Good and Evil

As we all know there is great evil in the world but there is also great good. Maybe our task is to make sure the good triumphs over the evil. Otto Weidt was one such righteous person, actually recognized for his righteousness at Yad Va'shem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel. Otto Weidt was an industrialist in Berlin who was loosing his own sight and had a broom and brush manufacturing company. He had special machines made so that blind or nearly blind people could be productive making brooms and brushes.

Today you can visit his brush factory. These are some of the special machines he had made for his business. On the wall at the end is a large photograph taken during WWII of the people employed. Otto Weidt believed that he could save people's lives by employing them, including some sighted people as well. They made brooms and brushes for the Nazi regime.

This is a photograph of Otto Weidt's secretary who was Jewish and what came to be known as a submarine, Berlin Jews who stayed in Berlin trying to hide some in plain sight and some really out of sight. Eventually she and her mother came to stay with Otto Weidt even after the Nazis found him out. He continued to help blind people Jewish and non-Jewish, and even some sighted people at great risk to himself.

This is the entrance to a secret room occupied by a family of 4 (submarines) though they were found out, deported and killed.

The inside of the tiny room, window boarded up, no toilet and no light. The family lived inside this room (two adults and two teen aged children) for many months. Otto Weidt's secretary and her mother managed to survive, went to Israel and petitioned for Otto Weidt to be named a Righteous person at Yad Vashem and the petitioned the German government to open the broom factory as a museum.

On the way to the Kulturdom art museum park is an installation dedicated to those who were euthanized or sterilized by the Nazis. Anyone deemed mentally unfit was subject to eugenics, something picked up from American policies going back to the 19th century. This installation is located on the site of a facility that was dedicated to this practice, Aktion T4 (Tiergarten 4, Berlin). 200,000 people were victims of euthanasia or sterilization generated from this place.

One of two works at this location entitled "Berlin Junction" by Richard Serra, 1989. The tilted and confined nature of this work calls to mind what one of the victims wrote on the window of the bus taking him or her there "Where are you taking us?" Interestingly, this was originally installed in another location and moved here with the agreement of the artist. In Art Appreciation we'll be discussing an early work by Richard Serra, site specific that was taken down because of its not being well received. Serra preferred that one to be destroyed rather than be moved.

On the other side of the plaza is this blue glass wall. I do not know who the artist is and what I can guess from the information panels in between is that paperwork was created for each individual with either a red + which mean euthanasia or sterilization or a blue - which meant release. This appears to be the blue -. You get a glimpse of the music hall behind, a bit of a contrast built in 1963 based on a design by Mies van der Rohe.

The information panels told the heartbreaking stories of a number of the victims and also those responsible, doctors and nurses who mostly were not prosecuted and continued to work. Eugenics remained legal in Germany until 2007. This photo shows doctors and nurses from a psychiatric clinic who were having a good time when not working euthanizing or starving patients to death.