Monday we went as a group to the Jewish museum. We met in front of the building, whose facade was somewhat misleading as to the actual contents of the museum as it was a very typically German-looking building with no traces of modernity. Upon entering, the reality of its contents were revealed. The entrance to the museum itself–beyond the security check, gift shop, coat room, etc.–took us down a set of stairs into a slanted and skewed floor. Our tour guide asked us to interpret this design choice, a request which few of us were eager to answer. He brought us next to one of the 3 or 4 levels of the museum, in which was held information about Jews in the late 19th to 20th century Germany, and gave us some insight into the influence that Jewish people held in those periods. It was refreshing to hear things about German Jews other than the terrible crimes committed against them during the third reich, which seemed to be the main focus of many other tributes to the history of Jews in Germany. It felt like it took agency on the subject of Judaism away from the Nazis and put it in its rightful place.
I’m somewhat biased against these sorts of tours, and they generally make me somewhat uncomfortable, so I was relieved to be able to explore some of the rest of the exhibits independently. It was very interesting to learn about the centuries-long history of Jews in Germany, and to see relics and accounts from before and after the genocide of the Holocaust. Again, it was great to have the focus put on the Jewish people rather than on their victimization during WWII, which I think usually overshadows the hundreds of years that Jews spent as influential members of German and European society. It framed them as something more than victims of a horrific genocide, without ignoring or brushing aside that terrible fact, but also not focusing on it as the most important part of German-Jewish history.