If you were a conscious news-reading world citizen this week, chances are your awareness of Berlin on the world scape increased (and not just from checking out my blog). It seems that Berlin is under watch for a terror attack of some sort, or so American and German intelligence say. Security has been visibly heightened throughout the city, with concerns being raised particularly at the Reichstag, Berlin´s Parliament Building, with its tourist-frequented glass dome.
As a member of what I would like to name the "terror-ified generation", it is often hard to know how to respond to the threats that have become all too common in our society. In general it seems that the sounding of this most recent alarm has resonated far more among my American friends than Germans or others I encounter in Berlin. Maybe part of the explanation for this is that so much of the intelligence information seems to be coming out of the US, from the CIA, and therefore it is being relayed in terms that seem, almost all too familiar to us. Or maybe Europeans just stereotypically have more of a "what will be, will be" attitude, and don´t stay up at night worrying about things they cannot directly impact. I mean in a sense even telling the public about such a threat just stirs us up, since I don´t really have the power to single-handedly do anything but be ... cautious? vigilant?
On a side note, with phrasing like, "The man believed to be trying to smuggle the would-be terrorists into Europe is 54-year-old weapons dealer Dawood Ibrahim, who the United Nations believes is a major backer of terrorism," showing up in Spiegel news, sometimes it is hard not to be a bit jaded. Seriously. Do we need Intelligence to tell us that a weapons dealer might be a backer of terrorism? Maybe we just need to be intelligent.
Anyway, maybe you´d rather know how this type of information actually effects my life. Working in an important Jewish building in Berlin, security is a fact of life and not something new. Metal detectors, armed Israeli and German guards, and strict rules for accountability and access to our building are standard - standard for most Jewish places in Germany. It will be interesting to learn how that differs in smaller towns that I will be visiting (fyi my first site visit will be to the Bundesland (state) of Thüringen is in the beginning of December!!). Jewish buildings in the US definitely have varied degrees of secuity. But part of my interest in studying Jewish space in Germany is to understand how accessibility to Jewish places is different when the doors are necessarily locked (or appear from outside to be locked).
I think sometimes I am so determined to understand Germany, to love it and to love to learn about it, and then I shock myself when something happens, and, for a split second, I am scared.
Saturday night while walking to the tram from my house, I reached the main street only to see the street blocked off by police vans, 50 some police in riot gear standing watch. I was curious and walked closer to see what was happening, and suddenly what seemed like hundreds of protesters began marching through the street waving flags. As I got closer I saw just the words Nazi and Fascism, and literally, my heart stopped. For what was probably about a half a second I was honestly petrified. A million horrible thoughts went through my mind, more than you could possibly think could go through one mind before I was able to read the rest of the banners: ANTI Fascism, AGAINST Nazis.
An anti-fascism demonstration. Well, it would have been nice if someone had posted a flier or something. Apparently, there are so many anti-fascism demonstrations in Berlin that it would be impossible to announce all of them. I was totally relieved, but I guess if there are still anti-fascism demonstrations, it means there is still a need for them, and that is sad.
In hasty conclusion: Look twice when there are riot police, not everything that looks scary is.
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