Day 5 - Berlin

 

Today we woke up at 8am for our first breakfast in our new hotel in Berlin. On our walk to the U-Bhan, our Program Leader, Megan, gathered the group in front of a “stumbling stone” to explain the significance of this memorial. Stumbling stones are small brass squares found across Europe and commemorate the last chosen residence of Nazi victims. The stones are embedded in the ground, enabling passersby to polish them as they walk over them, furthering the memory of these victims for future generations. There are over 100,000 of the stones currently installed with up to 400 new stones being produced each month as additional victims are identified and memorialized. Each stone is hand designed and made. As we continued on to the historical center of the city, the warm weather and sun made for a great day to do a lot of walking. We exited the train station and saw Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, as well as the U.S. and other world embassies. 

Standing in front of the gate, Megan not only told us about the history of the gate but also specifically its location in the “Death Strip” while the Berlin Wall was up. Putting it there made is so that no one had access to it, but also allowed it to remain protected. It was one of the few monuments that survived WWII, making it all the more important to continue to protect. After walking underneath the gate, we crossed over to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe to meet our tour guide, Charlotte.

Charlotte began by giving us some history about the memorial’s creation and then allowed us time to explore the memorial, encouraging us to experience the memorial in solitary reflection.  After walking through the memorial’s undulating design and observing the cement blocks, we gathered to share our individual reflections on the memorial’s meaning. Charlotte explained that the designer intentionally left the memorial’s meaning up to visitor interpretation because he argued that if he offered an interpretation, others would take the interpretation and move on. By not giving an interpretation, the memorial invites people to continue to look for meaning and learn more about those who were murdered. This causes people to live with and reckon with the Holocaust rather than forget.  In our group reflection, people compared the concrete block design and wavy ground to the sea, a videogame, and the experience of drowning. We debated how visitors should behave among the blocks, discussing what it means to interact with a memorial.  This discussion prepared us to be thoughtful observers of the monuments that we would visit on the remainder of our tour.  

We continued on our tour of Holocaust and WWII memorials, crossing into Tiergarten Park to see memorials created for other victims. First, we learned about the Roma and Sinti people, an underrepresented, yet large, group of victims. We spent some time looking at the reflecting pool memorial to this group and learned that the flowers are changed out daily. Afterwards, we saw a Soviet-era memorial to fallen Russian soldiers created just after the war’s end, which was an interesting comparison to more contemporary memorials, as this memorial projected a sense of power and glory rather than the quiet contemplation of the earlier memorials. We continued our walk through Tiergarten and saw the more modern memorial to LGBTQ victims of the Holocaust. We learned that the video seen through the memorial’s window is changed every two years, making this a memorial that continues to evolve.

 

Finally, we finished our tour at the former location of a villa that became a headquarters for Action T4 (a program designed by the Nazis to kill mentally and physically handicapped people during the early years of WWII) and is now the Memorial and Information Center for the Victims of the Nazi Euthenasia Program. The blue glass memorial was accompanied by information panels about this lesser known group, informing us about yet another group impacted by the Holocaust and how this memorial was built with a focus on accessibility through its design. This is the most recent memorial to victims in the Tiergarten area. There is currently a group working to propose a memorial to Jehovah’s Witnesses that were murdered by the Nazis. After a morning full of reflection and learning, we said goodbye and thanked our awesome tour guide. 

Next, we headed to KERB Berlin to grab some grub for lunch. We then took a walk up into the glass dome of the Reichstag, a historic legislative government building that houses an exhibition on the building’s parliamentary history. There, we were able to learn the story of the building from its origins to the present day. We were able to climb all the way to the top of the dome, where we were able to view the city of Berlin from a high vantage point.

Following our time at the Reichstag building, we ventured onward to the Topography of Terror, a government-funded indoor and outdoor museum located on the former site of the SS Reich Security Main Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen, and Gestapo. We spent the first half or so on the outdoor portion of the site, where an exhibition trench lined the former Gestapo “house prison” cellar walls. The panels, protected by a glass roof (allowing us to view the excavated cellar ruins directly behind the information stations), detailed the history of the former government quarter’s ministries. 

  

The indoor portion of the museum, where we spent the second half of our stint, provided us with a deep dive into the bureaucratic and systematic nature of Nazi crimes through five distinct chapters: “The Nationalist Socialist Takeover” (how the Nazis seized power and began dismantling their own democratic institutions), “Institutions of Terror” (structure and development of the SS and Gestapo), “Terror, Persecution, and Extermination in the Reich” (terror inflicted on political opponents and “socially marginalized” groups such as asocials and homosexuals), “SS and Reich Security Main Office in the Occupied Territories” (expansion of the terror system across Europe during WWII), and “The End of the War and the Post-War Period” (collapse of the regime).

After exploring the indoor and outdoor exhibitions of the Topography of Terror, we convened as a group to reflect upon what we learned and experienced through interacting with the physical remnants of the Holocaust. We had the opportunity to ask questions and engage with the material a little more before departing. From there, our day concluded with dinner at Bangkok Bites, where we enjoyed Thai food and several boisterous rounds of Psychologist.

Back at the hotel we did our nightly “GRIP” session - gratitudes, reflection, information, and plan for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be our last full day in Berlin and we look forward to exploring another new area of the city.

Annie and Katherine