Taking a look at history: Holocaust, Berlin Wall, GDR

(Holocaust Memorial in Berlin)

We couldn't leave Germany without taking a look at some of its painful history. One morning after we finished eating breakfast at our hotel, we walked about a mile to the Holocaust Memorial on Cora-Berliner-Strasse.

It's located just south of the Brandenburg Gate with more than 2,700 concrete blocks erected from the ground covering about 19,000 square feet.                                                                                                                 These blocks are in a grid-like pattern where you can walk through it free of charge. The site looks like a cemetery, and it gave me an uneasy feeling. I read that the memorial's designer didn't intend for it to look like a graveyard, but that's what it reminded me of. 

Here's a short video I took with my iPhone as I walked in between the concrete blocks:

After the memorial, we walked less than a mile where Hitler's bunker used to be. This is where it is believed he killed himself in 1945.

(Führerbunker)

It was the last of the headquarters used by Hitler during World War II.

The site is now a parking lot in a residential area where only a sign is up describing the Führerbunker.

Then, we walked about another mile to Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrasse, which used to be a border crossing between East and West Berlin between 1961 and 1989. The communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) tried to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the democratic West Berlin.

                                      

The guards on the east side would thoroughly check its citizens' cars before letting them through, sometimes for several hours.

This site which became a symbol during the Cold War, now has a KFC at the intersection with other shops and restaurants.

Our look through history continued with a guided tour of the Hohenschönhausen Memorial, which used to be a former prison during the Cold War.

Our guide was Peter Keup, who was actually imprisoned himself by the Stasi (the GDR's secret police) when he tried to escape from East Berlin to West Berlin in the early 1980s because he didn't believe the communist ideology anymore. 

Even though Keup was sent to a different prison in Dresden, he explained how the prisoners were tortured by sleep deprivation and made to stand upright for long periods of time. Peter was finally released from prison and purchased by the West German government for $55,000. Can you imagine having a price tag to be free?

We then finished the day with a tour of the Berlin Wall which went up in 1961 to divide East and West Berlin. The whole world watched its fall on November 1989.

Reunification took place a year later.

Here's our RIAS group on the last day when we toured the Berlin Wall. This photo was taken from the East side where many people died trying to cross the wall. Its fall was the beginning of freedom and a new way of life without communism for many Germans. 

Auf wiedersehen Germany, I will miss you.