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Berlin is an interesting city; it was almost leveled to the ground after WWII in order to take Germany, and since has been rebuilt; much of it is replicas of what it used to be, but there are also many modern buildings that have taken the place of the older, more German buildings, and the old European layout. Much like Paris, it has grand boulevards, which too was the result of more modern city planning. Ever since WWII, Berlin has been the hostage of colliding ideologies, Communism and Democracy. It just cant seem to catch a break!
Many feel like Berlin is not German enough, and that it lacks the European city feel. I guess that is characterized by smaller streets, smaller cars, and a half-hazard labrynth type city plan; it is much more westernized, and closer to Paris than any other city I have seen. I can actually find my way in Berlin! The subway system actually makes sense!
Berlin is a city that is ever changing, as it has been the seat of so many regimes, each one diametrically opposed to the last. Kaisers and Kings used to rule Prussia, then that ended after WWI, then the Weimar Republic happened, then the Nazi's took over, then WWII ended that, then Berlin was split up into many different pieces, with East Berlin going to the Soviets, and the other parts going to other allied powers, all who hated the Nazi's, and tore down all of their monuments. Then, the Soviets fell, and the wall came down, and then democracy ruled again, which tore down all the soviet stuff. Each new regime hated the old, or was an enemy of the old, and thus tore down all the old monuments, leveled buildings, and so forth, and built their own buildings and memorials. The result is a somewhat new Berlin; it is surprisingly new considering that it is several centuries old. Most everything that I saw in East Berlin was less than 100 years old, as WWII was really the most humbling thing that ever happened to the city, as the Soviets bombed the crap out of it, and invaded with 3 million troops.
I started off tracing the Berlin Wall, which is a vestage of the Communists doing everything they could to stop a mass exodus from communism to freedom. What a chilling thing, to have guard towers, barbed wire, dogs, and a 10 foot wall keeping an entire generation from freedom. Most of the Nazi buildings had been razed, but a few still stood, such as the old Nazi air force command, which was now the Ministry of Finance.
Checkpoint Charlie, the place where you could check in to cross over from the West to the east, and where Soviet Guards were face to face w/ American guards, was a bit of a disappointment. It is famous, but it is nothing close to what it looked like, and has become more of a place for tourists to spend money than anything else. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews was very interesting, and was composed of 3000 concrete blocks of differing height; the interpretation of this art is yet to be fully understood, but it stands as a monument to the worst genocide in human history.
There were a couple of Wow moments, such as the Berliner Dom, or the Berlin Cathedral. It was fantastic on the outside, and got even better on the inside.
My second day of exploring Berlin, was not a good one on several levels. I toured the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, just about 45 minutes north of Berlin. The camp was considered to be perfect, and nobody ever escaped from the camp. It was built in an equilateral triangle, and was the model for many other concentration camp because it was the perfect design, and very efficient. Barracks no longer than 35m long housed up to 400 people, and it was incredibly abysmal. Looking at the cramped and disgusting conditions, I was reminded of the Middle Passage, where so many slaves were cramped onto these small boats and treated like animals. The stench of death was about the place, and looking around at this triangle, it was difficult to take in that so many thousands of people died here. This was not a death camp, where the primary purpose was to kill people; it was a concentration camp, which only meant it was supposed to concentrate undesirables, and take them out of society, and concentrate them somewhere else. This was primarily a labor camp, but the labor was borderline torture. As the war went on, these workers got more valuable, and so the killings went down, but still, there was mass killings by shooting, which caused the SS to have high problems with drugs and alcohol from the emotional toll it took, which got them to take different measures, shooting people in the back of the head while they thought they were being measured, and then burning their bodies in massive furnaces. There were 20 tons of ash underneath the ground of all the bodies. The smoke would have billowed out over the region, but people didn't know for sure what was going on. Rather, about 95% heard rumors of what the Nazi's were doing, but could never confirm it.
I did my best to distance myself from all the death, and all the evil, in order to just keep my sanity. Every person had a story, the thousands that were killed here had families, and all had lives like I do. It was terrible what happened there.
Unfortunately, Genocides continue today, because we have not done enough to confront the mistakes of the past. There are even world leaders who are audacious enough to claim that the Holocaust never took place, but rather that the best documented genocide in history is all an overstatement, and even a hoax. An interesting theory that is.
Berlin is down, and now, it is time to enjoy Prague, even if it is raining cats and dogs.
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