August 5th with Nazis

We’re told that these people—these Nazis—didn’t know they were promoting terror because they were surrounded only with people just like them however the fact that this exhibit is titled Topographies of Terror makes me wary of such a statement. The buildings surrounding me were visited every day by the right arm-lifting sons of bitches who genuinely had no idea. I find this difficult to fathom. “So basically every sick idea was pretty much originated here,” Cassie makes me realize. The machine gun bullet holes in the buildings around us stand as her citation.

We’re standing on the grounds that the Nazi Party walked about as they went to work every day. This is their sky. Their grass. These are their buildings. I stand breathing their air and I still can’t come to grasp the idea of such intense hate and wrath or even begin to understand the logic behind such violence.

The signs worn by all the tortured groups are on display. The symbol used for homosexuals is the pink upside-down triangle, the current symbol used for gay pride. Sally and I discuss the likelihood of an intentional symbol adoption. There is a photograph of a store front with painting on it: “Jude” and the Star of David. So “Hey Jude” runs through my head, adopting an entirely new meaning.



The Holocaust Memorial looks like a bunch of risen graves in the middle of East Berlin—the most metropolitan area I’ve seen in this city. This was apparently intentional in order to make holocaust recognition commonplace (by putting it in a highly populated area). 2,700 of these concrete graves varying in height, some very tall, await exploration still.