Fallen leaves.

So yes, we enjoyed Berlin, largely for the view of 20th-century history that it gave us. We were visitors, after all, from a land that claims to have escaped the horrors of war, persecution, genocide, oppression.

Germany has got many hard truths to face up to, and face up it does. Em and I visited a number of museums during our days in Berlin, and some of them had real impact. I won't bang on about them, but a couple warrant and effort at description.

Mostly, the Jewish Museum at Berlin presents - brilliantly - the long, proud history of the European Jewry. Besides anything else, it's a bright and creative museum. There is an installation artwork called fallen leaves in there; I'll try to relate my experience of it here.

Despite the artist's invitation to walk on his or her work, you ask yourself whether it is really OK to accept and proceed. A sea of human faces is before you, expressions of anguish carved into their faces by the heat of a blowtorch. Walking on faces, people looking up at you, pained. Is it really alright to ignore their plight, add to their burden?

In taking my first step amongst the fallen leaves, i realised i was having trouble choosing wihch face - which anguished individual - to step on. and in trying to decide, my attention is all the more focused on the faces, leaves, pain. I was being asked to decide which of the mass of rusted steel people to disrespect more than the others.

Or ought I simply to march roughshod? With a little imagination - or just an inspection of human nature - I might be in the position of the jailer, the soldier, the monster whose job it was to persecute and disrespect the people beneath me. Real people, represented by the hundreds - or thousands - of rough-hewn, rusted steel faces beneath me. I felt I was asked to decide to ignore the humanity beneath my feet, to pretend that all of them deserved the same level of disrespect.

As I walk on them, the solid steel face-discs clang and clink against each other. Each step is advertised, there's no escape from the noise and no option but to admit that I am the perpetrator. Sure, I was one of four or five making the noise, walking over humanity, and I'm not sure whether that made it easier to commit the deed or not - we sure made a lot of noise. Certainly on reflection I realise that the first step onto the field of victims was made easier by others' presence on them. It's easier to be one of a crowd.

And that horrible noise! Reminiscent of nothing more than chains, haunting, heavy, sharp. The path of people narrows, leading into a gloomy corner. A one-way road, but one from which my position allows me to return, provided I maintain my uncaring air, and keep stepping on people.

I stoop to touch one of the faces, choosing a small one, and lift it in my hands. It is heavy, imperfect, one of a kind. Thick, cold steel rests uneasily in my hands. The person I'm holding shrieks. Anguish.