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.

The 'Six Million Murdered Jews' Memorial

After our group went to the Brandenburg Gate, we walked two more blocks and the city opened up to a park of stone blocks. We had arrived at the 'Six Million Murdered Jews' Memorial. According to Dr. Moser, Germans avoid using the word Holocaust. The park itself was void of trees, except around the edges. The granite blocks seemed to flow in waves. The artist purposely built this to symbolize the confusion and uncertainty the Jewish communities felt during the Nazi Party's rule. Another important aspect of the above-ground memorial was that the stones were void of any inscriptions, signifying the nameless, anonymous aspects of the genocide. I found the memorial to be very effective. As we walked into the stones, the ground began to slope, and all of a sudden, the stones towered above me. It was like being in a cold maze. I stopped to take a picture and I ended up losing the rest of the group. I was able to find them only when I exited the memorial on the far side.

The above ground views of the

memorial.

The perspective from the center of the memorial.

      


The rest of the memorial was underneath the stone blocks. It was a small, but very heavy emotionally. Dr. Moser led us down a staircase into an indoor, underground memorial. We first walked down a hallway and on the wall was a timeline from the start of the Jewish persecution in 1932 through the end of the war. In pictures and writing, it described the increasing segregation and mistreatment of the Jews in Germany over the fourteen years the Nazi Party held power. By the end of the timeline, Jews across all of central Europe had been either killed, interned, or run into hiding. By the time the Nazi Party had been overthrown in Germany, over six million Jews had been murdered.

After walking down the hall, we then walked into a dark room. The only light came from blocks on the floor, with first-hand written accounts from Jews themselves. These letters - the voices of many never to be heard or seen again - spoke about the horrid evils of being transported in livestock cars, work and death camps, gas chambers, shooting squads, mass graves, rape, and the impending feelings of fear and death.

In the same room across the top of all the walls were each European country's name and how many Jews were killed in each country. 

Standing in that room was numbing. I had to sit down in the middle of the dark because I felt dizzy from standing. Six million people were murdered. I do not know a lot about genocides, but this act, this holocaust, was particularly... senseless. This was an organized, meticulously thought-out plan to exterminate a select group of humans from the Earth. These were innocent people, families - men, women, and children alike. And as I sat there, I contemplated how much I valued my life and the lives of others around me. I tried to multiply that by six million, but it was impossible to grasp. The Holocaust was six million voices silenced. Those are six million live, with six million unique experiences, thoughts, beliefs, and voices, with millions more relationships and people that loved and shared life with the world, gone.

As I walked through the remaining two rooms, the memorial touched on some of the lives and unique backgrounds of the victims. They discussed the heritage and lineage of some of the families, as well as the personal experiences of individuals. It was fascinating to hear about how people bonded together to survive in the imprisoned ghettos and concentration camps, making the most of their conditions. In the last room, a voice over the intercom narrated a brief summary of the life stories of a few victims. The audio was roughly a minute long for each. According to a plaque on the wall, if all six million's stories were briefly read in the same format, it would take six years, seven months, and 27 days.

"Survival is not a rule, it is an exception."

                                                                  - Dr. Moser

The Brandenburg Gate

After we visited the Reichstag, we walked three blocks to the Brandenburg Gate. Along the way, I learned what "dictatorship windows" are - as Dr. Moser explained, they are windows that they can see out, but you can not see in. Once we got to the Brandenburg Gate, the group had some great photo opportunities with one of Berlin's most iconic monument. I also became a diplomat and a monetary contributor to a German acting school.

The Brandenburg Gate

Dr. Moser and I in front of the Brandenburg Gate

Actors dressed as U.S and Russian Soldiers

Representing R-MC






Full-time student, part-time diplomat

Settling in Berlin

Our hotel that we are staying at in Berlin is the Hotel Gates. It is very nice and located near a grocery store, many coffee shops, and the S-Bahn (above ground railway). They also gave us a pretty nice rental car, although it is only a two-seater.

Hotel Room

Queen Size Bed

Hotel Room Bathroom

Rental Car

The Reichstag - Germany's Legislative Building

Due to our flight delays in Amsterdam, we were half a day behind in our schedule and we compensated for it yesterday. We toured Berlin from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, but we were able to get back on track.

The first place we visited was Der Reichstag, Germany's legislative building. Once we were through security and  inside the main lobby, I immediately was impressed with the modern decor of the building. Unlike D.C., with white stone marble and ornately carved columns, the interior was cream colored, with the German flag colors on a modern art canvas. The building conveyed a sense of realism, professionalism, and modernism - qualities that certainly are attributed to Germany's social-democratic government.

We took an elevator up five stories to the rooftop, where there is a glass dome, called a Kuppel. Inside the glass dome was a spiral walkway that went up to the top of the dome, giving us great panoramic views of Berlin. Hanging from the center of the dome was a stalactite of mirrors that pointed down, giving us different views of the congressional hall directly below the dome. The concept behind this unique feature is that the average citizen can watch the legislature in person without being in the chamber itself. In Germany, the legislature holds the "common man" as their source of power and principle.

As an aspiring political science major, it was very fascinating for me to visit the Reichstag and observe the ideas and principles of another government. It also helped give our group an introduction to how the German government has restructured themselves since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The front of the Reichstag.

The front steps, with the inscription "Dem Deutscher Volke,"
which means To the German People.

The top of the Reichstag dome.

Full view of the top.

J-term class with Dr. Moser at the top of the Reichstag dome.

The interior walkway of the dome.

The central curved mirror offering a 360 degree view of the
legislative hall below.