Berlin, Germany

We only got to spend one full day and one afternoon in Berlin, but we were able to see a lot. The first day we went to the Jewish Museum. The museum was dedicated not just to the Holocaust, but to the history of the Jewish people since documented history existed. There was a big focus on the Holocaust, but also on the genocide of the Jewish people in general. The building itself was very neat. It was designed with one hallway running straight through the building with the rest of the halls running in zig-zags and intersecting at certain points. Where the halls would intersect, there would be a "void," a place with useless space created by the zig-zag pattern. Some of the voids were in the center of the building, but some were outside. The voids and the outside could be seen though the windows, which were all like slits, very narrow and tilted. Two voids in particular, which ran both ran the height of the three story building, were of great interest. The first was simply three stories of concrete with a huge iron door and one slit window at the third floor. You were allowed to enter the room, and then the door was closed and you were able to experience what it was like to be in a concrete prison. The second "void" was completely interior with no windows, but was light. On the floor were 10,000 metal disks with two holes cut out for eyes and one larger hole cut out for an "O" mouth. The effect was very drastic because one could hear the room before seeing it. The echo coming from people walking on the faces created a very loud clanging audible from rooms away. I walked into the room and stepped on the faces, but the effect was too chilling to stay in there for long. The museum was very well done, and there was so much information and memorabilia, it was a very good experience.

The next day in Berlin, we took a free walking tour (the same company as in Prague) and again, it was wonderful. This tour lasted for FIVE hours! We started in east Berlin in Pariser platz, which among other things is the plaza that hosts the famous Hotel Adlon, where Michael Jackson hung his son out of the window of the balcony. There was a marathon running through the city on the same day that we were, and this platz was packed with people. Then we walked south and passed a Holocaust memorial. It was rectangular blocks of cement, huge blocks, ranging in size from a few inches off above the ground, to over 15 feet. The blocks were all the same width and length, about three feet wide and five feet long. There were thousands of these blocks, and they were all gray, and when one stood in the midst of a forest of dense, 15 foot tall, gray cement blocks, it was very grim and imposing. The architect never came right out and said what the blocks were representing as to leave the interpretation open, but whatever it does represent is very evil. After this, we walked into the western part of the city, past the biggest building in Berlin (in my opinion) which houses the Federal Ministry of Finance (it's the tax office), but housed the air force during WWII and housed was used by the Soviets during occupation. On the south side of this building stands what is left of the Berlin wall. It is far less imposing than I have ever imagined, but I guess the wall was the least of ones worries when trying to escape from east Berlin, the death strip would take that title. Our guide told us the story of the erection of the Berlin wall. At 1:00 a.m., soviet soldiers snuck into the city and ran a barbed wire fence right down the center of the city and patrolled it. When people woke up in the morning, they were just stuck where they were, even if they lived on the east side and worked on the west, or just happened to be passed out on the west side and life in the east. Many people were able to pass this wall in the early days, but then it turned to brick, then to cement, and then to an impossible obstacle. Directly south of the remains of the wall is a vacant lot. During WWII, this lot housed the offices of the most important SS officials, and also a political prison. The building is gone, but some foundation does remain. The city was not sure what to do with this lot because it is a reminder of such horrible history but it is still history, so nothing has been done. However, a temporary exhibit to the political history of Germany until the end of WWII sits right behind it. This exhibit is called "topography of terror" and shows the rise of the Nazi party, the composition of the party, the tactics employed during the war, what this land has been used for (the empty lot), and a little less concentration on the massacre part of the Holocaust. The exhibit also follows the life of some high ranked officials in the Nazi party, and the lives of the political prisoners who were kept in the prison. The exhibit even shows what happened to the people mentioned after the war and how they lived on, or didn't. This was a wonderful exhibit, and there are future plans to make the exhibit a permanent addition to the topography. Slightly more east of this point we came to Checkpoint Charlie, and here there were even more pictures and descriptions, of the checkpoint and the cold war this time, and some stories of east Berlin citizens who managed to sneak across the wall. The Berliners seemed very good at subtle memorials. One example of this is the memorial to the books burned by the Nazi's in 1933 in Bebelplatz. In the middle of the platz, amongst the cobblestones, is a (plexiglass?) four-by-four foot opening that looks to a room with empty bookshelves under the platz. The shelves have enough space to fit every book burned on that day in 1933. Perhaps the best example of this subtlety is in the parking lot of an apartment complex built 100 yards from the Berlin wall by the Soviets to make the east side look more inviting. Under this parking lot lay Hitler's bunker. When Hitler killed himself he was in this bunker, and he asked to be burned so he could not be recognized and humiliated by his enemies. He killed himself when the Soviet Union were on their way to Berlin, and he was burned in this very parking lot for five hours, because that is all the time there was until the Soviets arrived, and then he was buried right there. When the Soviets came, they found his body and were able to recognize him and Eva Braun, and did not tell the citizens of Berlin that Hitler was confirmed dead until the 1970's! To commemorate all of this, there is a sign in this parking lot that is 5 feet by 3 feet, and it shows the layout of the bunker as it was when it was still there.

We were able to see a lot in Berlin in just a day and a half, but I could have spent longer there. The best part of the city though was undeniably the history, without which Berlin would just be a huge, brand new city. But there are still things standing to remind us of the history, like an SS headquarter building that still stands with bullet holes in every single brick. Or the tv tower in Alexanderplatz that that towers over the city as a reminder of communism in Berlin. Or the old crossing signs that light up with red or green men to tell us to stop or walk; in east Berlin, they are still the lights from the Soviets, and the red man stands firm in his conviction not to walk with his bowler hat on, but the green man bounds across the street waving his hat as if to say that in east Berlin, even crossing the street is fun.