The Jewish museum in Hamburg has had for many years in its
collection half the grave stone of a prominent eighteenth-century Rabbi, who
had been buried in the Jewish cemetery in the centre of the city. No prizes for
guessing how the stone got broken, but what happened to the other half? Surely
even the most enthusiastically anti-Semitic Nazi wouldn’t carry off half a gravestone as a
trophy? The other half finally turned up only a few years ago, miles away in
the sand and mud at the mouth of the River Elbe. Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser.
What had happened was that after the Second World War,
during which Hamburg had been pretty much flattened by allied bombing, the vast
amounts of rubble was taken out there to strengthen the sea defences. Sea
erosion, aided by a quite recent hurricane, has turned up all sorts of
interesting and disturbing things, including even gas-powered street-light
standards, that had once been in Hamburg and are now in the Elbe estuary mud.
No comments:
Post a Comment