So I'm going to do these next two posts a little differently. Several of you have expressed interest in getting my opinions on things. I have a lot of those, and my thought is to present them at the end. For now, I'll provide a basic narrative and lots of photos for today and tomorrow's post (detailing Saturday and Sunday in Berlin) and Friday evening I'll recount my adventures from this week and write a little reflection on my feelings after Berlin.Saturday and Sunday had some troubling sights, so I would rather write a somewhat cohesive review on one day, then separate my thoughts. Here goes.
Saturday we got up and went adventuring in East Berlin. There's some stuff by the spreeriver we wanted to check out so we did that and got some decent photos of things in rural Berlin.
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| He was happy to see me, even though I got him up at crack of dawn everyday |
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| Near the bars. Didn't scare away the hipsters, since reading stickers is too mainstream |
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| Universal headquarters Berlin. Depressing location |
We then went back to downtown Berlin.
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| Sony center, big film location. Mark Whalberg was here a week before I was for the premier of transformers |
We then took a tour of the Berlin concentration camp...
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| 350+ to a room |
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| The overseers would let the kitchen staff decorate their work environments |
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| They believed this would make them more productive. |
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| Somehow the shower in the first image of fruit is much more sinister when you consider what showers were being used for |
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| Spot for execution by firing range |
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| End of the line for many |
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| Ovens for burning of human bodies |
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| Captured Soviet soldiers |
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| Upon entering this zone, prisoners would be shot |
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| Work will set you free |
I'll talk about the camp on Friday. I'm troubled by a lot of things I saw there, but just blown away that an operation of that scale was allowed to happen all over Europe. We returned to Berlin and explored the city some more.
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| There were members of Parliament who voted against Hitler. They were killed, and this is now their memorial |
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| Memorial to the slain Jews |
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| Street where Hitler and the three other big four German leaders had their offices |
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| A more natural looking wall than what will be seen at East side gallery |
This is all for now. Take this all in, if you have questions fire them my way. Know Friday that I'm going to be ranting. I'm troubled deeply by some aspects of Berlin, and these photos help remind me of all the worrisome things I saw. More to come
Tom, I know the viewing of the concentration camp near Berlin had a impact on you, but it looked like a little place compared to the camp I experienced in Poland called Auchwitz I and Auchwitz II. Your camp looked like Auchwitz I, the political prisoner camp. At Auchwitz II, it was a killing factory where the barracks were worst than what you saw and the decision as to whether you lived another day was the side of the box car that you got out. It is hard to imagine that people did this to other people and why? It is hard to believe that these things still happen today because you have a different religious belief than I might. Why?
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