BERLIN TRIP
After an easy flight, we arrived in Berlin. When we arrived at the nearest station to the hotel, an old cathedral, clearly ruined by allied bombing, towered over us its bells ringing, giving the place a strange atmosphere. We dropped off our luggage at the hotel and we went on a walking tour around some nearby sites. First off was the Brandenburg gate, illuminated by brightly coloured lights changing their colour every minute or so. This was completed in 1791 as a symbol of peace. The next stop was the Reichstag, which we were allowed in. We could see the debate chamber, the seat of German Power, through the window on the way up to the roof. On the roof was the impressive dome designed by Norman Foster after the reunification and from here, views over the entire city could be seen, though not very well in the dark. We also passed Bebelplatz, the site of Nazi book burnings.
Friday was our cold war day. In the morning we visited the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, which was a prison from 1945-1989. Originally a canteen built in 1939 for that National Socialist People’s Welfare Organisation, it was transformed into Special Camp No. 3 when the Soviets occupied Berlin. From here, inmates were transferred to other Soviet Camps, but the conditions in this camp were very bad and 886 people died. Later, the main Soviet prison was set up in the basement of the building known as the U-Boot or Submarine. Prisoners were made to sign confessions through physical and psychological torture. Prisoners had to stand for hours on end, were deprived of sleep and other methods such as water cells and Chinese water torture were reportedly used. People put into the prison were political enemies of the soviets – not just Nazis. The prison was handed over to the Stasi (East German secret police) in 1951 and towards the end of the fifties, a new building with over 200 cells and interrogation rooms was built. This was a secret prison that no ordinary citizen knew about and did not appear on the map. In this prison, physical violence was replaced by psychological methods that broke down the resistance of the prisoners. The prisoners did not know where they were and never met any of the other prisoners. They were interrogated every night by specially trained interrogators who used a whole range of techniques to get an incriminating statement. Prisoners were mainly those caught trying to flee into West Germany and political prisoners.
After eating in a bakery on Friedrichstraβe, we visited the checkpoint Charlie museum. Checkpoint Charlie was the infamous border crossing between East and West Germany after the wall had been erected. It was here that in 1961 American and Russian Tanks faced each other in a tense stand-off after a diplomatic schism. The museum tells the history of the Berlin Wall and the many escape attempts made by East Germans trying to escape the oppressive East German Government. Some of the more interesting attempts included a home-made hot air balloon, a bullet-proofed van and tunnelling under the wall.We all purchased our ‘piece of the Berlin Wall’ and some of us were wise enough to buy an East German border guard hat.
On Saturday, we walked rather than using public transport to respect the Jewish Sabbath for the observant Jews on the trip. Firstly we went to Gedarmenmarkt, the site of the French and German Cathedrals and the concert hall. We were visiting an exhibition in the German Cathedral very relevant to our GCSE course. Two groups looked at two different parts of the exhibition, our group looked at the Weimar Republic and how Hitler got into power in 1933. After this, we went to the topography of terror, and outdoor exhibition under a long section of the Berlin wall, on the site of the headquarters of the Gestapo (the Secret police in Nazi Germany) and the SS (Hitler’s protective squad, elite troops and concentration camp guards). The exhibition details the role of the SS and Gestapo and the actions that they carried out, such as the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen (Death Squads). We ate in a shopping centre and then went on to the German Resistance memorial centre which is situated in the building from which the German Armed Forces were commanded from in Nazi Germany. The museum was all in German, but the tour guide told us much about resistance to the Nazis. This ranged from not giving the Nazi Salute at rallies, to printing and distributing leaflets like the White Rose, to assassination attempts. One attempt on Hitler’s life was planned in the same building as the resistance memorial. This plan involved a man named Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg placing a briefcase full of explosives by Hitler at a conference and excusing himself. The bomb plot failed only because someone moved the briefcase slightly and Hitler was shielded by the table. Stauffenberg was captured and shot in the courtyard of the memorial. His statue stands there today.We then visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which is a very controversial monument. It consists of dozens of concrete pillars of varying heights which you may walk between. As you walk in between the pillars, you feel claustrophobic and disorientated. The design was the winner of a competition. Controversy has come from the Roma and Sinti gypsies and homosexuals who criticize the monument for singling out the Jews. Another point of controversy was that the company that manufactured the special anti-graffiti paint for the memorial manufactured zyklon-B for use in the gas chambers in the Holocaust.
Sunday was probably the hardest day of the trip, it was a cold day and we went by train to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the small town of Oranienburg. It was set up in 1936 by the Nazis in the beginning for political prisoners, however many other types of people were put into the camp. As you enter the camp, you can see the entertainment building for the SS as the prisoners entering the camp would have done. The entrance has the famous phrase ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (‘work sets you free’) on the gate. As you enter, you can see that not much of the original camp remains, however we were shown a Jewish barrack that remained but was largely a reconstruction after neo-Nazis burnt it down in the 1990s. Many Jews were held at Sachsenhausen and died there, but most were transported to Auschwitz in 1942. We then saw the solitary confinement wing which was partitioned from the rest of the camp by a wall. Here, POWs, important political prisoners and even Josef Stalin’s son were held. The camp was vast, and after a long walk, we came to an execution pit where many were executed, before the development of station X. This was the killing ‘factory’. Inmates were deceived into think that they were having a medical check up. They went through a production, at first, their mouths were checked (if they had gold teeth then they were marked with a black X). they then went through various other checks before finally being placed against the wall, ostensibly to have their height or weight measured, but they did not notice the slit at neck height through which they were shot by a man in the room behind. The body was then thrown into a large room with all the others. If the body had a black X then the gold teeth were removed, the bodies were then incinerated in the crematoria. Some people were gassed in a chamber disguised as a shower room. At the time, I could not fully comprehend where I was, it was only a few days later after reflection that I actually realised where I had been.After lunch, we went to the Jewish museum, which is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. It is a huge museum that tells the complete history of German Jews. The architecture of the new building is very symbolic. The building is the shape of a broken Star of David and it has feature such as stairways that lead to nowhere, very angular designs giving a sense of unease and disorientation and blacked out exhibits representing the missing parts of Jewish history. There are voids in the museum showing the void left in Judaism as a result of the Holocaust. One of these voids has a floor covered in metal faces that make a terrible sound like screaming when walked on. The Holocaust tower commemorates the Jewish victims of the holocaust and is a tall, unheated room which is lit only by a narrow slit which is high up. The sounds from the outside world can be heard. The garden of exile is like the Holocaust memorial we visited before, but it has olive trees growing out of the pillars.
On Monday, we visited the 1936 Olympic Stadium before our flight back home. The stadium hosted the famous 1936 Olympics where Jesse Owens (an Afro-American Athlete) embarrassed the Nazis by showing up their racial doctrine and winning four Gold Medals! Today the Stadium is home to Hertha BSC, the Berlin football team.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Hornick, Ms. Bennet, Mr. McBroom and Mr. Brooke for giving up their time to take us on a very enjoyable and beneficial trip and for being such good company. I can definitely recommend this trip to next year’s 5th Form.