Tempelhof aeroport
The Nazi eagle, shorn of its swastika, still remains. Amongst the first projects the Nazis undertook
with the
reconstruction of Berlin was the planned renovation of Berlin's Tempelhof International Airport, which
began in 1934. Tempelhof was dramatically redesigned as the gateway to
Europe, and became the forerunner of today's modern airports. Indeed,
the airport halls and the neighbouring buildings are still known as the
largest built entities worldwide, and Tempelhof has been described by
British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". The
building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with
semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar
roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at
air and ground demonstrations. However, although under construction for
more than ten years, it was never finished because of the war. Tempelhof
was one of Europe's three iconic pre-war airports, the others being
London's now defunct Croydon Airport and the old Paris–Le Bourget
Airport. It acquired a further iconic status as the centre of the Berlin
Airlift of 1948–49.
The
Nazi enlargement of Berlin's Tempelhof aeroport grandiosely
demonstrated their aims at enlarging Germany's influence in Europe. The
airport's eagle design clearly conveys that "the Eagle of Germany" would
again take to the skies, to fly higher than ever before. Coupled with
other Nazi architectural accomplishments, like the 1936 Olympic Stadium,
and Nuremberg Zeppelin Tribune, were assuredly profound propaganda
victories for the Nazi regime.
In
the 1930s, Tempelhof was at the forefront of European air traffic with
its traffic volume, ahead of Paris, Amsterdam and even London. The
limits of the technical possibilities were soon reached, and in January
1934 the first planning work for a new building for a large airport on
the Tempelhofer Feld began. In July 1935, the architect Ernst Sagebiel
received the planning order for the new building from the Reich Aviation
Ministry, which reflected both the new urban planning ideas and the
monumental architecture under the Nazis and had to anticipate the
development of aviation for a longer period of time. The airport was
planned to handle up to six million passengers a year. The facility was
intended not only for air traffic, but also serve for events such as the
Reichsflugtag and provide a seat for as many aviation-related agencies
and institutions as possible. This new building also met all the
requirements of a military airfield at the time.  |
| Hitler and Göring at Tempelhof, 1932 |
The
early Nazi concentration camp Columbia, which was opened on December
27, 1934, was located directly at the new building and had operated
until November 5, 1936 and demolished in 1938. A 1994 memorial designed
by Georg Seibert and the Friends' Association for the commemoration of
Nazi crimes on and around the Tempelhofer Flugfeld eV commemorates the
existence of the Columbia concentration camp since 1994.
From
January 1940 until early 1944, Weser Flugzeugbau assembled Junkers Ju
87 "Stuka" dive bombers; thereafter, it assembled Focke-Wulf Fw 190
fighter planes in the still unfurnished main hall and hangars 3 to 7 of
the new terminal, which were supplied by a railway and trucks via a
connecting tunnel.[16] Hangars 1 and 2 were not used to assemble
aircraft as these were already used by Luft Hansa for its own planes.
Aircraft parts were brought in from all over the city while complete
aircraft engines were trucked to Tempelhof. Once the airframes were
complete and the engines had been installed, the finished aircraft were
flown out. The Luftwaffe did not use Tempelhof as a military airfield
during the war, except for occasional emergency landings by fighter
aircraft.
A decapitated reichsadler in front of the aeroport with how it originally appeared on the roof with victorious Red Army soldiers, May 1945 below. 
When the front approached at the end of April 1945, the airport was to
be defended. The airport commander at the time, Colonel Rudolf Böttger,
and some senior Lufthansa employees circumvented this order, however, by
having the weapons provided and setting up a field hospital. This did
not lead to a defence of the airport, which could have led to its
complete destruction. According to Wikipedia, Böttger evaded Adolf
Hitler's extermination order to blow up the entire complex by suicide.
However, according to other sources he was called upon by an officer of
the Waffen ϟϟ
for insubordination and shot. In fact, the concrete floor of the main
hall was blown up, so that it fell onto the luggage level below and the
main hall became unusable. On April 29 1945 Red Army troops occupied the
Tempelhof district and the airport. The new buildings were largely
spared from destruction, but there were several fires that also severely
damaged the steel structure of the hall buildings. The buildings of the
old airport were completely destroyed and the airfield was littered
with impacts. The underground bunker with the film archive also burned
down completely, and all films were destroyed in the process.
When the front approached at the end of April 1945, the airport was to
be defended. The airport commander at the time, Colonel Rudolf Böttger,
and some senior Lufthansa employees circumvented this order, however, by
having the weapons provided and setting up a field hospital. This did
not lead to a defence of the airport, which could have led to its
complete destruction. According to Wikipedia, Böttger evaded Adolf
Hitler's extermination order to blow up the entire complex by suicide.
However, according to other sources he was called upon by an officer of
the Waffen ϟϟ
for insubordination and shot. In fact, the concrete floor of the main
hall was blown up, so that it fell onto the luggage level below and the
main hall became unusable. On April 29 1945 Red Army troops occupied the
Tempelhof district and the airport. The new buildings were largely
spared from destruction, but there were several fires that also severely
damaged the steel structure of the hall buildings. The buildings of the
old airport were completely destroyed and the airfield was littered
with impacts. The underground bunker with the film archive also burned
down completely, and all films were destroyed in the process. On
July 2, 1945, the Red Army left the airfield so that it could be taken
over by the Americans (473rd Air Services Group) before their official
arrival on July 4.
