(7 May 2015) LEAD-IN:
Seven decades after the end of the Second World War, Jewish tourists are flocking to Berlin.
Some come for the art, culture and lifestyle, but many others to trace the roots of their families that were either killed in the Holocaust or forced to leave Germany as the Nazis took power.


The Soviet tanks at the War Memorial in central Berlin have been still and silent for almost seven decades.
No longer forces of death and destruction, they are instead used as a playground for children born long after the battle for Berlin in 1945.
The memorial, erected by the Soviet occupying forces just months after Berlin fell, is one of many reminders of Germany's dark past dotted around the capital.
Another is the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The structure, made out of 2711 concrete slabs, opened in 2005 to commemorate the 6 million Jews that were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Each year "several million people" visit the site according to the Berlin Tourism Board, making it one of the more popular tourists attractions in Berlin.
But while most visitors can ponder the horrors of the war and the murder of innocents from a safe emotional distance, some tourists are more emotionally connected to the city.
According to Visit Berlin there has been a marked upsurge in Jewish tourists and visitors from Israel over the last few years.
Many come for the culture, but a significant number come looking for hitorical ties to their families that were either killed by the Nazis or forced to escape their homeland to survive.
Brothers Jerry and Michael Karp made the trip from the US to trace the history of their parents.
Michael Karp is now aged 80 and lives in New York City, his brother Jerry is 76 and lives in Chicago.
Their mother and father were both doctors in Berlin, living in the Jewish quarter of the city.
They were a part of a vibrant Jewish community with a century long tradition in Berlin.
Before the Nazis took power there were around 160-thousand Jews living in Berlin, according to the Jewish community of Berlin.
After the war there were only a handful left.
Jerry and Mike's parents left in 1933, soon after the Nazis took power.
The first stop was Palestine where they settled in Jerusalem and where Jerry and Mike were born.
Later they moved to New York with their teenage sons.
Most of their immediate family survived the war and Holocaust, but many neighbours, friends and distant relatives were never heard from again.
Berlin was lost to them, despite being the home of their families for generations.
But Jerry says that Berlin, or the horrors that were planned from the German capital, were almost never discussed at home.
"Typically a lot of the generation that my parents came from did not want to discuss their history, they rather talk abut the positive things in life and never brought problems to the table," he says.
But now, 70 years after the war ended, Jerry and Mike are trying to understand their heritage as German Jews.
The visit has been organised by a company called Milk and Honey tours which specialises in heritage tours for Jewish tourists.
The company runs about 400 tours to Berlin a year with around 2000 people participating.
It takes them to the old Jewish quarters in central Berlin where once a Jewish school, synagogue and hospital formed the centre of Jewish life in the city.
They visit the Jewish cemetery where they presume several of their ancestors are buried and they go to the address where their grandfather once owned a large building that was confiscated by the Nazis.

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