Germany: Prayer

On Thursday morning, shortly after bombs ripped through the London underground and world leaders huddled at the G-8 summit in Scotland, a long line of people hoisting banners snaked along Unter den Linden, the main east-west thoroughfare in Berlin.

"Europe's Shame," read one banner, detailing the toll of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed in the genocide of Srebrenica, Bosnia, in 1995. This month, which marks the tenth anniversary of the slaughter, Germans, Bosnians and others drew attention to the fact that top perpetrators of the crimes, including leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain free.

The marching protestors slowed traffic at intersections and added a moving mural to the atmosphere in Pariser Platz, just east of Berlin's famed Brandenburg Gate. A nearby photographic installation, arranged in a tall, 180-degree outdoor display, told another story of history's pain: Photos outlined first the devastation of Luftwaffe bombing in London, Rotterdam and Warsaw during World War II, and then the retaliation visited on Berlin to defeat the Nazi regime.

The photos showed charred timbers and shattered stone, cityscapes twisted to the edge of recognition by thousands of pounds of explosives. It was not until near the end of the display that a photo showed people: huddled Berliners wrapped in blankets and waiting for help after the bombing of Pariser Platz in 1945. Theirs were real faces, but also symbols of both ends of the human spectrum of war - those who bring destruction, and suffer from it.

Since the days of that photo, when Pariser Platz and much of Berlin lay in ruin, the city has reinvented itself, first under the occupation of Soviets, Americans and British, now as a reunified capital city. Cranes dot a skyline anchored by gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers. A wall has come down. A glass dome has risen above the Reichstag. Towering, soulless apartment blocks of the Soviet persuasion still dominate Karl Marx Allee, a former East Berlin street. But much of the rest of the city has been splattered in the designs of Coca-Cola, T-Mobile and Deutsch Bank.

So it feels often like this city is sprinting strongly toward a future unlike the past. Even the Olympia Stadium, that solid monument of sport built by the Nazis to woo the world in 1936, glimmers with polished stone beneath a modern overhang of steel and glass.

On Thursday evening, U2 took the Olympia Stadium stage, setting a sea of white arms waving with the opening of their proven set. It was, as usual, all rock and roll and fun. Many Germans, kept in line by security, stood stoically in higher stands. But from "Vertigo" to "New Year's Day" to "City of Blinding Lights", the crowd awoke and danced and cheered.

Then, as they had in nights past, U2 made it personal. Bono sang about the loss of his father, and then more. At the opening of "Bullet the Blue Sky," guitarist The Edge played wailing, lyrical chords, as if to say, "you need to listen to this."

The image of a bomber crossed the towering light screen behind the stage and Bono added lyrics from the American civil war: "Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah."

He added words of condolence for the friends and families of those killed in London that day. Reports that began with two or three fatalities had grown by concert time to 49 dead; the number would nearly double by morning.

Near the end of "Bullet," Bono would sing a line inspired by "Amazing Grace:" "Once was weak but now am strong, was blind but now I see."

First, though, he stopped to address the crowd.

"I have a prayer," he said. "I hope it's your prayer: That we don't become a monster in order to defeat a monster. That is my prayer."