The
airport was given a new meaning in 1948 when, along with the Gatow
airfield and later Tegel Airport, it served to transport food and goods
for Berlin by plane during the blockade of West Berlin through the
valiant efforts of the RAF and USAAF. A large part of the cargo
consisted of fuel. The vital supply through the Berlin Airlift between
various West German cities and Berlin lasted from June 26, 1948 to May
12, 1949. In Tempelhof, the planes took off and landed at roughy
ninety-second intervals. The American pilot Gail Halvorsen popularised
the dropping of candy during the approach to Tempelhof with parachutes
made of handkerchiefs from the cockpit windows, which was adopted by
other pilots and gave the aircraft the legendary name of raisin
bombers. The southern runway was built for the smooth operation of the
airlift.
Tempelhof
Airport closed all operations on October 30, 2008, despite considerable
protest. The former airfield has subsequently been used as a
recreational space known as Tempelhofer Feld. In September 2015 it was
announced that Tempelhof would also become an emergency refugee camp.
The swastikas return to allow Tom Cruise to make his movie Valkyrie
Nearby, Volkssturm along Hermannstrasse. Beevor (302) writes of how
The remnants of his `Norge' and `Danmark' regiments were waiting impatiently by the canal for motor transport, which was having difficulty getting to them through the rubble-blocked streets. Just as the trucks finally arrived, a cry of alarm was heard: `Panzer durchgebrochen!' This cry prompted a surge of `tank fright' even among hardened veterans and a chaotic rush for the vehicles, which presented an easy target for the two T-34s that had broken through. The trucks that got away even had men clinging on to the outsides. As they escaped north up the Hermannstrasse, they saw scrawled on a house wall `SS traitors extending the war!' There was no doubt in their minds as to the culprits: `German Communists at work. Were we going to have to fight against the enemy within as well?Treptower Park
During
my 2021 Bavarian International School class trip and as it appeared in a
photograph taken in 1955 by Estella Burket, a teacher at Deseronto
Public School, Deseronto, Ontario, in the Dominion of Canada. After
the war, four Soviet memorial sites were
created by the Red Army in the urban area of Berlin.
These sites are not only monuments to the victory over Germany, but also serve as Soviet war grave sites in Germany. The
central monument is this, the complex in Treptow Park. The memorial in
the Schönholzer Heide, the memorial in the Tiergarten and the
memorial at Bucher castle grounds were also built for this purpose.
A contest had been organised by the Soviet Command for the design of the
memorial in Berlin-Treptow, to which 33 drafts were submitted. From
June 1946, the proposal of a Soviet creator collective, designed by the
architect Jakov S. Belopolski, the sculptor Yevgeny Wuchetich, the
painter Alexander A. Gorpenko, and the engineer Sarra S. Walerius, was
implemented. The sculptures and reliefs were manufactured in 1948
by the Lauchhammer art foundry. The memorial was built on the site
of a large play and sports meadow in the area of the "New Lake", which
was created during the Berlin trade exhibition of 1896 and completed in May 1949. 
The
construction of the monument was marked by the beginning of the Cold
War. Although there was a lack of living space in post-war Germany and
the construction sector had almost come to a standstill due to the lack
of planning, labour and material shortages, Soviet propaganda demands
took priority over housing construction. This site was to express two
ideas: on the one hand, an appreciation of Soviet occupation power so
that the scale of the area should be "a witness of the greatness and the
insuperable power of Soviet power." East German politicians like Otto
Grotewohl, on the other hand, saw in the memorial on May 8, 1949, the
fourth anniversary of the end of the war, a sign of gratitude to the
Soviet army as a liberator. In
the following decades, the Treptower site was the scene of mass events
and state rituals of the DDR, which sometimes completely superimposed
the original intention of being the victory mark and cemetery of the
Second World War. In 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the end of the
war, the representatives of the youth movement of the DDR organised a
torchlight procession at the Treptower Memorial. There they took the
"oath of the youth of the DDR" on their behalf. 
At
the site with my students holding one of my wartime Soviet flags and
the same spot on May 8, 1956 with an honorary formation of the National
People's Army in front of the Soviet memorial. The memorial’s
significance goes beyond its architectural grandeur or the scale of loss
it commemorates. It has long been a site of political symbolism. In the
immediate post-war years, as the Soviet Union consolidated its control
over East Germany, the memorial became a focal point for the DDR's
official historical narrative. Through state-sponsored ceremonies and
school visits, it was promoted as a site of pilgrimage, representing
both the brotherhood of Soviet and East German socialism and the eternal
debt owed by East Germany to the Soviet Union. This close association
with Soviet power made the memorial not just a symbol of victory over
fascism but also a potent marker of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.
