Old Altona in the Eyes of a Jewish Child, Photo Album |
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I am strolling through the Altona of today, on an early Sabbath morning. The shops are still closed, and the streets are almost chillingly quiet and inanimate. I feel an inner drive to go to the city hall square, to the large black granite block with the inscription “Dedicated to the Missing Jews” of Altona. The missing Jews! As if one didn’t exactly know, as if one didn’t unerringly know what happened to the Jews…
1998
Or perhaps…very cautiously a thought dares to draw near: “A stone for the Missing Jews”- perhaps this is also a hint that the Jews are being missed in Altona? It seems as if this thought wants to appease me, to gently surround my speechless mourning, carefully almost imperceptibly taking my hand, accompanying and guiding me into today’s Altona as well.
It points at the nearby Betty-Levy-Passage. Say the name again: Betty-Levy-Passage; the name speaks softly, and yet not only to itself, it speaks out of today’s Altona too.
And from there I am driven further and further, up to a street-like rectangle with red brick houses, grouped around a large flower-bed. Meanwhile the sun has risen, and it seems as if it were summertime; the carefully arranged flowers blossoming in glowing shades of violet and pink. The people in the nearby houses are opening the windows and looking at the flower-bed. They are Altona citizens. They live in the Joseph Carlebach Strasse.
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