Berlin, Germany

Today our port was Warnemunde (Rostock), Germany. We left early and took a train further inland (2+ hour train ride).

We started in Oranienburg where the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was. The camp is open as a memorial and many of the buildings are gone but labelled with markers. This camp was one of the earlier concentration camps, opened in 1936 and intended to be a model for later camps. It was a work camp, opened before the Nazis developed extermination camps, but they did experiment with various methods of executions there. Early on it housed political opponents, but it did also have an area for Jewish prisoners. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned here between 1936 and 1945. Unknown numbers were killed or died here from mistreatment and starvation. Days before the camp was liberated, the Nazis moved thousands of prisoners out on a death march. About 3,000 sick prisoners were left behind and were liberated by Soviet and Polish troops in 1945. The Soviets continued to use the camps from 1945-1950 to house political prisoners, putting approximately 60,000 people there in that time. Of course, many of them also died.

It was incredibly moving to visit this concentration camp. It is so mind boggling how this could have been done, but it is incredibly important to remember…especially when there are people out there who deny the Holocaust.

From Oranieburg we went on to Berlin. As a child I was able to visit West Germany, but it was strongly recommended that we not go to West Berlin as it was in the middle of East Germany and the East German officials weren’t open to having pastors (as my dad was) enter their country. Having watched the fall of the Berlin wall on TV as a late teenager, it was great to get to see this city in person.

We had the opportunity to see many historical sites. We started out at the Reichstag, the building for the old German parliament. Today, after surviving WWII damaged but repairable, it is again a parliament building, but is known as the Bundestag.

From there we walked to the Brandenburg Gate. On the way there were cobblestone markers where the Berlin wall once stood along with a small memorial to those who were killed at the Berlin wall. The Brandenburg Gate was built in 1789 to celebrate the victories of the Prussians. It was one of the crossing points of the Berlin wall and is a huge historical site.

We then walked on to see the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Our guide says that this memorial is somewhat controversial as some feel it is inappropriate to have a Holocaust Memorial in the center of where the Nazis were. It is a somewhat plain memorial, with over 2000 concrete rectangles of various heights, but it is surprisingly moving to stand in the center of it. From the memorial our guide pointed out a tree that is basically where Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Odd proximity. I can understand why there are some who don’t like the memorial placed here, but maybe it is best to overshadow the evil that occurred there with the memorial itself.

After the memorial, we drove to a remaining portion of the Berlin wall. There are a couple of segments of the wall with metal posts marking where the was was between them. There is another memorial here to those that died at the wall.

After that we took the train back to our ship. It was a long, but very interesting and moving day in Germany.