The Jewish Museum in Frankfurt

I expected to learn new insights into German Jewry (the Jewish Community of Germany) at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, but the museum was a disappointment.  Though there are some very lovely pieces -- and some that truly spoke to me -- the museum seemed almost like a cemetery to Judaica.   It was not a vibrant place.  It didn't breathe or come alive for me.  The building is the former Rothschild villa, and many of the rooms were rather stark and unassuming.  There were a few rooms that held on to some of their former splendour, but no where was there a room set up as a Rothschild room to show us what it looked like in their day.  No where was there a family tree.

The thing that bothered me the most, though, was the graveyard-like quality to the collections.  For many visitors to the museum, this is where they learn about Jewish culture and traditions -- and the traditions don't sing and dance.  They don't call out.  They whisper.  They are shadows and echoes of the past.  And, what haunted me throughout, was the fact that the Nazis collected everything to make a museum to this people they wanted to annihilate.

On a more positive note, the Holocaust Remembrance Wall is very moving.  It is in an area that was part of the Medieval Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt.  Next to the outline of a synagogue that was destroyed during Kristallnacht in November 1938.  We also drove past the house where Anne Frank lived until she was 5 (1929-1934) and her family left Germany for Holland.

Tomorrow morning we will visit Hadamar, a T-4 euthanasia center.  Then we will travel north to the village of Celle, near Bergen Belsen.