Consequently, for many East Germans, it came to embody the
contradictions of their national identity, simultaneously representing
liberation and subjugation. Scholarly interpretations of the memorial
reflect this duality. Sebestyen argues that the Soviet-designed war
memorials across Eastern Europe, including Treptower Park, were intended
as much to intimidate as to commemorate. The massive scale,
militaristic iconography, and positioning of such memorials were,
according to Sebestyen, reminders of Soviet control rather than simply
tributes to wartime sacrifices. This perspective sees the memorial as a
tool of Soviet soft power, particularly in the years following 1945 when
the Soviet Union sought to solidify its ideological and military
presence in the region. The deliberate evocation of Soviet heroism,
portrayed in such grand terms, was integral to the GDR’s legitimisation
strategy, binding the country closer to Moscow and reinforcing the
Soviet Union’s role as a paternal protector of the socialist bloc. .gif)
The
Federal Republic therefore undertook in 1992 in the agreement of
December 16, 1992 between the Government of the Federal Republic of
Germany and the Government of the Russian Federation on War Graves Care
to permanently guarantee their existence, to maintain and repair them.
Any changes to the monuments require the approval of the Russian
Federation.On August 31, 1994, the military ceremony for the withdrawal
of Russian troops from Germany was held at the Soviet Memorial in
Treptower Park. After a ceremony in the Schauspielhaus on
Gendarmenmarkt, 1,000 Russian soldiers from the 6th Guards Mot.-Rifle
Brigade and six hundred German soldiers from the Guard Battalion at the
Federal Ministry of Defence came together to commemorate the dead. They
formed the framework for the wreath-laying ceremony, accompanied by
short speeches, by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Boris Jelzin.
Since 1995, a memorial rally has been held at the memorial every year on
May 9th with the laying of flowers and wreaths, which is organised by
the “Bund der Antifaschisten Treptow e. V. "is organised. The motto of
the event is “ Liberation Day ” and corresponds to Victory Day, the
Russian holiday. On the night of May 8-9 1945 in Berlin-Karlshorst the
unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht by three leading German
military men, that of the last Reich President Karl Dönitz in the
special area Mürwik were authorised to do so, and signed by four Allied
representatives. On May 9, 2015, around 10,000 people visited the
memorial to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the war -
among them were members of the Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle and
rocker club. The bikers' trip to Berlin caused a sensation when some
members were initially refused entry to Germany. On September 2, 2015,
the inscriptions on a memorial plaque were destroyed by arson. On May 4,
2019, there was another incident in which the statue "Mother Homeland"
was doused with a dark liquid.In October 2003, the statue of the Red Army
soldier was restored in a workshop on Rügen, brought back to Berlin via ship and has been on its base since May 4, 2004.
One
enters the memorial either coming from Puschkinallee or from Am
Treptower Park , each through a triumphal arch made of grey granite
shown here on July 12, 1957 when members of the district association of Greater
Berlin, together with the delegations from the CSR, from China, North
Korea and Vietnam, attended the 7th party congress and during one of my class visits
An inscription on this honours the soldiers “who died for the freedom
and independence of the socialist homeland”. Following the path you come
to a kind of forecourt with a three metre high statue of a woman, an
allegory of the “Mother Homeland” mourning for her fallen sons. From
here the line of sight of the main monument opens up. A broad, gently
sloping path lined with sloping birch trees leads along the central axis
to the main field of the complex. This is marked by two large, stylised
flags made of red granite, which lean towards the path on either side.
At the front of each is the sculpture of a kneeling soldier in full gear
and armed with a machine gun. There is an older soldier on the left and
a younger soldier on the right. From here a few stairs lead down to the
symbolic burial ground, which forms the centre of the complex. These
graves, greened with grass and small hedges, are marked by five square
stone slabs, each with a laurel wreath (the real graves are more likely
to be found on the sides of the complex under the plane trees and under
the burial mound).
In the following decades, the Treptow site was at times completely superimposed on mass events and state rituals of the DDR. In 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the representatives of the DDR's youth movement organised a torchlight procession at the Treptow Memorial.
There, they represented
the "oath of youth of the DDR". In the time of the invasion on 28
December 1989 strangers smeared the stone carcass and the base of the
crypt with anti-Soviet slogans. The SED-PDS suspected that the
perpetrators would come from the right-wing extremist scene and
organised a mass demonstration on January 3, 1990, involving 250,000
citizens of the DDR. On this occasion, Gregor Gysi, party chairman,
demanded "constitutional protection" for the site; historian Stefan
Wolle therefore considers it possible that Stasi employees were behind
the vandalism, fearing their positions upon re-unification.
In the following decades, the Treptow site was at times completely superimposed on mass events and state rituals of the DDR. In 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the representatives of the DDR's youth movement organised a torchlight procession at the Treptow Memorial.
