NPR Berlin's Museum Series: Visiting Weissensee Cemetery

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Gravestones in Weissensee cemetery, the second largest Jewish cemetery in Europe.

John Macdougall/Getty Images

Gravestones in Weissensee cemetery, the second largest Jewish cemetery in Europe.

Forging ahead in our museum series on NPR Berlin, I wanted to say thanks for all your museum suggestions we should be looking into. We received some great ideas.

Today on our weekly series, Berlin Stories, author Susan Bell talks about her visit to the Weissensee cemetery. After hearing her story, I started to rethink the perimeters of what should be included in our museum series.

Bell is a writer and editor and teaches at the New School's graduate writing program in New York City. During an extended stay in Berlin, she decided to visit the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee. Though she is Jewish herself, Bell says she hadn't visited Berlin's Holocaust memorials or museums; she wanted to avoid any forced feelings or reactions.

But her visit to Weissensee proved to be different. Built in 1880, Weissensee is the second largest Jewish cemetery in Europe and, miraculously, made it through the Second World War relatively intact. Though it was left to decay during the GDR, the cemetery is filled with elaborately designed plots and decorative mausoleums, which, as Bell notes, signifies the socio-economic status of Jews in Berlin before the wars of the 20th century.

"While memorials remind us of the war and museums educate us about it, these gorgeous graves simply show us what was, and therefore what was lost," Bell says.

So in making a list of important/visit-worthy museums in Berlin, I thought we should include this. This story challenged my conception of what a museum is, or better yet, what their purpose is, and it reminded me how much living history is everywhere in Berlin.

Keep sending us your ideas.