Berlin at Night - Food & Landmarks

This is a compilation of our delicious food and walks around Berlin after dark... sehr romantisch!

The German Transportation Museum

On Sunday, January 20th, our group toured the German Transportation Museum. This was one of the coolest museums I had ever been in. It was like the Air & Space Museum, but it had all forms of transportation - trains, cars, planes, and boats. It was fascinating to see the technological development of Germany (which was quite impressive) because I could compare it to America's history. The main reason we were there was to examine the involvement of the railroad corporations in the Holocaust. On display was a giant steam engine used during the late 30's through the war. Next to it was a typical cattle car that was used to transport Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. In a single car, the Nazis would cram roughly 100 people. Standing in the dark confines of the car, I was terribly disturbed by the thought of this. The cars were small and very dark. The only light came from one window, which would be covered up with barbed wire. Sometimes, when people realized what was about to happen to them, they would resort to tearing at the barbed wire with their bare hands to break it. If anyone made any sort of loud disturbances or were caught attempting to throw things out of the cars, soldiers would shoot the car. The journey from Berlin to the concentration camps in east Germany or Poland could take hours, if not days. People had to go to the bathroom and sleep standing up. In the winter, it was bitter cold. In the summer, the heat was choking and the smell was unbearable. It was very important to visualize this; it is impossible to imagine otherwise.

The East Berlin Tower

On Friday, the 18th of January, we went back into East Berlin and went up in the East Berlin Television tower. This had been built by the Soviet Union during the late 1960's as an impressive landmark of east Berlin. It is 290 meters tall. As Dr. Moser put it, they wanted something impressive to compete with the West. As we walked through security, it was the first time I noticed a difference between east and west Berliners. Dr. Moser has mentioned there are subtle differences in mannerisms and cultural values, but the personnel working the tower made those differences quite apparent. I felt like I had unfortunately traveled back in time to the Soviet Union of the 70's. The people were nice, but very serious. The security checkpoint was pointless; they searched our bags, made us throw out all liquids, but never screened our bodies. I'm convinced that they just wanted us to buy drinks at the bar in the top of the tower. We crammed in this tiny elevator that took us up 290 meters in under 30 seconds. I was the last person to squeeze into the lift and I accidentally stood in front of the buttons that go up. The woman working the elevator, a middle-aged woman with short brown hair in a uniform fit for a flight attendant, turns to me and sternly says "You go there; that is my place." That moment, in itself, captured East Germany in the 70's. It has been a running joke of the trip since. We are so very nice and pleasant in the east, but that is your place and this is mine. It was a nice piece of the old school. At the top of the tower, we had a 360 degree view of Berlin. It was beautiful!

The Potsdam Conference

After we toured the villa of the Wannseekonferenz, where the decision of the Holocaust were made by the Nazis, we traveled to the Schloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference took place. The Cecilienhof is a giant palace that served as the meeting place for the United States, Great Britain, and U.S.S.R. to decide the fate of war-torn Europe. It was there that the redistribution of land in Europe and the Mediterranean was decided upon. This was also the place where the Iron Curtain fell between the United States and Russia. It was fascinating to walk through the palace. It was not what you would think of as a European palace. It looked like a giant ski lodge. The U.S.S.R. hosted the conference; which explained how the rooms were divided between the countries and what each room served as. It was a contrast to to the ornate Wannseekonferenz and I found it fascinating to read about everything that happened during the peace negotiations. So much of the Cold War and the issues between the West and Russia were a result of the conference. There was no photography allowed inside the palace, but I was able to sneak a photo of the room where the conference was held.

 

 

Haus der Wannseekonferenz

The hardest aspect of any genocide is making sense out of what is senseless. It is the search for reason. As a premeditated genocide, the Holocaust is especially difficult to comprehend. The ability to kill six million people in a period of roughly four years can only be done through a well organized operation. More incredible is the fact that Germany was fighting a two front war. The Nazi party was still able to devote time, money, and resources to carry out the horrific genocide on their Jewish targets.

