I am in the middle of the Jewish museum in Berlin, which is not quite the place you might expect and our tour-guide Adam is gonna tell us more about why.

Okay, so, let´s enter into Daniel Libeskind´s building and have a look.

So, one of the first things that people notice, once they enter the museum, is, that it´s quite bleak and quite empty, very dark, very narrow quarters, sort of enter into German Jewis history. All this is extremly symbolic as well, that is, retracing German Jewish history is not something that is easily done, especially considering that so much of this history has been lost and destroyed.

What are you standing on right now?

This is an installation by an Israeli sculpturer, named Menashe Kadishman, the piece is called „Shalechet“ (fallen leaves) and contains about ten thousand different faces scattered on the floor.
He dedicated these faces to all innocent victims of war. The installation is not specifically dedicated to the Holocaust victims.

Who is this nice Jewish gentleman, we´re standing in front of and what is he famous for, what did he accomplish?

One of the best things about this museum is, when visitors stumple upon things they don´t expect to see. This man here is Magnus Hirschfeld, a very prominent Jewish scientist of the 1910-1920-ties.
One of the world´s first sexologists, who established here in Berlin in 1919 the world´s first institute for sexual studies. In this display case we have some objects, which illustrate his work in this institute, including his collection of dildos.

For my personal enjoyment: Who kept these things? If they´re the only surviving part of the entire collection?

I don´t know exactly, how they sxurvived, but I know that everything else is destroyed.

This is different: Happy, light, green, what is this?

This is actually the last room of the exhibition. A lot of visitors ask: Are there still Jews in Germany today? Is there still history to tell after 1945? And there is!

A lot of people do come visit the museum, thinking, they already know, what German Jewish history is. And a lot of the museum, a lot of the exhibition, a lot of the stories, that we tell here, might be quite surprising for people, that is, the history is much more that they think it might be.