What we found is that it is so hard for people to comprehend the horrors of people killed in statistics. But there is something about having a name and the fact that this PERSON lived or worked in the building by this stone is very moving. We found these in many place. Our hearts mourned for the loss of life and family that these represent.
We also had the chance to visit “Checkpoint Charlie”. This was one of the places that people from the West could cross to go into East Berlin while the Wall was up. Dick remembers having crossed through this checkpoint over 40 years ago. There was quite a powerful display about The Wall and how the conflict unfolded in Berlin.
Then, Patti had to take advantage of the chance to get her photo taken with some US soldiers. We scratched our heads trying to understand why they had Soviet hats to wear… but, whatever. The photo was fun.
We walked by an exhibit focused on the devastation of Warsaw by the Nazis. Hitler had a plan that he wanted to kill everyone (nearly all were Jews) so that Germany could take over the area. It was chilling to see photos and read about these evil plans and the deadly results.
It was a surprise to us that much of The Wall was not removed by heavy equipment. It was removed by people who became known as "wall peckers" who took it down chip by chip. Once The Wall was down, there was a decision to mark its location with paving stones wherever it went. We could see those stones as we walked along the route of the Wall. Today, there were a few places where buildings were erected over were The Wall had been. We also had the chance to see one of the few remaining watchtowers from which guards looked over the dangerous no man’s land, and shot anyone who tried to escape the East to get to the West. Very chilling! We also talked with a college instructor who was working this gig on a temporary basis before starting to teach again. History majors were in abundance on this trip.
A solemn memorial is the Holocaust Memorial or the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This consists of nearly 3000 grey stone slabs of various sizes with spaces for people to wander among them and contemplate the horrors of the murder of millions of Jews people. It is meant to be a place of contemplation, remembrance and warning. We spent some quiet time there, thinking and remembering. As with many memorials, there are questions about whether it adequately serves it purpose. Were the dead honored enough? Is there enough warning? Nearly everything seems inadequate to the job…So much death. So much violence. So much ignorance. It was very sad. There is also an underground museum, but the line was too long, and we were not able to go there. It was still powerful.
So, we had set the tone in the morning, and following lunch we met up with our walking tour which focused on Hitler and the Third Reich. This was lead very a charming young man from Spain, who had a Masters Degree in German History. This was a tour he created to walk us through the narrative of how Hitler came to power, and eventually to the end of the War and Hitler’s death.
In 3 hours, the history of Berlin came alive as we walked through the city and heard the stories of a county which had been beaten down after WWI, and then a charismatic leader who promised to bring back pride and economic prosperity. Fascism and evil plans were not prominent during his rise, but it was very frightening how quickly democracy was overthrown and a tyrant took control. This included the memorial to the members of Parliament who voted against Hitler. All of them ended up in Concentration Camps and most were killed. The memorial, beside the Reichstag, was a set of steel plates with the people's name and what happened to them. We might have missed it but our guide pointed the plates out to us.We listened very closely as we pondered the world situation, and the situation in the U.S. today.
The tour was so well done, but exhausting. We ended it in the old Jewish section of the city. Again, so sad, but also, filled with hope. We spent time in front of the one Synagogue that was not destroyed by the Nazis. It was the main place of worship for the Jewish people before the war and is again.
As we walked about the old Jewish Quarter we heard the stories about how the people were isolated and then removed to the camps. We found many of the stumbling stones along each of the streets.
We concluded our tour by what had been the Jewish Cemetery. It had been desecrated before and during the war. A very moving memorial was located there. Buildings nearby still showed the damage from the heavy fighting at the end of the war as the Russian Army fought block by block and building by building, As our guide said, it gave him hope that so many people came on this tour when they could be sitting in a pub having a beer. We finished very sobered, but also grateful to have heard such a powerful story, so well told.
We grabbed dinner in a very cool local traditional German garden restaurant, which especially had the largest snitzels any of us had ever seen. We needed a bit of a break from the heavy history lessons we had been learning. The food was delicious and the atmosphere much lighter.
Public transportation took our tired bodies back home. Guten nacht, Berlin!
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