Berlin celebrates postwar visitor program for expelled Jews.
She was 14 when the Nazis forced her and her family onto a train from their home in the German capital to the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, in 1941.
Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, the program has successfully brought people like Melmed on one-week trips to Berlin to reacquaint themselves with the city. Some 35,000 people have accepted the invitation since it was first issued in 1969, and while the numbers are dwindling a few new participants still come every year.
On Wednesday, she and other former program participants were invited to Berlin City Hall to celebrate the half-century anniversary. Despite skepticism at the time that anyone persecuted by the Nazis would want to return, in 1970 — one year after the program's launch — there was already a waiting list of 10,000 former Berliners who wanted to come back for a visit.
Melmed, who lives in Venice, Florida, received her invitation under the reconciliation program 42 years ago. Johannes Tuchel, the director of the German Resistance Memorial Center, which curated the exhibition, said that many returnees had conflicting emotions.
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