I've broken up Spring Break into seeeveral posts because there's so much info. Keep scrolling down if you haven't read in a while! This one is only about Berlin, but Amsterdam is in the post before this.
Berlin:
My trip to Berlin was very much a whirlwind. Because I booked really cheap tickets, my flight times were a little funky, and I was in Berlin essentially only for one day. It was only one day, but I really saw a ton of stuff, if I do say so. Berlin is a big city, but I found it really nice to walk around in, minus the literally freezing weather. For Spring Break, I knew I was going even further north, but I figured because it is the middle of April, my medium jacket would be warm enough. Oh no. Not at all in Berlin. The whole day I was wishing so badly that I had thought to at least bring gloves, but it was worth it to visit this very cool city. I just wish I had looked at the weather a little more carefully. I think it was about 45 degrees F and lightly raining the whole day. Fun!
I started the day off by taking the train all the way out to Saschenhausen concentration camp. It was very interesting because the train ride out there reminded me very much of the woods in movies about Germany during WWII, like Inglorious Basterds. I’m not sure where that movie was filmed, but it sure looked like it. Luckily, there were plenty of school groups going there, so after I got off the train, I just followed them there. Unfortunately, they were mostly loud, rude, and disrespectful, but what can you do? It blew my mind that teachers/tour guides wouldn’t tell these kids to stop playing around and laughing really loudly at a place like that, but maybe it’s a cultural thing… But in any case, it was a really interesting visit. I’ve wanted to visit a camp for a very long time, so it was so nice to finally get to go. I actually learned some things about the Holocaust, which surprised me. This camp did have some Jewish prisoners, but there were also a lot of Roma and Sinti (gypsies) and political prisoners. There was a ton of information presented, but I’m pretty sure that all the original buildings were destroyed in the mid 1950s because they were structurally unsound, but some of them have been recreated. There is an execution trench where prisoners were forced to execute each other. There were actually remnants of cremation ovens left over. The building around them had been destroyed, but you can still see the ovens. They were rather small actually. Originally at this camp, bodies were shipped out, but when the death toll started to mount as a result of increasingly crowded and unhealthy living conditions, the Nazis got concerned about the town finding out about the increase? That’s what the museum said, although that doesn’t really make any sense. Anyways, in the mean time, they brought in mobile gassing trucks (much like China today) and finally built an in-house crematorium. The infirmary is still there. Originally, they did “autopsies”, and the tables and all the furniture are still there. Of course, they did their perverse medical experiments there as well. Very chilling. The most surprisingly part of the whole visit was the brothel wing of the infirmary. A few years after the camp opened, the officers decided they would like a brothel there. I thought that the Nazis did not rape prisoners because they were so concerned with race, but apparently not. The brothel was also used as an incentive to make prisoners work harder, but the Jewish male prisoners weren’t allowed to use it.
Speaking of labor, one of the weird things that the Nazis made the prisoners do was to test leather-substitute shoes. The Nazis designed faux-leather shoes, and in order to test the soles, they would make prisoners wear very heavy backpacks and run around a track all day. The track is still there.
Like I said earlier, most of the buildings were destroyed in the 50s, but replicas were rebuilt. A barrack was rebuilt, but after the Israeli PM visited in 1992, an arson attack nearly burnt it down. You can still see the charred wood.
After the camp, I headed back in to the center of Berlin. I started with the Brandenburg Gate, the famous German landmark. As I was coming out of the Metro station, there were probably 20 to 30 police vans on that street alone. After talking with some nice Germans, I finally realized that all the security was for the NATO conference taking place just down the street. (I am normally quite up to date on world news, but I’ve been traveling and not paying for newspapers or Internet.) After the Brandenburg Gate, I saw the Reichstag, the German Parliament? There is a beautiful dome on top, but it is no longer open to visitors. Also you can’t enter the building at all without a reservation, but the outside was very pretty anyways. Then I saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The best way to describe it is to show a picture. I was shocked to learn that there was no such memorial until the mid 1980s in Germany. Before I took my Holocaust Perpetrators class at Elon, I had not realized that the world (especially Germany) did not really address the legacy of the Holocaust until many decades after the fact. Underneath the hundreds of steel blocks that make up the memorial, there is a little mini museum that addresses Jewish life in Europe before and during the Holocaust. It was very well done and also free!
The next few things that I saw in Berlin concerned the wall. I first went to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the checkpoints left between East and West Germany. The checkpoint is outside; there is a museum inside, but you couldn’t take pictures, plus I just assumed it would have been very touristy. Speaking of touristy, at a nearby section of the Berlin Wall, they literally will charge you 25euro to get an “East German passport stamp”. …… There’s nothing else to say about that. Needless to say, I declined.
Then I visited a museum called the Topography of Terror. It is partly indoor, partly outdoor. It contains a big section of the Berlin Wall and is at the site of some of the most important buildings of the Nazi regime. Those buildings were destroyed after the war, but the museum helps recreate the site. I had not realized that so many historically important buildings were destroyed after the war, but Berlin really does a great job of preserving history. The Topography of Terror also had a great temporary exhibit on Adolph Eichmann. Another thing that I had learned about in my Holocaust Perpetrators class, Eichmann was basically in charge of the transport systems during the Holocaust. After the war, he escaped to Argentina, but Mossad kidnapped him and brought him to Israel to stand trial in the late 1950s. He had a very controversial trial that was largely used to build up the state of Israel. After 4 months of deliberations, he was sentenced to death and executed. Being a Nazi is the only crime for which you can receive the death penalty in Israel. I’m pretty sure that his trial is the only one that took place in Israel.
Finally to wrap up my super charged day in Berlin, I visited the Jewish museum. I originally wasn’t going to, but decided to at the last minute. This was the only thing I had to pay for in Berlin, but they had a great student rate of only 2euro50. It was actually one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. It had a small Holocaust memorial, but the heart of the museum was documenting Jewish culture from medieval times all the way through to today. It was a very fun and interactive museum, and there were plenty of people there.
