Spring Break Part 5 - April 3

Upon arriving at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, we were told that Hermann Göring had designed this early camp in a triangle because it was the ideal way to keep in political prisoners and other "undesirables".  There were guard towers on each side to watch the housing units, most of which were demolished.

Minor Guard Tower

Guard Tower A

"Work will set you free"

Sachsenhausen

The barbed wire, electrified, gravel surrounded fences

Barracks

The empty grounds

We weren't allowed to take pictures really in the little space that there was inside.  That was because there were a lot of "relics" of the Nazi era recovered that were on display, such as propaganda, personal belongings, and triangle identifiers worn by prisoners.  This, if put online, could have been found by some white supremacists and used as items of reverence.  I took pictures of the inside of this barrack anyway though because it was severely fire damaged.  That's because a few years ago some Neo-Nazis broke in and tried burning down the camp.  While they failed at erasing history, the scars remained, which was a bracing reminder that just because Hitler was defeated doesn't mean that antisemitism was too.

These were the special barracks made for the people that the Nazis really didn't like.  They were kept in a walled area off the side of the triangle so that it was displayed to the prisoners that there was a worse place to be than in the yard to keep them in line.

Woman Showing her Son the Holocause

I have a lot of pictures of the yard because it just struck me how on that cold a day it was appropriate to visit a concentration camp.  Also, I knew right away that I could never really communicate the feeling of the place - the simultaneous feelings of the place being full and empty, with sadness written on the very landscape - so I hoped that maybe seeing it would give some idea.

In Soviet fashion, when they took this region and freed the people in the camp they saw the huddled and broken men - Jews, gays, Romani, prisoners of war, the disabled, the pacifists, the communists - and promptly erected a statue honoring the communists that fell under Nazi tyranny.  The three-sided obelisk has eighteen red triangles on each side (communists wore red triangles) to honor the fallen comrades, and the statue is of a communist soldier liberating two fine healthy members of the proletariat ready to reclaim their hammer and sickle who clearly were never in a concentration camp in their goddamn lives.

Where people were executed before they streamlined the process

There are six of these slabs, which mark where the ashes of victims were dumped by the Nazis.  People come the world over to put a rock on these slabs.

This was Station Z, the code word for where the prisoners were executed.  What Sachsenhausen did before they began using poisonous gas was they would line the new prisoners earmarked for execution up in what looked like a doctors office.  They would go in one at a time, and the "doctor" would take their vitals and then tell them to stand against a ruler on the wall to get their height.  The Nazi officer on the other side of the wall would then shoot the man in the back of the head in what was a soundproof
room.  The "doctor" would then clean up the blood, drag the body into the next room, and call in the next person.  From there the dead person was loaded into a furnace, his body was incinerated - usually by other inmates - and the ashes were dumped outside.  For that matter, this was also the place where a lot of experimentation was done so far as what poisonous gas would be the most effective.

The Furnaces

Medical Center, where the rest of the experiments were done

If I could give one recommendation on where to go, it would be to a concentration camp.  It doesn't make for a fun vacation, but it certainly reminds one of how privileged one is to be in the United States, where diversity is welcomed rather than hated.  For that matter, it reminded me of the privilege I have in being a white male, and by extension not having to worry about being maligned or hated except for the crimes of my fathers.  Finally, it reminded me of a very basic truth that is easy to forget - it's our compassion that makes us human.

Spring Break Part 4 - April 2

We were told through our hostel about a great free tour done in Berlin that was paid for through tips.  This sounded great to us, to learn some more of the history of the city, so we met at the Starbucks near the Brandenburg Gate (thus far I can't decide if globalization is good or not) and awaited our tour.  Before that, however, we intended to go to the museum of German Communism near what is called Museum Island; we couldn't find it however so after taking a look at the Island we walked to the Gate.

Altes Museum

Oddly Gender Specific Statue; there's another with all females to the right

At the Brandenburg Gate our tour began with George from Missouri.  He gave us a history lesson of what was originally a fishing village and pointed out some of the finer points of the plaza.  The hotel left is from whence Michael Jackson infamously dangled one of his children.

The picture right shows where the Berlin Wall formally was with the brick line in the middle of the road.  Throughout the city one can see the brick base on which there sat the Berlin Wall, which oddly enough was used to encircle what was West Berlin.

