Berlin Memorial Blog

2/3/16

Berlin Memorial Blog

John Zalazinski

What I learned is that as Hitler grew in power the restrictions for Jews grew constantly. Many of them were really not fair, examples of this would be the Jews not being able to take their pets with them, or not being able to be a Jewish actor or actress. Starting off with the pet restriction law, they lost an extension of their family, and really never knew what happened to him or her, sometimes without even getting to say goodbye. A man refused to go without his bird and as a result he got killed by Hitler's men. As acting being a restriction, some Jewish actors and actresses never got to show their full potential as an actor or actress, and wasn't really expressed their love for what they really liked to do. 

I think the monument was built to remember what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust and what they lost during it. The musical notes to me are really self explanatory to what their meaning is to be on that sign. They are there because there was most likely a large portion of the Jewish community was passionate about music and unfortunately lost their lives in the Holocaust. The sign, translated into English, says, "Jews are at the Bavarian space using only the yellow marked benches," my best guess is that those benches were used to indicate which people were Jews during the Holocaust so the Nazis who needed to be taken away.

I feel more laws were passed when Hitler was and/or felt more powerful. When he first started in  1933, he was passed 12 laws restricting Jews from multiple hobbies and jobs. In 1938, he definitely felt powerful because he was Time Magazine's person of the year, so he passed 18 laws in one year, some examples are, revoking Jews of their driver's license, Jews can no longer be members of the German Red Cross, and Jewish doctors can no longer practice. It was also the year that "The Night Of Broken Glass" occurred, Hitler's army destroyed Jewish communities and massacred many Jews that night. Then in the years 1942 - 1945 was when Hitler was fully in power. He was passing laws that were strongly unfair. A huge example of a strongly unfair law would be that Jews were not allowed to have milk, so couldn't get even somewhat the protein that was necessary for a normal human being.

I think the restrictions that would be the most trouble dealing with would be the Jews not being able to emigrate and Jews not being allowed to use a public cellphone. The reason for emigration being hard to deal with is that Jews would not be able to get to safety from being sent to a concentration camp or any other danger for that matter. Jews not being allowed to use a public cellphone would be hard to deal with because of no simple communication. They would not be able to call for help or even say a quick goodbye.