The Wannsee Conference, held on January 20, 1942, was the highest ranking military officers of the Nazi party of the special division in charge of the Jewish extermination. They met at 56-58 am Grossen Wannsee, a villa on the shore of lake Wann. This beautiful mansion was donated by a wealthy, energetic supporter of the Nazi party. It was here that officers crunched numbers and calculated exactly how to institute the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. For me to walk through that house  was eye-opening. The house and grounds were beautiful; it was just how it looked 71 years before, cold, elegant, and isolated. On display throughout the house were all the documents of the meeting, down to the minutes. I was expecting this to be a top secret plan, because the Final Solution, when implemented, seemed to be kept out of the world's eye until the end of the war. But this was instead like a corporate meeting, boring and mundane. The whole thing was weird. People being treated as numbers, more as of a commodity than humans.

Our group learned that the Final Solution did not explicitly discuss killing off the Jewish populations when it was first conceptualized. But Adolf Hitler's politics pitted leaders under him against one another to come up with a better plan. Someone would draft a plan, and then the next person would try to beat it, until the Final Solution was pushed to its extremities. I wonder if the officers at the conference saw the final results of their decisions at the camps.

I learned two lessons at Haus der Wannseekonferenz - First, it is easy to sit in comfort and treat people as numbers. Second, competition can bring out the most primitive evils.

Bahnhof Train Station - Deportation of Jews

On Thursday, the 17th of January, we took a train to the outskirts of the city. It was an especially cold morning. We exited the train at the Berlin-Grunewald stop and proceeded down the stairs of the old station to a brick tunnel. From there, we walked only a few meters and turned up another staircase, and went onto another track. This track was secluded from the other track we had just exited, so much so that you would not notice it standing on the other platform. Trees and vines gave this spot the privacy of an old relic. To my left, the soft hum of the Autobahn could be heard through the cold air, although you couldn't see it. Through the leafless trees to my right, a small villa with a coffee shop and a square could be seen.

Seventy years ago, this was just woods. The villa was farther down the road and there was no highway nearby. And where we stood, there was a railroad platform connecting Berlin to the rest of eastern Europe. Today, the railroad and platform still stand, but trees grow from the rusty tracks. An old brick administrative building sits dark and hollow off to the left. And as I stood there, I could feel the presence of a hundred thousand empty people being herded like livestock onto train cars.

This was the deportation site for the Jews in Berlin. It was here that they were taken to the ghettos of Theresienstadt and the gas chambers of Auschwitz, many never to be heard from again. The inscriptions on the tracks began in 1942. They ended a month before the invasion of Berlin, in 1945. They would read "21.2.1942 / 100 Juden / Berlin - Theresienstadt" and continue up and down the track. The date, the number of Jews, and the location to and from. 100 Juden, 50 Juden, 100 Juden, 100 Juden... day after day, month after month. It was meticulous; it was a premeditated, well organized act. Like "business," they had a quota, a count to meet.

At first, I could comprehend the amount of people. 100, 50, 100... but by 1943, the numbers jumped up to 500, 750, 1,000 per day. I was shocked. The platform was large, but for 1,000 people? No way. The Nazis must have been running multiple trains per day to get 1,000 people through this rural station seventy years ago. And this was a single platform. There were hundreds of these in Germany alone. But soon, as the War became turbulent and resources were diverted elsewhere, the consistency of numbers and dates began to decrease. There would be a month gap, then over 1,000 people would be transported out in a single day. By the end of 1944, the numbers were back under 100. There were not any more Jews left to transport.

The Berlin Wall

The final activity for our group on Wednesday (1/18) was a visit to the remnants of the Berlin Wall. Across the city of Berlin is a cobble stone line showing where the wall once stood. There also is a historical section of the wall still standing, with guard towers. On Thursday, I was able to buy my own piece of the wall in a local gift shop.