Berlin: a Look into the Past

My week in Berlin was really an excellent way to finish the trip abroad. We started out with a tour of mostly Eastern Berlin, and it quickly became clear that this city was different from most of the others we had visited. The town was divided between old and new, and (even now) somewhat between East and West. Many of the buildings were restored in such a way as to remind us of the past: pockmarks were left where bullets and shrapnel hit the sides of buildings, and ruined structures were repaired in different styles than before. We had a chance to learn in the very building where Rudolf Virchow lectured, which was partially destroyed by Allied bombings. The restored room shown in the picture below attests to both of these facts; the ruins are left mixed in, and Virchow’s lecture is shown in a photo on the wall.

We also spent a day in Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp and memorial near Oranienburg. Our trip there was delayed by over an hour due to railroad closures – an unexploded bomb had been discovered nearby and was in the process of being disarmed. This helped set the mood, as remnants of World War II still affected daily life. Visiting the concentration camp gave depth to my understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust. I saw medical facilities where human experimentation occurred, I saw inadequate living facilities once crammed with inmates, I saw the ruins where executions occurred, and I saw the crematories used afterward. I experienced emotions ranging from sorrow to anger, and understood in a gut-wrenching way the extreme results that can come when people are dehumanized.

The life that I’ve visited this week is one that the German people experiences in daily life. Most of them were not alive during this time period, but are still coping with the effects of one of the most horrifying regimes in the past. This Vergangenheitsbewältigung (a German word referring to the process of coming to terms with the past) is especially present in Berlin, and needs to remain. While the Nazi regime is no longer here, the human fears and drives that led to their rise still exist today. It is essential that we remember the past, lest we repeat it.