Wasted Lives

It's impossible to live in this city and not live with the weight of history. I also have to say that I feel that Berlin has done an incredible job keeping the names and lives of the people that were murdered in the Holocaust present. I know that is a difficult statement dimensionally, but as a foreigner, I am moved by the way my neighborhood has honored the lives of the ones that once occupied these flats and these streets.

I grieve with this nation over the horrific history and hope with them for a beautiful and somehow redemptive restoration. I am honored on Saturdays as I walk past families on their way to Synagogue and marvel at their deep faith and resilience. I smile at the joy of the children, and think how much their grandparents suffered, and if they notice the little gold stones and when their parents will tell them and how difficult it must be as a parent to have to educate your child on the senselessness of your people's suffering, and how difficult it must be to rob them of that innocence about their faith.

This is one of the many, many, many gold stones in my neighborhood. There is one for every member of this family. This is the father... His parents, wife, children, younger brother and younger brother's family were all taken and murdered in Riga as well.

Here lived
Emanuel Fink
JG. (jahre geborn - year born) 1871
Deported 1942
Murdered in
Riga

As deeply painful as it is to have to stare at the horrific plight of the Jews in this part of the world, I am in another way very thankful, as an American to be able to live face to face with such deep history.