There, they represented
the "oath of youth of the DDR". In the time of the invasion on 28
December 1989 strangers smeared the stone carcass and the base of the
crypt with anti-Soviet slogans. The SED-PDS suspected that the
perpetrators would come from the right-wing extremist scene and
organised a mass demonstration on January 3, 1990, involving 250,000
citizens of the DDR. On this occasion, Gregor Gysi, party chairman,
demanded "constitutional protection" for the site; historian Stefan
Wolle therefore considers it possible that Stasi employees were behind
the vandalism, fearing their positions upon re-unification. The Soviet
war memorials were an important point of negotiation on the Russian side
for the two-plus-four treaties on German reunification. The Federal
Republic therefore committed itself in 1992 in the agreement of December
16, 1992 between the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and
the Government of the Russian Federation on war grave security to ensure
its existence permanently, and to maintain and repair it. Any changes
in monuments require the approval of the Russian Federation. In 1994,
the military ceremonial was held for the withdrawal of Russian troops
from East Germany at the Soviet Memorial. Since 1995 a memorial service has
been held every year on the 9th of May with flowers and wreaths,
including the "Union of Antifascists Treptow e. V." The event is under
the motto "Day of Liberation" and corresponds with the day of the
Victory , the Russian holiday. On May 9, 2015, about 10,000 people
visited the memorial to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the war.
I'm standing beside one of sixteen
white sarcophagi of limestone that stand along the outer boundary of
the field leading to the statue, this one displaying Lenin; all display war scenes
and historical moments through reliefs from the history of the Great Patriotic War
of the Soviet Peoples on the two long sides. On each of these is a quote from Stalin on the narrow side facing the central field; in Russian on
the left (northern) and in German on the right (southern). This one shows Lenin on a red banner
that flies behind the Soviet Red Army with a quote on the side embossed in
gold by Stalin. These sarcophagi are marked on the two longitudinal
sides with reliefs from the history of the Great Patriotic War of the
Soviet Peoples, bearing quotations from Joseph Stalin in Russian on the
left and in German on the right. The individual sarcophagi have specific
themes: the attack by the Germans, the destruction and suffering in the
Soviet Union, the sacrifice and abandonment of the Soviet people and
support of the army, the suffering of the army, victory, and heroic
death. Oaulk Stangle (225) writes More problematic is the portrayal of Soviet innocence, which lacks validity due to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact's program for the future division of Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union, subsequent Red Army participation in the invasion of Poland in 1939, and the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939-1940. Claims that the German invasion disrupted the Soviet Union's peaceful development ignored the forced collectivisation of agriculture and the Great Purge in which 19 million Soviet were arrested, a majority of whom either were executed or died in labour camps. Stalin, responsible for these atrocities and the disastrous lack of preparedness for the German invasion, was omitted from the narrative.Geographical Review , Apr., 2003, Vol. 93, No. 2
The
last two sarcophagi dedicated to the heroic dying stand in line with
the central location of the complex, an artificially created burial
mound. This is dominated by the sculpture “The Liberator” by Yevgeny
Wutschetich standing on a double conical base. 
The figure shows a
soldier who carries a sword in his right hand and a protective child on
his left arm; a swastika is bursting under his boots. This memorial to the liberator as
part of geographic memorial triptych with his
mother on Mamayev Hill in Volgograd (1967) and the worker behind the
front in Magnitogorsk (1979) a showing the forged sword in
Magnitogorsk, the raised sword in Volgograd and the lowered sword in
Berlin. Here it serves as a mausoleum on which a ten to
twelve metre high bronze statue is placed depicting a bareheaded,
heroic, Soviet soldier wielding a sword and standing on a smashed
swastika, into which the sword is deeply cut. On his left arm he is
carrying a child while staring out over the plaza. This sculpture, "Der
Erreer" by Jewgeni Wuchetich, stands on a double conical base 12 metres
high and weighing 70 tonnes. The statue rises above a walk-in
pavilion built on a hill. In the dome of the pavilion is a mosaic with a
circulating Russian inscription and a German translation. This mosaic
was one of the first important orders in the post-war period for the
August Wagner company which
combined workshops for mosaic and glass painting in Berlin-Neukölln .
The hill itself is modelled after a "Kurgan" (mediæval, Slavic tombs on
the Don plain), often found in Soviet memorials such as those at
Volgograd, Smolensk, Minsk, Kiev, Odessa and Donetsk. On top marks the
outstanding endpoint of the 10-hectare complex. The sculptor himself
emphasised in several interviews that the representation of the soldier
with a child saved had a purely symbolic meaning and not a precise
incident. However, in the DDR the narrative of sergeant Nikolay
Ivanovich Massov, who had brought a little girl near the Potsdamer
bridge to safety on April 30, 1945 during the storming of the
Reichskanzlei, was widely circulated. In his honour, a memorial plaque
was erected on this bridge over the Landwehrkanal and for a long time he
was regarded as the model of the Treptow soldier. The model for the
bronze figure was the Soviet soldier Ivan Odartschenko. Another version
claims that the monument is modelled on the heroic deed of the Soviet
soldier and former worker of the Minsker Radiowerkes T. A. Lukyanovich,
who paid for the salvation of a little girl in Berlin with his life. The
source for this version is the book Berlin 896 km by Soviet journalist and writer Boris Polewoi.
