EURO TOUR: GERMANY PART 2 (FRANKFURT)

May 30 - June 1: We left Dublin early Friday morning on our way to Frankfurt and after overcoming a few issues, including - shockingly - delays to the trains (!), were taken to our hotel. After some more annoying moments of having to make sure they (the Frankfurt organisers) had arranged food for us and issues with our hotel room and a realisation that we had unwittingly been volunteered into a whole range of activities over Shabbat, we rested and explored the immediate neighbourhood (I also encountered a little casual Antisemitism in the laundromat - always important when visiting Germany). It was not really a good start to the Frankfurt trip. We were also being accommodated in the 'red light' part of the city, which was grimy during the day and appropriately seedy at night.

Fortunately, it got better. Realising we had no choice but to join the community for Friday night service and dinner we made our way to one of the few German synagogues which survived Pogramnacht (Kristalnacht). It is a glorious shul dating from 1910 century with its stunning North African features beautifully restored. The synagogue survived because it had been attached to the neighbouring building, which was a block of flats (only those shuls which were attached to non-Jews buildings survived that rampage) and so during the war it was used as a store-house.

Anyway, it took a lot of persuading for us to get past the Israeli security guys on the door (despite both of us speaking Hebrew) but we eventually made our way in, just in time for dinner. It was a very pleasant dinner which David was expected to lead and was even more pleasant because we were joined again by David Wolfe who we had met two weeks before at Limmud Germany. Even nicer was lunch the next day which we spent with David Wolfe and a collection of people he had brought together.

Amazingly, Shabbat did not go out until 10.30 that night, but that didn't seem to stop the local gangsters from apparently firing a few shots nearby from between around 9.30 and 11.00 that Saturday night. We went for a walk around our new neighbourhood that night...it was pretty grim and dark (as you can see from the pic David took just before Shabbat).

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and were taken on a lightning tour of the city and its attractions. Frankfurt was heavily bombed during the war which is why there are some ugly parts of the city, although the parts near the synagogue were very picturesque and very green (the Germans certainly do green in their cities in the summer). But Frankfurt has also tried to reconstruct some of its historic parts, which to the untrained eye look very convincing.

The area that had once been the Frankfurt Judengasse (Jewish ghetto, but literally in German 'Jewish Alley') and had been completely destroyed at a street level by the allied bombing and probably a bit of German activity too. We popped in for a quick visit to the Jewish museum, but didn't stay longer than to look at the archaeological excavations they had made of the street which revealed various levels of building stretching back over many centuries.

What we found outside was intense. Where once had stood the Jewish market, was now a pebbled area, with trees and a mound - unmarked but with a distinct sense of symbol. Adjacent was the Jewish cemetery. While we didn't have time to go inside, we had no option but to absorb the tremendously impactful line after line of small plaques commemorating the thousands upon thousands of names of people from Frankfurt who perished in the holocaust. Even after everything we had heard, the numbers were staggering to behold and it was impossible to understand that each of those ash-grey stone plaques represented a real person. Profoundly too much to contemplate.

We were eating again, this time for the Sunday lunch and lecture (David's talk). Paulina, the organiser who for all our moaning, is actually fabulous and extraordinary because she effectively organises all the events for young people in the Frankfurt Jewish community single-handedly - set the room up in a most ingenious way. We had a great crowd of around 50 people but sadly were missing air-conditioning which was tough for all, but particularly difficult for David who had chosen to wear a jumper for the talk. But that didn't stop him giving another fabulous rendition of The Whole of Jewish History in One Hour.

The talk was over and so was our stay in Frankfurt. We were taken to the train station where we were to board a train bound for Nuremberg where David was to give the talk again that evening.

Some notes on Frankfurt: we didn't like it very much. And it's not a friendly city. We heard two versions of mild antisemitic caricatures, we saw Nazi buildings still stand smug and proud and were told it was ill-advised to walk the city at night wearing visible signs that mark you as Jewish without care. We met and spent time with a number of very nice people but it is not a city we are in a hurry to revisit.