket would stand the cold. Then I worried if my baggage would be handled properly or would it be lost on a wintry rudimentary airport in Poland. I consoled myself that I can wear a knitted T-shirt underneath by thick cotton shirt with suede patches and top it off with my jacket to beat the cold.

I've watched so many movies and documentaries of Holocaust and read so many books. I remember how Meryl Streep, in 'Sophie's choice',  stands shivering in the cold on that notorious 'selection platform' in Auschwitz with two infants at hand. Then of course 'Schindler's list'. And then a wave of shame washed me over. Here I am, a healthy guy with credit cards and the ability to buy anything I want at any store in case of emergency. Even if my bags are lost its only an inconvenience for me. In the case of a dire necessity as American citizen I can walk into a US consulate. Millions of women, children, aged and the sick have been dragged to this city in box cars, families have been torn asunder at the whim of a Nazi thug at the platform. The victims were depersonalized, their bodies did not belong to them let alone their possessions. In that one moment I realized why a pilgrimage is a spiritual necessity. Whether one calls it a pilgrimage or a study tour the idea is that nothing, no amount of reading books or watching movies, can substitute for being in a place. Of course a study tour or pilgrimage is useless without the reading and watching prior to that. Only a mind that is pullulating with memories will find that aha moment at a place. Else one would be a mindless tourist sauntering through Auschwitz like one would stroll in a park or a museum.

When our tour guide pointed to a serene innocuous swimming pool like water and asked us "what do you think that is" most thought it was a swimming pool for the Nazis to relax. No. Auschwitz was insured by the company Allianz. As an insurance requirement, like today, Allianz stipulated that Auschwitz should have a pond like place to store water to fight any fire hazard. No book had written about that. Looking at the pond and the memory of millions who died a chill ran down my spine at the grotesque nature of human affairs.

Our tour guide made a penetrating observation that Auschwitz was not a concentration camp but an 'extermination' camp built to kill on an industrial scale. Auschwitz's central location played a key role. A map showed the places from which Jews (and others) were transported to Auschwitz from as far as Budapest.

These are insights that become readily available and would take several books to cultivate. That is why a history study tour is essential for students. Next on my agenda is to stand on Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma where Afro-Americans went on a march braving mounted police and police dogs. Several trips like that are pending.

I've often been confronted with the question of whether Holocaust is unique? Being from Tamil Nadu I am also often asked "would you not consider the killings of Sri Lankan Tamils as holocaust, is Rajapakse not Hitler". Of course a Rwandan could ask the same, so would somebody from Darfur. What about an Armenian? The massacre of a million Armenians is still not officially classified as 'genocide', let alone a holocaust. What is so 'unique' about the holocaust? Is it the numbers, a staggering 6 millions? Yes and no.

For any victim in an ethnic conflict his/her tragedy would be, in his/her perspective, the greatest tragedy to befall humanity. I've to respect how a victim feels. A Tamil mother grieving over a child blown to death or a wailing child who had lost both parents or Rwandan who was gang raped and mutilated or a Darfur native who is maimed would all be legitimate in feeling remote to a tragedy that befall a different people decades ago.

It is however the unpleasant duty of a historian to put things in perspective. Let us not forget that from Jaffna to Darfur to Rwanda the deaths and killings were part of and result of civil war with both sides being engaged in an armed conflict. That 6 million Jews were murdered like sheep without a single bullet being fired from their side is indeed unique. That they went to their deaths without a fight has been cruelly used to criticize them or even discredit the scale of the horror.

Syria is burning. UN report says that a million Syrians have crossed over to neighboring countries as refugees. However feeble maybe the efforts of the world in stopping the bloodshed it should be noted that at least the world bodies are 'trying' something and there are nations to open their doors to the refugees. A plaque at Dachau states bluntly "when the inmates at Dachau were liberated most went back to their home countries but the Jews had nowhere to go".

FDR's inaction to bomb Auschwitz is a hotly debated topic. Just last week a new book claims that if the transit lines to Auschwitz had been bombed and if the crematoriums had been bombed it still would not have saved many because allies had the ability to do those only late into the war when many had already been killed. It is 2013 and even today new evidences and new rationale is being investigated in the most complex savagery of humanity.

It is a modern shorthand to refer to any despicable ruler as 'Hitler'. Only Stalin, in reality, matched the cruelty and horrors of Hitler. It is impossible for any ruler of any country to inflict on any race the horrors that Hitler inflicted on humanity at large and at Jews in particular. Doctors, I mean doctors, non-chalantly indulged in medical experiments on Jews. Dr Mengele used to select twin children and subject them to blood curdling medical experiments. Doctors in Berlin thought it unnecessary to wonder how come so many body parts of so many children is turning up for analysis. Dr Mengele had a peaceful anonymous death and never was brought to justice.

