Berlin encounters

 

Tlalit Kiz from Israel is working for one year at the House of the Wannsee Conference.

 

“When I first went to a seminar at the House of the Wannsee Conference, I knew immediately that I had to come back again. I was 
impressed by the method of remembrance here. It is not only about the actual horrors, but also the documents, the protocols and the people behind them – the ‘pen-pushing perpetrators’ as they say in German.

 

I am a teacher, and I travelled a lot between military service and studying. In Yad Vashem in Israel and Auschwitz in Poland I learned how to give guided tours. I enjoy talking with the visitors. Whenever someone asks here 
for a tour in Hebrew and I have the time, I am very glad to do it. My family was not immediately affected by the Holocaust. My parents come from Romania and Bulgaria. I myself grew up in a kibbutz in the south of Israel. And now I am living in Berlin-Neukölln. I 
really like the district, because it is so inter­national and because Israelis and Arabs live together here as neighbours, side-by-side. In fact I feel very much at ease in Berlin. Maybe I shall stay longer.”

 

TLALIT KIZ // 
HOUSE OF THE WANNSEE-CONFERENCE

Tlalit Kiz, 29, is a volunteer with the Action Re­c­onciliation Service for Peace (ARSP) supporting the work of remembrance at the House of the Wannsee Conference. The former industrialist’s villa is where representatives of the National 
Socialist power apparatus and ministries met on 20 January 1942 to engineer the so-called final 
solution of the Jewish question – the deportation and murder of the European Jews. Today, the rooms contain an exhibition on this theme. The educational department offers insights into the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Tlalit is pictured on the terrace of the villa.

 

Text: Clara Görtz, Helen Sibum; photograph: Stephan Pramme