Homer High School Concert Choir and Kenai Peninsula Community Chorus Travel Blog

By Carolyn Norton

Practicing in the American Church in Berlin.

Our first performance was yesterday morning, Sunday, at the American Church in Berlin, a red brick church that was rebuilt after it was bombed in 1943. The congregation, mostly Americans living in Berlin, with a few English-speaking visitors from around the world, was friendly and welcoming. Our voices sounded strange in the large, stone space – we echoed and rang. It felt good to sing; after traveling thousands of miles, we remembered why we are here.

During our first performance.

After our performance we changed out of our choir outfits and set off in Red Bus and Blue Bus to see Berlin under what the ACB pastor called “the cement sky,” a flat grey that Berliners must be accustomed to. Our tour guides were knowledgeable and guided us expertly around the city, showing us evidence of Berlin’s violent past. Much of the city is completely new, shopping centers and embassies built where bombed-out buildings or parts of the Berlin Wall once stood. How strange it must be to live in a city where twenty years ago you might have been shot for walking near the place where you now buy your jeans.

A part of the Berlin Wall, which our tour guide described as not just a wall, but a “complex system of obstacles.”

Mark Robinson and Nancy Lander at Checkpoint Charlie.

Reminders of the Holocaust are everywhere. Innocuous-looking buildings turn out to be the former offices of Nazi officials or the bank where they kept the gold stolen from the teeth of Jews. The history, horrifying enough to think about at home, is even more immediate and shocking here. We visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by American architect Peter Eisenman. The memorial is a series of 2,700 huge cement blocks that form a grid set in a kind of basin. The blocks form paths for visitors to walk along. Traveling deeper into the memorial is an eerie experience. The blocks tower overhead, giving an impression of burial. The voices of other visitors – solemn mourners and laughing children – come to you around corners, first close, then far away. It is like hearing the voices of the dead. Part of you wants to get away, to climb back on the bus and stop thinking about such horrible things, but you feel lucky to be here to honor the victims.

The Holocaust memorial as seen from the edge.

Inside the memorial.

After visiting more important sites in Berlin, we stopped at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. A small room is all that is left of the church, which stands at the other end of the street that is also home to the American Church in Berlin. Both churches were damaged in an air raid on November 23, 1943. On the same street, halfway between the two churches, the old American Church in Berlin was completely destroyed by the same bombing run. The American Church relocated to the location where we performed that morning, and a beautiful, new church was built to replace the old Kaiser Wilhelm.

The new Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

It had started to rain when we gathered in what is left of the old Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to sing No. 63 from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, “O Haupt voll Blut.” The space was small and warm and the other visitors in the church stopped talking and listened intently as we sang. There was no echo this time, and the small building seemed to cradle our sound. Everyone applauded joyfully when we were done, and a woman with white hair asked Mr. Robinson if we could please sing another. We sang “What a Wonderful World” a cappella, and it really was wonderful at that moment. We were warm and dry and singing, and there was nothing else we could ask for.

Inside the original Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.