Ostalgie

Communist space, surreal commodification: in mourning for the former Communist East? Go to Kochstrasse, Wilhelmstrasse, and Friedrichstrasse in the Mitte, and nearby Potsdamer Platz. Locals seem indifferent to, if not invaded by, tourists blanketing the streets.

Instruction guide: make a border crossing from West to East under surveillance of the border patrol guard, venture into the Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, and read about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall next to the geriatric men selling communist kitsch. The afterlife of traumatic histories. 

Gleis 17, Grunewald Bahnhof, Berlin

Abfahrt nach Riga, Lodz, Chelmno, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz: these were the main destinations of German-Jewish deportees transported from Grunewald during the "Final Solution". A very evocative memorial; deportees remain as sunken shadows, their historical journeys to the platform imprinted as a simulation on the concrete block.

Hannah Arendt Strasse, Berlin

Hannah-Arendt-Strasse, Berlin: a square in a city carrying the freight of a national trauma. Materiality and memory combine: concrete, insecurity, reconstruction, undulating paths, uneven terrain, fractured souls, and burial grounds. Hannah Arendt, philosopher of totalitarianism, and interpreter of Eichmann's banality, watches over the resting place of the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.