The figure shows a
soldier who carries a sword in his right hand and a protective child on
his left arm; a swastika is bursting under his boots. This memorial to the liberator as
part of geographic memorial triptych with his
mother on Mamayev Hill in Volgograd (1967) and the worker behind the
front in Magnitogorsk (1979) a showing the forged sword in
Magnitogorsk, the raised sword in Volgograd and the lowered sword in
Berlin. Here it serves as a mausoleum on which a ten to
twelve metre high bronze statue is placed depicting a bareheaded,
heroic, Soviet soldier wielding a sword and standing on a smashed
swastika, into which the sword is deeply cut. On his left arm he is
carrying a child while staring out over the plaza. This sculpture, "Der
Erreer" by Jewgeni Wuchetich, stands on a double conical base 12 metres
high and weighing 70 tonnes. The statue rises above a walk-in
pavilion built on a hill. In the dome of the pavilion is a mosaic with a
circulating Russian inscription and a German translation. This mosaic
was one of the first important orders in the post-war period for the
August Wagner company which
combined workshops for mosaic and glass painting in Berlin-Neukölln .
The hill itself is modelled after a "Kurgan" (mediæval, Slavic tombs on
the Don plain), often found in Soviet memorials such as those at
Volgograd, Smolensk, Minsk, Kiev, Odessa and Donetsk. On top marks the
outstanding endpoint of the 10-hectare complex. The sculptor himself
emphasised in several interviews that the representation of the soldier
with a child saved had a purely symbolic meaning and not a precise
incident. However, in the DDR the narrative of sergeant Nikolay
Ivanovich Massov, who had brought a little girl near the Potsdamer
bridge to safety on April 30, 1945 during the storming of the
Reichskanzlei, was widely circulated. In his honour, a memorial plaque
was erected on this bridge over the Landwehrkanal and for a long time he
was regarded as the model of the Treptow soldier. The model for the
bronze figure was the Soviet soldier Ivan Odartschenko. Another version
claims that the monument is modelled on the heroic deed of the Soviet
soldier and former worker of the Minsker Radiowerkes T. A. Lukyanovich,
who paid for the salvation of a little girl in Berlin with his life. The
source for this version is the book Berlin 896 km by Soviet journalist and writer Boris Polewoi.
The Heereswaffenmeisterschule dating from 1935 at Treptower Park then and now
Schöneweide
During
the Nazi era, Niederschöneweide in Treptow developed quickly into an
important location for the armaments production thanks to its metal and
chemical industry. A new building was built for Hasselwerderstraße in
the Hasselwerderstraße, where, among other things, the departments of
inheritance and race care, infant care, Schularzt and Schulzahnklinik
were housed. At the end of the Sedanstraße (today: Bruno-Bürgel-Weg), a
building was built for the SA-Stand 5 "Horst Wessel", which at the same
time served as an HJ-Heim for Niederschöneweide. In 1933, the crossing
area in front of Schöneweide train station was redesigned and the main
road system was expanded. Because of the intensified consignments from
1941 personnel shortages in the factories arose. In order to maintain
production, more and more forced labourers were employed. In 1943 Albert
Speer erected a barrack camp for more than 2,000 forced labourers
between the Britzer, Sedan and Grimaustrae. The barrack camp is now
under monument protection. A partial area of this was made available to
the public in the summer of 2006 as a documentation centre for Nazi
forced labour under the sponsor "Topography of Terror". On April 16, 1945 the last great battle of the war in Europe began around Berlin. On April 24, just after German rear groups had blown the Kaisersteg and the Treskow Bridge, Niederschöneweide was in the hands of the 8th Garde Army of the First Belarusian Front.
At
the last well-preserved former Nazi forced labour camp is located in
Schöneweide, located at Britzer Straße 5, Berlin-Schöneweide. During the
war it served as one of the more than 3,000 mass housing sites
dispersed throughout the city for forced labourers. The camp was ordered
to be built for two thousand workers by the “General Building Inspector
for the Reich capital” (Generalbauinspektor für die Reichshauptstadt)
in close proximity to large armament industries. It included thirteen
stone barracks for housing. Civil forced labourers and forced labourers
of various nationalities, Italian military internees as well as female
concentration camp prisoners lived here. A well-preserved residential
barrack referred to as ”Barrack 13” has been open for tours since the
end of August 2010. In 2000 a compensation program was set up to help
out the 2.3 million surviving forced labourers, which is probably both
too little and too late.
Website: http://www.ns-zwangsarbeit.de
Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen
The
camp was used between 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in 1945, and
then used by Russians in the Soviet Occupation Zone as an NKVD camp
until 1950. It now operates as a museum. The camp was established in
1936 and was located 22 miles north of Berlin, giving it a primary
position amongst the German
concentration camps: the administrative centre of all concentration
camps was located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen became a training
centre for ϟϟ
officers (who would often be sent to
oversee other camps afterwards). Originally planned to accommodate six
thousand inmates, Sachsenhausen generally had a population of between
ten and fifteen thousand, rising to about thirty-five thousand in the
final months of the war. The blocks were arranged in a fanlike
configuration in a semicircle around the Appellplatz, which had a radius
of about a hundred meters. The camp as a whole therefore was similar to
an isosceles triangle: at the base, the semicircle of the parade
ground, then the blocks in four concentric rings, and at the apex the
nursery and pigpen. Executions took place at Sachsenhausen,
especially of Soviet prisoners of war. Among the prisoners, there was a
"hierarchy": at the top, criminals (rapists, murderers), then
Communists (red triangles), then homosexuals (pink triangles), Jehovah's
Witnesses (purple triangles), and Jews (yellow triangles). During the
earlier stages of the camp's existence the executions
were done in a trench, either by shooting or by hanging. A large task
force of prisoners was used from the camp to work in nearby brickworks
to meet Albert Speer's vision of rebuilding Berlin. Sachsenhausen was
originally not intended as an extermination camp—instead, the
systematic murder was conducted in camps to the east. In 1942 large
numbers of Jewish inmates were relocated to Auschwitz. However the
construction of a gas chamber and ovens by camp-commandant Anton Kaindl
in March 1943 facilitated the means to kill larger numbers of
prisoners.