Do concentration camps (or the modern internment camps) make up the holocaust? Historian Timothy Snyder in a book review of 4 books writes that it was 'not yet holocaust' referring to Warsaw Ghetto, the laws that prohibited Jews from practically living as human beings etc. In very penetrating analysis Snyder comments that Hitler's murderous scheme was able to take root only because Hitler, in every country he invaded, destroyed every civil institution. In Poland non-Jewish Poles had to be killed first. But in Lithuania which had already been ravaged by Stalin and lost its civil structures Hitler found willing allies in the puppet right wing regime. Close to a 150,000 jews were killed in the matter of a year with Lithuanians being eager to outdo the Nazis and prove themselves as valuable subjects of Nazi state. Death visited the jews in the form of the invader and aided by people who used to be neighbors.

The Nazi regime was an industrial killing machine that took the contours of a holocaust as it brought countries under its jackboot. Stalin had to content himself killing mostly Soviet citizens. Wholesale murder of the Czech or Poles was something even Stalin could not do. Jews were made to pay for the cost of cremating the murdered jews. Snyder writes "Nazi Germany was a special kind of state, determined not to monopolize but to mobilize violence".

Sick minds have caviled about whether it was indeed 6 million who died. Two weeks ago New York Times reported that what we thought we knew of holocaust and the camps is but a fraction of truth according to new evidence. Recent research, gruesomely detailed and verified, asserts that there were nearly 40,000 death camps. Way more than what was thought of.

Only when I planned my trip to go to concentration camps I realized a sobering fact. All the notorious camps were actually close to cities. Dachau is an hour away from Munich, Auschwitz and Birkenau are just 2 hours away from Krakow, Bergen-Belsen where Anne Frank and her sister were killed (not died) is 2 hours away from Berlin, Berlin itself had a concentration camp, Ravensbruck was 90 miles north of Berlin, Buchenwald was near Weimar. The NYT article concludes that given the number of camps it is impossible that people did not know what was going on. At Dachau I saw a photograph of stunned German citizens, dragged to the the camp by allied army liberators, looking over emaciated corpses and the ovens. Were the people of Dachau truly ignorant? I don't think so.

When communist jackboot replaced the Nazi boot in Eastern Europe covering Auschwitz talk of jewish victims was muted as Stalin's regime wanted to speak only of communist victims. That, after nearly 65 years since the camps were liberated, we are still learning and unearthing evidence gives us a perspective of the tragic uniqueness of holocaust. This new knowledge is not an incremental addition to the existing knowledge but it is a paradigm shift that practically enlarged the scope of what was already a too big to digest horror.

Holocaust remains a unique tragedy unparalleled before or after in history. Let us not, juts to rob the Jewish people and Israel, deny this uniqueness and nor shall we wish it upon any people for ages to come.

The one remaining question that I promised to answer was about the lessons from Holocaust that Israel learned. In another perversely unique manner no other tragedy that befall any people draws the question "did they learn from it?". No other people who have suffered are being asked "how different are you from your tormentors". Whenever I speak of holocaust to most people the invariable question is "what about the suffering of Palestine". People are more eager to hold Israel and the Jewish people accountable for todays mess all the more so because of holocaust. In this aspect too, sadly, Israel and the Jewish people are treated uniquely. I'll answer them in my next blog.

Berlin and Nuremberg: Museums For A Ghostly Past

I've written the past few tourism blogs in a thematic manner overlooking the chronology of when I visited those places. Also I've not delved into the anecdotes of what I 'experienced' as a traveler in those cities about food, commute, people etc. I'll get to the tourist aspect in the coming days.

Subsequent post-war generations of Germany have confronted their parents with the question of "how did Nazism happen", "how did we allow holocaust to happen" etc. Ever since the unification Germany and Germans have taken it upon themselves to answer all that forthrightly. This is also possible only after the unification for several reasons. The historical sites in Berlin are now accessible giving an authenticity that was not possible earlier for a museum constructed anywhere. For instance the museum 'Topography of Terror' which details the repressive Gestapo regime during the Nazi era stands in Berlin in the same spot where Gestapo headquarters used to be. The Berlin Wall used to pass right next to it hence after the fall of the wall it is now possible for the museum to exist. Another reason is now Germany tries to view the Soviet repression and Nazi era in a connected manner of how they mutilated the soul of Germany.