This is the scene of Hitler's bunker in which he committed suicide.  The location wasn't known until the 90's, and by that point there was a parking lot over it.  It stands as a further reiteration of how Germany chooses to represent those years - the oppressed got monuments, and the oppressor's legacy is marked by a blue sign and a dirt parking lot on which dogs do their business.

In Memory of Hitler

This is the headquarters of the Luftwaffe and later the Communist Party in Berlin.  Keeping with the theme of having the building being a place that is to be feared and hated, it's now the home of the tax collection agency.

The Berlin Wall

East Side of the Berlin Wall, incidentally

The Communist Car

Checkpoint Charlie; none of this is original

Where the Berlins meet

This square, Gendarmenmarkt, was made to thank the French Huguenots who contributed culturally to the city, especially with the cathedral which gave a mass all in French.  The Germans were subsequently jealous, and so an identical one was built giving the mass in German.  Between the two is the Konzerthaus, which is a Concert House.

Konzerthaus

German Cathedral

French Cathedral

We then went down to where Albert Einstein taught until 1931, the Humbolt University.  Within it is a strange memorial for the book burning of 1933 in the square, which you can only see through a piece of glass in the pavement - a room of empty bookshelves with no entrance.










"That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."
- Heinrich Heine, Almansor (1821)

We ended at Memorial to the Fallen Soldier, which was sculpted by Käthe Kollwitz, who lost a son and a grandson to the World Wars.  It's entitled Mother and her Dead Son.  Beneath it are the ashes of soldiers and prisoners of concentration camps, here both seen as victims.










As the tour progressed we were told of a trip the next morning to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.  The three of us wanted to go, and that occupied much of the next day.

Spring Break Part 3 - April 1

Early on the 1st we left Prague - it was so cold it was snowing - and took a train to Berlin.  By noon we were there, but it wasn't much warmer.  We started walking around the city once we had checked into our hostel, situated on the third floor of some apartment building set apart in the middle of a plaza near a train station.

What I noticed about Berlin, and what made me love it, was the fact that more so than anything else the city as a whole stands as a monument to owning up to your mistakes.  There are monuments dedicated to every minority group that was prejudiced against in the Holocaust, and they redesigned the Parliament house for government transparency.  When the Reichstag was rebuilt after being burned down in the 1930s (supposedly by Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe in five different places at the exact same time) it was later rebuilt in the 1960s and completed in 1990 with a new addition - the dome above the meeting room of the Bundestag is a glass dome which people can walk in.  This is for two reasons: the first is to literally make the gears of government transparent, the second being as a reminder to the members of Parliament exactly who they work for, the people.  As you can see below, the German people are very open about their dark past and subsequently don't beat around the bush.

"Monument to Sinti and Roma Murdered in the Holocaust"

The biggest leaf in the "Germany Knows Exactly What It Did" book is the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." This monument is actually just a few acres of variously placed cement slabs on a varying landscape.  You don't know this is for the murdered Jews of Europe unless you stumble onto the information kiosk midway on one side, and the architect has been silent on what it means.  Many people ask what it means, what it's supposed to signify.  Most people see tombstones, some see cattle cars, but a tour guide (more on him later) gave us an interesting take: as you walk through the monument the blocks grow and the ground falls beneath you, until such a point as you are in a veritable forest of cement slabs that block out all the noise and sights of the outside world until you are alone with nothing but the path in front of you and occasionally seeing someone else to your left or right only for them to disappear perhaps never to be seen again as long as you live.  Maybe the "point" of the monument is for us all to understand what it was like to live through the Holocaust, to be cut off from all that we've known and loved, by giving us our own personal Holocaust.

The Brandenburg Gate from Afar

Fun fact about the Brandenburg Gate, it's a remnant of the original Palace of the German kings, and originally had a goddess of peace being drawn by horses on top.  However, when Napoleon marched in he stole it, and when it was taken back it was given a scepter with the iron cross and an eagle and became the goddess Victory.  Some of the original meaning has been lost, and it's a nice reminder of how Germany was a nation of power and good intentions that was ultimately corrupted.


Now that we had most of the touristy stuff out of the way, we could actually enjoy Berlin.  This involved my living almost exclusively on soft pretzels; I got sick and it was worth it.  When not eating salted bread we also went to some German restaurants - there is no "authentic German food" in Berlin so we were told - but we got by with some goulash and German beer.  I know it will make my German ancestors turn in their graves, but I didn't see the hype about German beer, it still tasted like some Gulag ration.  But hey, the city awaits; more to come.