At
the main entrance. The Main gate or Guard Tower "A", with its 8mm Maxim
machine gun, the type used by the Germans in the trenches of World War
I, housed the offices of the camp administration. On the front entrance
gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei ("work
makes (you) free"). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen
between 1936 and 1945. In Sachsenhausen,
some 6,500 were confined at the outbreak of the war. Shortly thereafter, in September 1939, 900 Polish and stateless Jews from the Berlin area were taken to the camp; at the beginning of November, 500 Poles were interned. At the end of that month, 1,200 Czech students were added, and approximately 17,000 persons, mainly Polish nationals, were admitted as inmates in the period from March to September 1940. Despite the high number of new inmates, the camp population here too stabilised at the level of roughly 10,000 prisoners. That was because of the high mortality rate as well as the transfer of large numbers of Poles to Flossenbürg, Dachau, Neuengamme (in the Bergedorf section of southeastern Hamburg), and Groß-Rosen.
Sofsky (35)
Observation
points then and now; since the torching of a barracks by neo-Nazis,
security cameras have been installed throughout the site. Despite this,
the site has been vandalised by Neo-Nazis several times. In September
1992 for example, barracks 38 and 39 of the Jewish Museum were severely
damaged in an arson attack. The perpetrators were arrested, and the
barracks were reconstructed by 1997.
The mortuary and infirmary, showing the autopsy table. The brick pathology building with a large basement mortuary was constructed in spring 1941 and was involved in the storage,
examination, abuse and disposal of the bodies of deceased prisoners.
Before this the bodies of deceased prisoners were stored in a wooden
shed and in the cellars underneath barracks R I and R II of the sickbay.
The growing number of inmates exposed to the increasingly unhuman
conditions led to a rapidly rising death rate, especially after the
outbreak of war in September 1939. The relevant ϟϟ
administration body therefore approved construction of a mortuary and
pathology department on November 12, 1940. On this day alone, eight
prisoners died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. According to Harry
Naujoks a former political prisoner in the camp,
In 1941 Dr. Lewe came to Sachsenhausen from the Buchenwald camp to take charge of the pathology department. Being camp senior, I was told that blocke seniors had to report inmates with unusual tattoos. This report was passed onto the roll call leader. Eventually, each of the tattooed inmates was ordered to come to the sickbay. Soon after we'd receive a death notice. Several times I went to the pathology department while Dr. Lewe wasn't there and in his room saw pieces of skin and body parts with these tattoos, which were kept in jars of alchol lining the walls. In the drawers too, prepared sections of skin were kept. I have held such sections of skin with my own hand.
The Russians, accompanied by Polish soldiers, chanced upon Sachsenhausen concentration camp as they moved to invest Berlin. The camp was in Oranienburg, and the fall of that former royal borough brought it home to Hitler that his days were numbered. There were just 5,000 prisoners left in Sachsenhausen of a population that had reached 50,000. The rest had been taken on 'death marches.’(58) After the Reich - The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
More and more Berliners had been taking the risk of listening to the BBC on the wireless and even dared to discuss its news. But power cuts were now creating a more effective censorship of foreign broadcasts than the police state had ever achieved. London had little idea of the great Soviet offensive, but its announcement that Sachsenhausen- Oranienburg concentration camp had been liberated just north of Berlin gave a good idea of Red Army progress and its intention to encircle the city. The indication of the horrors found there was also another reminder of the vengeance which Berlin faced. This did not stop most Berliners from convincing themselves that the concentration camp stories must be enemy propaganda.
Beevor (274)
The 140-metre tall Tower of Nations behind me during my 2011 Bavarian International School class trip and in the 1970s, representing what Caroline Wiedmer describes as an
“antithesis of the Nazi architecture of the camp” and a “design in
which the triumph of anti-fascism could be made visible.” At the top of
each of the three sides of the obelisk are eighteen red triangles
representing the ones political prisoners were forced to wear on their
uniforms to designate their identities in the camps. This arrangement
of triangles suggests the multinational political prisoner population at
the camp.
This representation speaks to the importance of international unity — a cornerstone of communist ideology — but lacks regard for any victim groups that were persecuted so harshly at the camps. There is no implied or overt reference to Jews, Sinti or Roma, homosexuals, Slavs, women, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, though all of these groups suffered explicit mass murders in the camp at Sachsenhausen based singularly on these identities. Indeed, many of these captives may have been Communists, but unless they identified as such, they were excluded from memory at the Tower of Nations.
Directly
in front of the tower is Rene Graetz’s Liberation, added to the site in
1961, consisting of three figures standing atop a stone block.
