Berlin Pt 1- History of the City

We had a great time in Berlin this last weekend. We both learned so much and thought it was cool to see where so much history has occurred. I'm going to give a lot of details abut the things we learned so that we'll never forget it. Germany has a really dark past so its going to be some pretty sad stuff, but some good, too. So for those of you who already know these things, or don't care to hear it from me, just skip on past all the writing. I have a ton of pictures, so I'm splitting them up into 3 parts.

Day 1 and 3 were spent seeing different things around the city. (Day 2 was spent at a concentration camp. Those pictures will be in another post since there are so many). Berlin is much different than Prague in a lot of ways. Nearly everything was demolished in WWII-- mostly during the last two weeks of the war, when British and Canadian planes bombed Berlin 24 hours a day. Because of this, most of the buildings are more modern and nothing too special. The buildings that did survive, were still severely damaged from bombs and had to be re-constructed. So, there's actually not a ton to see but it was still cool to be in a place where so many things happened. Mostly, there are just monuments about certain aspects of the city's history. The coolest thing, I thought, was the part of the wall they left up.

The pictures below give a general idea of what the city looks like. The building on the bottom left with the German flag flying is the Reichstag Building; Hitlers capital which now houses German Parliament. When the Soviets invaded Berlin, Joseph Stalin wanted a picture of a soviet soldier waving a flag from the roof of the Reichstag for propaganda purposes. It took them five days and an estimated 3000-5000 lives to claim the building. Just to put that into perspective, on D-day, 2,700 lives were lost on the allied side. That means that almost twice as many people died taking over that one building than died taking an entire country (France). It was the most expensive photo ever taken (costing almost 5,000 lives).

These next pictures are of a catholic cathedral (definitely the biggest in the city). It has been mostly re-constructed, but the black-ish part is left over from the smoke of fires and bombs during the war.

This is the somewhat famous Brandenburg Gate located at what used to be the entrance of the city about 500-800 years ago, but is now smack dab in the middle. (Interesting fact: Germany didn't become it's own country until 1871. Before that it was part of Prussia, but Berlin was still the capital).

Now for what I learned about the Berlin Wall (from a tour we did one day):

-- The Berlin Wall didn't exist until 1961, 17 years after the end of WWII and was up until 1989.

-- Germany as a country was divided into East and West (this I knew) and Berlin was located in the East part of the country. Berlin was also divided, which meant that West Berlin was completely surrounded on all sides, like an island, by East Germany. Therefore, the Berlin Wall extended around all of West Berlin, forming a circle.

-- There were actually 2 walls with a 300 meter "death strip" in between where there were land mines and towers with machine guns to shoot people to death if they were caught in between. Around 300 people were actually shot in the death strip while trying to escape East Germany.

-- The wall was put up in 8 hours and torn down 28 years later by the bare hands of German citizens. The story of the wall coming down is truly amazing (and too long to write here) that when the tour guide was telling it we were getting goosebumps and got a tad emotional.

This is the only part of the wall that remains today. It's purpose: just for people to see. It is no longer blocking or restraining anything.

This is Checkpoint Charlie, the gate where the United States and other allied nations could get to West Berlin from East Berlin through the Wall.

This is the site where Hitler's bunker was located; right under this parking lot is where he shot himself during the last few months of the war.

This memorial below was built for the 5.3 million Jews that died in the Holocaust. People of Jewish faith have a tradition where they place stones on top of a grave sight, symbolizing permanence. This field of blocks represents stones placed on an enormous grave sight dedicated to those that lost their lives merely because of what they believed in.

An additional 5 million people died alongside the Jews in the Holocaust, including communists, political opponents, homosexuals and mentally handicapped people. This brings the total to roughly 10 million people murdered because of ignorance and hatred. It is absolutely bewildering to me what people are capable of when they are "blinded by the craftiness of men". I pray that we will never forget what happened.

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana

{ P.S. The next post will be more uplifting...} :)