A walking tour in Berlin

Steve was quite miserable last night with coughing and a headache.  My sinuses were draining causing me to cough and cough.

But then, in the morning, we got moving, and though our noses constantly needed clearing, we enjoyed the sights and the learning.

 

I had used Tripsite to find us a walking tour for the day.  I chose one that would touch on Checkpoint Charlie (the heavily guarded passage way between East and West Berlin during the cold war) and some of the other highlights including the bookburning memorial. 

The tour guide told us that the places we were walking by were in ruins when the World War ended in 1945.  Much of the massive buildings have been rebuilt in a way for them to still look old.  Not all the damage has been erased.  This was on purpose, to keep the memory of the war in their minds.

He showed us pictures of the area by the Gate being used for pomp and circumstance.  And then he showed a picture of it at the end of WWII.

Today there was music and the beginnings of the celebration that will be on Thursday, May eighth.  That is the day the Soviets liberated Berlin eighty years ago.

We stood in the place where the huge pile of books was burned as part of the Third Reich controlling people's minds.  A lot of times intimidation and other acts were done by follower's of the Reich and not men in uniform.

All the time I am reminded of MAGA folks and their name calling and hate for anyone opposed to their ideals.

In a PBS article in the topic of the book burning reads, "On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books."   

There were ceremonies and speeches.  You can read a great article about it here.

Here is another quote from that article:

"In Berlin 40,000 people gathered to hear German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels give a speech in Berlin's Opera Square. He declared "the era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. ... The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. ... And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past."

Radio stations broadcast the Berlin speeches, songs, and ceremonial incantations to countless German listeners. Widespread newspaper coverage called the "Action against the Un-German Spirit" a success. "

I can't help but think about what has been happening in the USA under the Trump administration. Our history erased from school classes and any mention of women, black or gay people erased from the digital records.  

People, not government officials, have been demanding some books be removed from libraries and more. 

There has been a movement to control what people think and the news they hear. It may have started with Rush Limbaugh?

On our walking tour we saw the wall.  I learned, (I am ashamed I didn't know this) that the wall went around West Berlin. 

After the war the allies split up the territory to help rebuild, police, and make sure the Reich didn't rise again.  

Russia had East Berlin and the surrounding area.  It wasn't treating the Germans very well and over the years they started to lose the smart young people.  So they started to restrict people from going to West Berlin.  First with barbed wire fencing and then with a wall.

By Checkpoint Charlie there is a fenced off area with kiosks, beach chairs and artificial palm trees..  It is right in the middle of huge buildings and parking lots. 

There were pictures on the fence showing how Checkpoint Charlie used to look.  Tanks from East and West facing each other during the cold war.  Seeing that made me realize how close we came to war.  Just one soldier spooked and firing and we would have been at war with Russia.

Fortunately, after the wall was taken down, bricks were laid in the pavement where the wall used to be.

The American Embassy has a Statue of Liberty with a different shape.

On our way to find a snack we passed some pocked marked pillars by an art museum.

We went back to the Memorial to the Lost Jewish Lives.  

Below the above-ground blocks is more of the memorial.  The blocks were not perfectly straight up, some leaned into the aisle.  And walking among the tall ones you can't see around the corner so the feeling is uncertainty, will someone be coming from the side passage and surprise you?  Our tour guide had explained that unease and uncertainty was the goal of the artist that designed it.  This is how the Jewish person felt as the rules and life was changing constantly in Germany.

The memorial was a bit frustrating.  We had the audio tour. It didn't always make sense.  What was clear was real people with real lives were taken away and killed or worked to death.  A few survived.

We stopped for ice cream on the way home.  Black vanilla was something new to try.

Tomorrow I will tell you about our last day in Berlin.  We will be riding a train to Prague tomorrow.

Thanks Ann and Fred, I'm Ruth, Jim, Louise, Anonymous and Anonymous for the emails and comments.  Lol.  I am loving it.