Berkach lies in the bucolic borderlands between the German states of Bavaria and Thuringia. Formerly divided by the hard boundary between former East (GDR) and West Germany, the one-time international frontier is now marked by an old watch tower, about a half mile outside the village.
But I’m not in Berkach today to chronicle its accounts of living on the fringes of the former GDR. Instead, I’m here to discover another significant aspect of the hamlet’s history, its once robust and significant Jewish life.
As Germany looks back on 1,700 years of Jewish life in the country, dating back to a decree in Cologne in 321 they are recalling Judaism’s long, if complicated, history in central Europe.
Visiting sites like Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin or renowned Jewish museums in Frankfurt, Berlin, or Munich, one gets a sense of the enormity of what was lost in the Holocaust — in human lives, in culture, in knowledge, in history and heart.
Yet, despite the ways each institution seeks to personalize the ambivalence of German Jewish life over the years, there is an intimacy and immediacy that is missed if those are the only places one goes.
To get a sense of the absent presence that Germany continues to wrestle with, one must also explore smaller, provincial places like Berkach.