Inscribed on the face of the block are the countries from which
prisoners at the camp came from, serving as a written representation of
the implied meaning of the red triangles on the obelisk. Certainly, the
communist struggle was important to the East German regime as a defining
point in the shaping of a new national identity and to promote the idea
of the ideological and moral victory of the communists that had
recently chased fascism from not only the borders of Germany, but also
the entire the European continent.
In front of Professor Waldemar Grzimek's bronze sculpture, Pietá,
depicting three figures who are supposed to symbolise resistance and
awareness of victory, mourning and death and as it appeared in 1961
before being given an English inscription. This memorial was limited to
the area of the former prisoner camp and only covered around five
percent of the area of the former concentration camp. Only “Station Z”
and the firing trench, originally part of the industrial courtyard,
were integrated into the memorial by relocating the camp wall. The
figures are notably more skeletal in nature than those at the obelisk, offering a much truer
representation of what inmates would have looked like after significant
time in the camp. Two of the prisoners are helping a fallen comrade, carrying him in a
blanket. The bronze cluster still speaks to the GDR message of
camaraderie, but in a more subdued and less overtly nationalist tone. Station
Z is a relevant place for mourning, and the
statue group reflects this, but allowed for a distinct and deliberate
division between areas of celebration and sorrow at the memorial site.
This is where the cremation ovens were located, where around 13,000 to
18,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in the shot in the neck and
their corpses were then cremated. Grzimek’s Pietá is not, however, without its limitations on historical representations. Though all the figures clearly are prisoners, and do depict a more historically accurate prisoner representation than those in Liberation, the man in the rear of the cluster, though wearing a look of grief on his face, stands tall, gaze fixed on a far off point, chest out and prideful. This is in contrast with many traditional representations of Pietá in which Mary is shown cradling the dead body of Jesus. Generally, the Pietá form is undeniably sorrowful. Mary has her head down, or tilted slightly up in supplication, and does not evoke any sense of physical strength or pride. Grzimek’s Pietá represents quite a different take on the classic form.
Bookheimer (15)
The NKVD’s interrogation of the camp commander Colonel Kainel confirmed that Senior Lieutenant Dzugashvili had been held three weeks in the camp prison and then, at Himmler’s directive, was transferred to the special camp, consisting of three barracks surrounded by a brick wall and high-voltage barbed wire. The inmates of barrack number 2 were allowed to walk in the early evening in the area outside their barracks. At 7:00 p.m., the ϟϟ guards ordered them to return to their barracks. All obeyed except Dzhugashvili, who demanded to see the camp commander. The guard’s repeated order went unheeded. As the ϟϟ guard telephoned the camp commander, he heard a shot and hung up. Dzhugashvili, in a state of agitation, had run across the neutral zone to the barbed wire. The guard raised his rifle ordering him to stop, but Dzugashvili kept on going. The guard warned that he was going to shoot; Dzhugashvili cursed, grabbed for the barbed-wire gate, and shouted at the guard to shoot. The guard shot him in the head and killed him. Clearly the unauthorised shooting of none other than Stalin’s son set off great apprehension in Sachsenhausen. He had been transferred in by Himmler himself, who hoped to use him as a pawn of some sort. Now, Stalin’s son was dead, and no one knew what the consequences would be. Dzhugashvili’s body lay stretched across the barbed wire for twenty-four hours while the camp awaited orders from Himmler. The Gestapo sent two professors to the scene who prepared a document stating that Dzhugashvili was killed by electrocution and that the shot to the head followed. The document stated that the guard acted properly. Dzhugashvili’s body was then burned, and the urn with his ashes was sent to the Gestapo headquarters. Indeed, it seemed irrelevant whether Yakov was killed by electrocution or by the bullet. Either way, it was he who committed suicide.Paul Gregory (65-66) Lenin's Brain
Inside
the ruins of the crematorium. The first crematorium at Sachsenhausen
was built at Station Z in April 1940 and construction on the new
crematorium began on January 31, 1942; it was completed and opened for
use on May 29, 1942. It had two rooms where Russian PoWs, who were
Communist Commissars, were executed with a shot to the neck.
Station
Z included a Genickschußanlage, a shooting pit, a gas chamber, and a
multiple gallows with block and tackle. The structures had been kept low
intentionally so as to block visibility and prevent anyone from looking
in over the wall. The first provisional gas chambers in Birkenau were
outside the camp, set up in former farmhouses. But the modern crematoria
were built in close proximity to the camp. They were surrounded by
barbed-wire fences and shielded from view by barriers of willow trees.
Flower beds lent the facilities an innocuous air. The zones of death
were disguised areas beyond the round of everyday camp routine. No one
had access to them except the Sonderkommandos—the corpse carriers and
oven stokers. The zone of death was taboo, a place of mystery where the
power to kill could unfold unhindered.
In
1953, the crematorium building was deliberately blown up by the East
German government, and today nothing is left except the ruins of the
ovens. When the former Sachsenhausen camp was made into a Memorial Site
in 1961, the brick wall separating the Industrial Yard from the camp was
moved so that Station Z could be located inside the memorial.
