In Prenzlauer Berg

Justin E. H. Smith in his blog:

Among the grimmer thoughts one has to contend with on any visit to Berlin is this: that one could very well be staying not only in the logistical nerve center of the Final Solution, but in the very building, and perhaps in the very same room, in which a Holocaust victim once lived. This possibility rose to 50%, in fact, when I was in Berlin a few days ago, and stayed in a six-unit building which housed, according to the commemorative plaques paved into the sidewalk outside, three separate Jewish couples who did not see the end of the war.

These plaques ensure that no visit to Berlin will ever be too fun. They are also the most decent, and most properly scaled, Holocaust memorials I've seen, anywhere, just the opposite of the misfired maze near the Brandenburger Tor (which induces, paradoxically, a sense of fun one knows one isn't supposed to be having), and a universe away from the grandiose theoretical statement of Libeskind's Jewish Museum. The plaques pull you away from the abstraction of large numbers and into the scene of what must have happened right there, in that building, the scene of individual lives unravelling.

More here.