Several erstwhile Nazi places that are now museums in Germany are often referred to as 'Documentation Center'. The 'Topography of Terror Museum'  constructs in artistic and painfully detailed manner the emergence of a repressive thuggish state apparatus. Running along the remnants of Berlin Wall is a series of very nice display of glass panels that are hung from steel frames detailing in chronological manner aspects of the rise of Nazism (check the picture at the right of this page http://www.topographie.de/en/exhibitions/berlin-1933-1945/#c1068). Every Siemens factory that utilized slave labor is mapped out. An artistic display tells us by using pull-outs on a calendar how holidays were declared based on Nazi festivals. Unflinching accounting of how many Nazis managed into slip into civilian life and even become judges in West Berlin is recounted in full. USSR wanted to embarrass West Germany and released a list of judges who were known to have been Nazis. While some of who lost property under Nazis some like condom manufacturer Julius Fromm, a Jew, were branded as 'Jewish proprietor of the capitalist kind' and refused restitution. Nazism which gifted the word 'Goebbelsian propaganda' was all about propaganda. A poster depicting a muscular healthy man carrying on his shoulders 'hereditary sick people' informed school students of the 'cost' of such an effort.

The inside of the museum is breathtaking. The colors are not too bright in the room, the expansive hallwith chronologically arranged labrynthine looking hanging displays with surrounding glass walls conveys a surreal feeling of openness in discussing a shameful chapter of German history (see the pics in the link http://www.topographie.de/en/exhibitions/topography-of-terror/#c1069 ).

Himmler talking of extermination, interrogation records of Jews stamped with 'J', transport lists, pictures of Jews having their beards snipped by smiling Nazis, details of camps and so much more is laid out for anyone wishing to study and learn. I'd say come to this museum not just to learn of Nazism or of how Jews were persecuted. Come to this museum to learn how hatred manifests human soul. Come here to learn what a set of human beings man did to their fellow human beings. Victims and perpetrators may change but the theme is sickeningly continuous. 

The holocaust museum in Berlin is situated, intentionally, I was told, right next to the notorious Fuhrer bunker were Hitler committed suicide. This museum is uniquely constructed with large cement blocks with grid like cobbled stone pathway that rises and falls in an undulating manner. The museum architecture evokes a sombre dark mood albeit not too depressing. The use of steel and glass is deftly combined to give a sense of openness and grimness. A room details stories of families, again with very well researched documents to trace the families path through holocaust. The room itself is imposing with mammoth cement blocks hanging from the roof inlaid with backlit glass panels of photos and documents.

The Fuhrer bunker was razed to the ground and filled up with mud by invading Red army in order to prevent any future 'shrine'. Today the place is a car park. This bunker was identified only recently. Sadly I saw some hooligan had scribbled 'holocaust ist luge' in a cycle stand nearby (and hence opposite to the holocaust museum). I jotted it down and used google to translate, it read 'holocaust is a lie'.

Nuremberg is an hour away from Munich by train. This city was the cradle of Nazism. There are no good English speaking hop on hop off tours. I just went to the 'documentation center' which is next to the large grounds where Nazi rallies took place. The taxi driver who dropped me said "look at that steel arrow like structure piercing the colosseum style building. This colosseum was left unfinished by the Nazis and the arrow like structure is there to signify an arrow into the heart of Nazism". Here we learn how Nazis used mega rallies as a method to project power and popularity. A room had displays of front pages from world newspapers that spoke of the rise of Hitler. It is sad to note how much the world knew and indeed feared Nazism and yet allowed it all to happen until an unspeakable price in human lives was paid to undo it. 

Nuremberg is not just any city. It was the center of German culture. It is here that Nazism took its shape and it is from the notorious Nuremberg rallies, so often pictured in Hollywood movies of that era, that Hitler mesmerized a nation and plunged it into untold misery. I could not visit the famous Albrecht Durer home. 

Coming a full circle Nazism faced the long arm of justice in Nuremberg. It was in Nuremberg the famous trials that convicted and executed many top Nazis took places. Those trials form the basis of today's war crimes trials. Ironically USSR which killed thousand of Polish officers in Katyn sat as part of the judges. During the trials none of the Nazis could even say a word of the conduct of Red Army which could easily be accused of war crimes that are only less severe in relation to what the Nazis did. Red army plundered and raped German villages. Allies punished Germany by obliterating most of the nation in punitive bombing raids. Dresden was flattened. The British who had their boot on India's throat and the French who plundered North Africa too were the judges.

Berlin: City Of Museums

A German colleague once told me that I'd need ten days to tour Berlin's museum. He was right. The country which had the birth of printing press, the Reformation movement, cradle of Western Classical music, more Nobel laureates than US and UK combined until 1931, country of Goethe, Schilling and Nietzsche, Nazism, Communism, Holocaust has museums for all and it would very well take ten days to satiate a curious mind.

