Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp, not a death camp. However, it was the camp where the Nazis started experimenting to find the “most effective way to mass murder”. We went into ‘Station Z’. They told Jewish soviet prisoners of war that they were going in for a medical exam. One by one, they would enter the exam room, and they would be shot in the back of the head through a hole in the wall by a soldier on the other side. While we were in there a group of Israeli students were praying and crying in a circle. This made basically every member of my group lose it. It was an extremely powerful and moving experience and I good first step before we go to Auschwitz in Poland in a few weeks.

What is Art? Who is it for?

I’m becoming more and more of a pretentious art snob, sorry about it. I’ve lost track of the number of galleries we’ve been to on this trip. We’re studying basically every era of paintings, architecture, poetry, cabaret, and I don’t even know what else. Gabriel is definitely to blame for my new interest in the arts. He just makes it so interesting, and so fun. He took a few of us on a walk through the Pergamon Museum in Berlin the other day. He’d have us walk into a room with our heads down looking at the floor, guiding us in and place us where he wished. He would then tell us to all look up… and BAM! Ishtar Gate, or BAM! super old Pergamon Alter. Gabriel told us to take future girlfriends there and do that, and if they don’t say “WOW” then they’re not marriage material. I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s done this… after all, we’re talking about the guy who unsuccessfully tried to woo French chicks at Oxford with German romantic art.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin

I can’t get over how awesome Berlin is! This week we have had more class, been to more museums and gone on more tours than ever, and yet this has still been the most fun week of the semester! I knew I would like it here, but I never thought I’d love it this much! We’ve had a culture overload. We’ve experienced everything from Bach to cross dressing cabaret. Fun highlights from the week include group karaoke, a giant chocolate factory, dessert (Kihlstrom cookies) and a classical music performance at Gabriel flat, a wine bar, museums (yes they were actually fun, thanks to Gabe), and so much more. 

This was a very serious week as well though, and this significantly added to Berlin being one of the best weeks of my life. Gabriel gave an extremely insightful lecture on the timeline of the holocaust; there was so much that I either didn’t know, I had misunderstood, or I was flat out wrong about. We took the train to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp the next morning and had an extremely moving experience there (I’ll write about my visit there in a separate post). Gabe led us on a walking tour around Berlin and showed us the Nazi’s lasting impact on the city; we also worshiped in a Nazified church in a Berlin suburb. The hour I will remember most from my week in Berlin is the hour that that a woman name Gila told us her life story. She was born in Berlin in 1941, her father was an important Nazi commander on the Soviet front, and her mother was a blue blooded woman who could’t take care of herself, not to mention her kids. Gila was a “problem child” to her parents and was always asking questions about the war and holocaust (a HUGE no-no in post war Germany). She eventually married a Israeli and her father disowned her. She is such an amazing woman and her whole story about her life as a ‘revolutionary’ is unbelievable! I recorded it on my computer and I will never forget it. The best part was when she describer her grandkids. One of her daughters married a Jew and lives in Israel. Two of her sons (Gila’s grandsons) are in the Israeli Army. Meaning, those Israeli soldiers’ great grandfather was a Nazi. Gila said that if her dad knew his great-grandkids were jews in the Israeli Army, he would roll in his grave. 

We’ve defiantly spent the most time as a whole group here. We’d have class most mornings from 9:00 to 12:30, a two hour break, then back for cabaret class from 2:30 to 6:30. At first, I was ready to explode from just pure annoyance. I don’t like huge noisy groups no matter who’s there, so this trip and this past week in particular has been a real challenge for me. I’ve slowly (very slowly) been getting more tolerant of our time as a group. I enjoy basically everyone here individually, it’s just when all 43 of us are in the same room (or bus) for hours upon hours I get extremely agitated. 

I’m really bummed we’re leaving Berlin, it’s been a blast! I cannot believe how fast this semester is flying by! I want time to stop so I can soak up every moment. We’re on our way to Dresden for the night, then off to Prague! What’s great about the rest of the trip is that after tonight, we’re in most places for a good amount of time (5-7 days each), no more of these three nights and leave (Oxford, Bayeux, Bruges, Amsterdam).

ghosts

The history of Germany does cast somewhat of a shadow over Berlin. Despite attempts of the previous generation to cover it up, there is evidence of Hitler and the Nazis all over. From mass graves to buildings covered in bullet holes, this city is scarred by it’s past. It does not ruin the city though, but adds to it. The city lives on, and has moved on. In the past the Germans have tried to rebuild Berlin, trying to cover up these scars. But the new generation has realized that it needs to accept the past in order to move forward. 

During our walking tour, led by Gabriel obviously, we got an inside look into Berlin’s past. He brought us to a cemetery with multiple mass graves, tucked between two buildings, almost hidden away. We walked around the city with old pictures from the 1930s and 1940s and lined them up with their current locations. We saw churches on fire and squares filled with Nazi flags and soldiers. It was creepy walking through places we knew Hitler had too walked. We ended our day above Hitler’s bunker, the place where he killed himself when the Soviets marched into Berlin. Gabriel had interviewed a former Nazi radioman who was in the bunker for the last days of Hitler. This man was actually the very last person the be alive in the bunker, after Hitler and Eva Braun had killed themselves. This man was charged with the duty of taking their bodies from the bunker and burning them in the park. We saw the area he burned Hitler. I still haven’t processed what I felt when I saw that area of grass. It’s now just a patch of green behind some low income housing.

Just a few hundred feet from where Hitler burned was the holocaust memorial. It consists of 2,711 of metal rectangles at all different heights, spaced out in rows that you can walk through (like a grid/maze). As I walked through, I recalled what I’ve seen and learned about the holocaust. I felt pain the the pit of my stomach. I cannot imagine what it’s going to feel like walking through the concentration and death camps soon.  

We also saw a memorial in the square where the book burnings took place. There’s a plate of glass on the ground in the middle of the area that looks down into a large underground room. Around the entire perimeter of the room, from floor to ceiling, there is a long book shelf warping around. It is big enough to fit the 20,000 books that were burned. The glass plate is designed to reflect the person looking down into the chamber. Since it’s triple paned glass, the reflection is blurred, giving it a ghostly look. “The burning of books is followed by the burning of people” is the general feel from the memorial. 

A plaque above a mass grave

The park where Hitler's body was burned

Holocaust Memorial (from inside)

Holocaust Memorial (from above)

Book burning memorial

BERLIN

Sorry Amsterdam, but you held the honor of being my favorite city in Europe for about 48 hours. That is, until I got to Berlin. Take everything I liked about Amsterdam and multiply it by ten, then take away all the negative aspects of Amsterdam, add more history and more people... that will give you Berlin. This city rocks the socks off of Europe. I now understand why Gabriel got the heck out of London and has been living here for the past decade. I thought that the ghost of its past would make this city somewhat uncomfortable to be in, but I was wrong. There is so much history here, and that can be a bit eerie sometimes (I’ll talk details about what the Nazis left behind in a later post). But overall, this city is so much fun and has so much culture.

I’ve been looking forward to Berlin since I joined this team last year, and it has not disappointed. This is going to be an awesome week. I am, however, trying to prepare myself for the horrors I’m going to see in both Germany and Poland. We’re going to multiple concentration camps and different locations of some horrific World War II events. It’s going to be a challenge going from those sights one day, to group karaoke the next day, then to live classical music in Gabe’s apartment, then back to the death camps. Wow, Europe Semester is incredible.