UFA Studios
UFA Studios
Hitler
and Goebbels visiting UFA's Neubabelsberg studios in 1935 during the
making of the film
"Barcarole." As a result of the nationalist German spirit that already
dominated the company, UFA was perfectly suited to serve the goals of
Nazi propaganda in film. Hugenberg had been named Reich Minister of
Economics immediately following the Nazi takeover of January 30, 1933,
and made UFA openly available for Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine,
even though Hugenberg was removed from his post shortly thereafter (June
1933) under pressure from Hitler. In an act of anticipatory obedience
to the Nazi regime, UFA management fired several Jewish employees on
March 29, 1933. In the summer of 1933, the Nazi regime created the Film
Chamber of the Reich, which adopted regulations officially excluding
Jewish filmmakers from all German studios.
In March 1937, using precisely the methods that he had previously branded as Jewish, Goebbels took over the major Ufa film company for the Reich. As a warning to Ufa he had instructed the press to trash its latest production; the film flopped disastrously, and the company agreed to sell out. ‘Today we buy up Ufa,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘and thus we [the propaganda ministry] are the biggest film, press, theatre, and radio concern in the world.’ Dismissing the entire Ufa board, he began to intervene in film production at every level, dismissing directors, recommending actresses (like the fiery Spaniard, Imperio Argentina), forcing through innovations like colour cinematography, and rationalising screen-test facilities for all three major studios, Ufa, Tobis, and Bavaria. Depriving the distributors of any such in such matters he created instead artistic boards to steer future film production. Suddenly the film industry began to surge ahead. Blockbuster films swept the box offices. With a sure touch, Goebbels stopped the production of pure propaganda and party epics, opting for more subtle messages instead—the wholesome family, the life well spent.Irving (414-415) Goebbels
In
late April 1945, the UFA ateliers in Potsdam-Babelsberg and
Berlin-Tempelhof were occupied by the Red Army. After Germany's
unconditional surrender the following month the Military Government Law
No. 191 initially halted and prohibited all further film production. On
July 14, 1945, as a result of Military Government Law No. 52, all
Reich-owned film assets of UFI Holding were seized. All activities in
the film industry were placed under strict licensing regulations and all
films were subject to censorship. The Soviet military government, which
was in favour of a speedy reconstruction of the German film industry
under Soviet supervision, incorporated the Babelsberg ateliers into
DEFA, subsequently the DDR's state film studio, on May 17, 1946. Murderers Among Us was
the first German feature film in the post-war era and the first
so-called "Trümmerfilm" ("Rubble Film"). It was shot here in Babelsberg.
Additionally, the Soviets confiscated numerous UFA productions from the
Babelsburg vaults and dubbed them into Russian for release in the USSR;
and simultaneously began importing Soviet films to the same offices for
dubbing into German and distribution to the surviving German theatres.
In contrast, the main film-policy goal of the Allied occupying forces,
under American insistence, consisted in preventing any future
accumulation of power in the German film industry. Here I'm beside the
statue based on the Portaprima Augustus for the execrable 1997 film Prince Valiant.
Fort Hahneberg
After
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, four forts were planned to
protect the Spandau Armaments Center as part of the citadel at Spandau.
In the end only one of them was built, as the development of artillery,
especially the introduction of explosive grenades, made such types of
fortification useless. Fort
Hahneberg was thus completed in 1886 and put to use two years later
serving, among other things, as a barracks and central archive for
military medicine until 1945. In 1903 it served as a training center
for the infantry. During the so-called Buchrucker putsch on
October 1, 1923 when an attempt by the Black Reichswehr to overthrow
the German government after it had ended passive resistance to the
occupation of the Ruhr on September 26, 1923 occurred, the fort and the
Spandau Citadel were briefly occupied by putschists who had to surrender
to regular Reich defence units. From 1924 to 1934 the Flugtechnische Verein Spandau used some structures of the fort in order to build gliders there. 
With
the establishment of the Wehrmacht in 1935, the fort became a training
location again and was expanded. After the war parts of the brick walls
and structures were broken up to make the fort unusable as a military
installation by blowing up the moat defences. The rubble was transported away as building material for the reconstruction of Berlin as residents
were given permission to demolish the Escarpemauer and other components
for material extraction for the repair of destroyed buildings or for the
construction of new houses. Before
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the fort was located at the border
crossing point on Heerstraße and was only been accessible to the public
again since 1990. The Nazi eagle above the entrance has been allowed to remain.
With
the establishment of the Wehrmacht in 1935, the fort became a training
location again and was expanded. After the war parts of the brick walls
and structures were broken up to make the fort unusable as a military
installation by blowing up the moat defences. The rubble was transported away as building material for the reconstruction of Berlin as residents
were given permission to demolish the Escarpemauer and other components
for material extraction for the repair of destroyed buildings or for the
construction of new houses. Before
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the fort was located at the border
crossing point on Heerstraße and was only been accessible to the public
again since 1990. The Nazi eagle above the entrance has been allowed to remain. 
The fort and area around were used as the hideout forest for the Inglorious Basterds.
As an aside, the title of the movie has to have the swastika removed
because the display of Nazi iconography is illegal in Germany. The
"Offizielle deutsche Website"
has been censored too. Under the German law there are exceptions which
allow the use of "unconstitutional symbols" for artistic and
educational purposes but Universal Pictures obviously didn't find it
worth the effort.
