I have had the pleasure of visiting Berlin twice.
The first visit was in the early 1980s, when Berlin was still divided by the Wall. The second was in 2018, nearly three decades after German reunification.
The contrast was extraordinary.
In the early 1980s, I stayed in West Berlin near the Kurfürstendamm, then the heart of the city. During my visit, I took a bus tour into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie. East German border guards carefully searched the bus before allowing us to enter.
The difference between the two sides of the city was striking. West Berlin felt vibrant and prosperous. East Berlin felt gray and constrained. Buildings still bore the scars of war. Our East German guide seemed dispirited, as though he were reciting a script he had been instructed to deliver. When the tour ended, I was relieved to return to the West.
When I returned in 2018, Checkpoint Charlie had become a tourist attraction. Actors dressed as Cold War guards posed for photographs. The place that had once inspired tension and unease now sold souvenirs. I posed for a photograph with two of them.
But the biggest change was not at Checkpoint Charlie.
By 2018, the heart of Berlin was clearly around the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the government district in what had once been East Berlin.
The Reichstag, once damaged by fire and war, now carries a glass dome designed by Norman Foster. Visitors walk above the debating chamber of the German parliament — a powerful architectural statement that the people stand above their government.
Nearby, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe occupies a prominent place in the center of the capital. Germany did not place its history on the outskirts. It placed it at the heart of the city.
As the child of Holocaust survivors, I am naturally drawn to places where history remains visible. Berlin could easily have become a city defined by its tragedies. Instead it has become something more complicated and more interesting — a city that remembers without being trapped by what it remembers.