On the day I arrived in Berlin I trekked to Checkpoint Charlie which was 15 minute walk from the Marriott I stayed in. Only when I stood there in a street could I envisage what a brutal gash through a city the Berlin Wall was. Imagine any city you grew up in and then imagine a wall bisecting it abruptly in the middle. A private museum displays all artifacts from that era including a sub-compact car in which a fully grown adult would stuff himself/herself in the trunk to escape from East Berlin. Before I went to Berlin I browsed through Tina Rosenberg's , Pulitzer and National Book Award winner, 'Haunted Lands'. Rosenberg details the devastation of Eastern Europe by USSR. She details how unified Germany is now prosecuting erstwhile soldiers of East Germany who would shoot at fleeing East Berliners.

The Berlin Wall museum details how Peter Fechter was shot on 17th Aug 1962 by East Berlin soldiers when Fechter attempted a futile escape. The US soldiers on West Berlin stood helpless and watched Fechter bleed to death. The soldiers who shot Fechter were prosecuted in the 90's. Note that it is a contentious prosecution because the soldiers did what was legal in that country at that time.

That architecture plays an integral role to a building and particularly to a museum as thematic as Jewish museum was evident when I went to the Daniel Libeskind designed Jewish Museum in Berlin. Given the shadow of a grotesque tragedy it is natural that the architect tries to evoke a poignant gloom but balance is maintained such that the tragic sense is not overwhelming making the visitor run out in despair. The museum has geometrical alleys and narrow rectangular slices for windows with a cement pathway all intended to evoke a concentration camp feeling. A holocaust tower which has large iron doors and absolute darkness transports the visitor to a grim era.

The genius of Jewish Museum's curator is in ensuring that the museum is not only a tribute to an unspeakable tragedy but in also ensuring that a visitor gets an idea that Jews in Germany lived a culturally rich life contributing to the rich tapestry of the country. That the German Jewish community was an intellectually vibrant community and every inch German citizens is clearly brought out by unique exhibits like the glass mannequins that represent German Jews who fought on behalf of Germany in World War I.

The museum traces artfully the history of persecution of Jews in the centuries before holocaust across Christian Europe. 'Salomon bar Simson', a narrative Hebrew history, recounts the persecution of jews in Germany during the first Crusade 1096 AD. Details of how jews were stereotyped and prohibited from various professions are vivid to learn how hatred seeps into minds. Many Jews would change their last names such as 'Cohn' to 'Coen' to escape persecution. Amongst the many geniuses celebrated was Karl Marx too. Marx was of jewish lineage but his father had converted to Christianity. Marx himself wrote very harshly of Jews that he was accused of anti-semitism.

The most interestingly curious display was a collection of 'detective reports'. A prospective groom was investigated in detail by a detective from the bride's side. The notes include whether the groom had a good job, his salary and even about his mother. This museum is a must visit for any one desirous of learning Jewish cultural contribution to Germany and the world in general.

The DDR museum showcases life in East German days. Every house needed to maintain a 'house book' to record guests staying over 3 days. In libraries supposedly subversive works would be kept separately and labeled 'Poison of thought'. One needed a 'poison pass' to read any of those books. School children practiced throwing grenades and girls had to undergo 'Lehre' or compulsory apprenticeship. Oh by the way East Germans hated abortion more than today's GOP in USA, there was only one 'no' vote against a March 1972 law regulating abortion. Communist economy fixed a professional Engineer's salary at 1470 Marks (1988) and a Bricklayer's salary at 1370 Marks (1988). A chemist earned 1300DM whereas a mineworker earned 1444DM (1988).

The German history museum is breathtaking in scope and could very well take one full day by itself. Indians always haughtily talk of what they 'taught' the world. One exhibit in this museum spoke of what Germans 'learned' from technologically advanced Orient. The city of Augsburg in 1526 regulated aid for poor ensuring they are not dependent on charity by the church. Interesting exhibits on Luther and Reformation impress the vast scope of how the world was changed. Modern day unions have their roots in professional guilds that were established centuries ago for the same purposes. The guilds regulated who practiced a profession in order to stifle competition. Workers guilds practiced pretty much what todays trade unions do.

One very little known museum is the 'Medical History Museum' named after the father of Pathology 'Rudolph Virchow'. This museum has very little exhibits that have an English note. Students of medicine can benefit from a visit. Here too the German's unflinchingly face up to the the dark chapter of medical experimentation in the Nazi era. Twisted beliefs in Darwinism and eugenics led doctors to kill disabled and the mentally challenged in addition to evil experiments on children in Auschwitz and elsewhere.

I'll cover Hitler's last bunker, Holocaust museum and Topography of terror in my next post for the sake of readability.