History - World War II, Berlin

this was a really interesting museum. the entrance way is hidden so you have to look for a ramp at the other end of the monument from the main road.

the signage is all in english and german - my colleague (spanish) had to pay for a headset and said she was bored by the end - it takes longer to listen to everything than just read the walls. headsets are not available in english or german.

you get searched like at the airport when you get in and have to walk through an exray. all bags must be xrayed too.

good information and stuff - but i feel that the holocaust exhibition in london´s imperial war museum was more informative - maybe they should ship some of london´s displays over?

the monument is really cool- but you can find postcards of it all over berlin with people and children climbing all over it. you can´t actually clim on it as the guards will ask you to get down.
it´s really hard to take pictures of it anyway - as it´s so big - so you´d probably be better buying a postcard.

the gift shop/ book shop is really well stocked and if you want to study a subject related to the second world war or the holocaust - then you´ll probably find a book about it here.

this is really good. i went in the summer (not sure if it would be so hot in the winter as berlin gets pretty cold). and its all open air.

it looks a bit weird at first as all you see are boards and stuff and a pathway running round the garden. you pick up your headphones - which are entirely FREE and you can listen in various languages.
theres spanish, english and german (not sure if their are other languages - but probably - the danish girl with me had to listen in english).

really interested and a bit of an insight to the goings on in germany before the second world war.

Just the other day I watched a report on old remains of bunkers and tunnels in Berlin. The exploration of these forgotten buildings is done by well equiped and skilled members of an association called "Berliner-Unterwelten eV". Three bunkers are open to public an can be toured. I hat the opportunity to do it and it was quite scarry and fascinating at the same time. For opening hours and prices see the site below. Try it! Its worth while.

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This is a nice approach to mark the void created by the WWII bombs. In one of the side streets near Oranienburger strasse the place where the residential building stood untill 1943 was marked in 1990 by french artist Christian Boltanski. What he did is simple and powerful at the same time - he simply put plates on side walls of the surviving buildings recalling the names, dates and professions of the former inhabitants of the house that was destroyed by the bombings.

Watching the movies about World War II with Germans as the Bad Guys makes it rather easy to forget that Berlin (and most of other German towns) suffered fierce bombings during the war and while the officials had their bunkers where they were hiding it is the ordinary citizens that suffered very much losing almost everything overnight.

The Missing House
Grosse Hamburger Strasse, S-bahn stop Hackescher Markt.

The exhibit » blind trust - hidden at the Hackesche Höfe « tells the history of the blind person's workshop Otto Weidt. Here worked during the Nazi era primarily blind and deaf Jews. In the guidance the uncompromising application is picked out as a central theme by Otto Weidt for his Jewish workers. He offered to the family horn in a Hinterraum of the workshop a hiding place. The rooms are received to a great extent in the original and offer to visitors by the authenticity of this place special possibilities to get to know the history of the blind person's workshop.

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This is an amazing thing to see... a must see for anyone interested in history and the Holocaust. The site is the deportation train platform, the infamous Track 17 of Grunewald Station, a former freight depot where more than 50,000 Berlin Jews were loaded on deportation trains during World War II. This is a hidden jem of a site, and it is quiet and seldom visited. Great for a photography spot and place of reflection.

If you do the Berlin Walks Tour, they will take you to a car park. You'll probably be thinking, now why are we here? Well, it's the site of where Hitler's Bunker was. There's no marker to show you, or anything on the map, because they don't want people flocking to it. I think it's good that they don't have anything to mark it, because such a vicious man doesn't deserve it. However, it was interesting to know that I stood right above where he shot and killed himself.

Berlin was somewhat preserved in its state during the Soviet area, clearly mostly in the East.
If you look carefully, you can still see bullet holes and shrapnel marks on the walls, just the same way as you can see remnants of adjoining buildings on some walls...

We must never forget the horrors of The Second World War and its consequences. While in Berlin, you can visit the old Gestapo headquarters and go to this wall to contemplate the rise of The Third Reich and its athrocious results.

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The Treptower Park is quite bit of green space in the Southeast of Berlin. It's main feature is the huge Soviet War Memorial which was built there between 1946 and 1949.

S-Bhf: Treptower Park