When I took this picture, I had no idea of the history of this place. To me it was just a quaint little street that looked picturesque with it's dusting of snow.
I was going to post it under the title Steep Hill, which is the imaginative name this street is known by. It wasn't until doing a last minute bit of post production, that I noticed that the book shop was called Jew's Court. I thought that this was odd and worried in case there were any racist overtones to it's name (not that this would be allowed - I'm sure). I did a quick bit of internet research and found that this is a place with a grim, macabre but ultimately fascinating history to it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/asop/people/jewish_community.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
I am very pleased to report that on my visit I witnessed no signs of anti-semitism. Everyone on the hill seemed more concerned with avoiding a slip on the ice rather than perpetuating some horrible history.
i very much like this blog entry... you produce something with it that is haunting me all the time; that dissonance between outer beauty and calmness and known facts or history of a place. there is so many examples i have for this that i don't even see it as something special anymore... it just seems to be normality that with time, all the atrocities of a spoiled place get forgotten and vanish into the calm and beauty of the scene. if i were a christian, i'd probably say that's soothing... but i instead just mourn that the atrocities had happened in the first place.
if you ever get to it, visit the jewish museum in berlin. it's exhibition makes you see the world with different eyes.