A sculpture in front of a Jewish cemetery in central Berlin. The cemetery was destroyed, by order of Joseph Goebbels, in 1943; only one gravestone remains: the grave of Moses Mendelssohn, the great 18th-century German-Jewish philosopher.
Memorial to the Herbert Baum Groups (German-Jewish resistance group).
http://www.juden-im-widerstand.de/en/index.html
This includes the famous quotation from Heinrich Heine, the great Romantic-era German-Jewish poet: "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
Hannah Arendt wrote a great book about the trial of Adolf Eichmann. This is where the memorial begins; this article describes it far better than I can:
http://isurvived.org/InTheNews/Memorial2MurderedJews.html
You can see the name of Ernst Thaelmann, leader of the German Communists who was imprisoned soon after Hitler took power, and who died in Buchenwald eleven years later.
This memorial includes the names of the 96 members of the Communist and Socialist parties who were members of the pre-1933 parliament (Reichstag), and who were murdered by the Nazis.
As you can see, the memorial is prominently displayed, right in front of the Reichstag building (a big tourist attraction). And, in general -- as this collection of photos demonstrates -- there are memorials to the Nazi period throughout the city. Over the last 30 years, Germany has done a good job in dealing with its wartime past, educating its citizens, etc. (better than, for example, many other European countries with grisly colonialist/imperialist histories. King Leopold II, for example, is still a hero to many Belgians; his image would certainly suffer if everyone read Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost," which wouldn't be a bad idea).
On this site in May 1942, the Baum group attempted to burn down an antisemitic/anticommunist exhibit staged by Goebbels. It was a dramatic act of resistance, but led to the arrests and executions of most of the group's members.
This plague adorns the front of an apartment building in our neighborhood; Sala and Martin Kochmann were members of the Baum Groups, and they organized anti-Nazi activities from their home in this building.
The German chancellor, Willy Brandt, spontaneously fell to his knees in front of a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising while making an official visit to the Polish capital in 1970. This is considered a profound moment in Germany's confrontation with its past and acknowledgment of its crimes. The photo is of a poster for an exhibit taking place this month in Berlin. (Brandt, by the way, was a member of the SPD, and during the Third Reich was a member of a small, left-wing opposition group.)
The biggest Jewish synagogue in Berlin; it was partially destroyed on Kristallnacht, and almost completely destroyed by bombing in 1945, but rebuilt in recent years. It is emblematic of the resurrection of Jewish life in Berlin in recent years.
The NPD is the largest far-right, racist group in Germany. They attempted to march past the big synagogue in Berlin in Dec. 2001 (the police re-routed them in a different direction). The persistence of neo-Nazism is troubling, to say the least; but what you can't see in this photo is that 50,000 Berliners came out to protest against the racists (50,001, including myself).
Statue by Käthe Kollwitz, the great German artist. Kollwitz was a pacifist, and lost her son in WWI; this "pieta"-like image captures the sense of loss and despair that she (and millions of others) experienced during that war, and it has a timeless quality. It is accompanied by the text, "Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny," and is visited by many hundreds of people each day. Needless to say, the Nazis did not appreciate her artwork or her pacifism; her international fame prevented them from arresting her, but she was not able to work during the Third Reich, and she died only two weeks before the end of the war.
Google "otto weidt jewishvirtual library" for the story of this remarkable and courageous individual, who ran a "workshop for the blind" in Berlin and helped many Jews survive the Third Reich. (He was non-Jewish, and was later recognized as a "Righteous Person" by Yad Vashem.)
Hans and Sophie Scholl, college students in Munich, organized a resistance group. This street in central Berlin is named for them. They were arrested and executed in 1944.
The Third Reich wasn't the only oppressive regime Germans have suffered under; although I wouldn't compare the two, East Germany wasn't too pleasant, and in 1953 a massive workers' uprising broke out; it is commemorated in a park near us.
In the Nov. 9-10, 1938 pogrom, the National Socialists burnt it down."
Murals adorn a portion of the old Berlin Wall
Moses Mendelssohn's lonely grave is in corner, right side of photo
In the graveyard destroyed by the Gestapo in 1943.
Dutch anarcho-communist who was accused of setting the Reichstag Fire (Feb. '33), seized upon by the Nazis to consolidate their rule, round up opponents, etc.
Presumably a member of the KPD, given the red star, and the date of his murder.
... deported 1942, murdered in Riga." Memorial stone on sidewalk on Auguststr., Mitte district.
This photo album is focused on the Holocaust and its memorialization, but one also sees in Berlin many things that are a lot more uplifting, so to speak, such as this poster for a concert later this summer.
From Wikipedia: "The West-Eastern Divan is a youth orchestra based in Sevilla, Spain, consisting of musicians from countries in the Middle East, of Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian background. The Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said founded the orchestra in 1999, and named the ensemble after an anthology of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....The aim of the West-Eastern Divan is to promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and pave the way for a peaceful and fair solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
Arrested for resistance activity in July 1944, murdered in prison March 1945; 4 Riemannstrasse, a block from my apartment
From their website:
Topography of Terror Documentation Center
Between 1933 and 1945, the central institutions of Nazi persecution and terror were located on the grounds of the present-day “Topography of Terror.”
Since 1987, the permanent exhibition “Topography of Terror” has informed the public about this historic site.
The new Documentation Center and the redesigned historic grounds are opened since May 7, 2010.
From Wikipedia:
The buildings that housed the Gestapo and SS headquarters were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945 and the ruins demolished after the war. The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin ran along the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, so the street soon became a fortified boundary, and the Berlin Wall ran along the south side of the street, renamed Niederkirchnerstrasse, from 1961 to 1989. The wall here was never demolished.
Siemens (sponsor of Real Madrid football team) had at least 93 factories in Berlin, at which at least 15,000 people served as forced laborers -- including Herbert Baum and some other members of this underground resistance group.
...of Jewish people who, desperate to save themselves, were enticed into serving as "Jew catchers" for the Nazis.
"permanent exhibit: The Nazi Paradise. War, Lies, Gestapo. How much longer?"
This was in response to an exhibit Goebbels staged in May 1942 called "The Soviet Paradise," which was later firebombed by the Baum Groups.
