A visit to the spot where Hitler committed suicide and to to the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin

Until I reached the spot where Hitler shot himself after consuming Cyanide, I was not at all paying attention to that guy who was explaining the already known history of Berlin Wall, parliament, and other stuffs! That instant was very crucial to me. In my unconscious mind, I was thinking that Hitler did it in any of the border place of Germany; frankly, I am very poor in history too! Nothing was there in that spot, just an ordinary place without any identifiable mark. Vivek and I were talking our ‘own’ constructed history of everything till we heard that word, Hitler from the guide.

with Sajeev Chemmany

Today I am writing about our journey to both of these two places,  firstly the spot where Hitler shot himself and the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin. That day was very much special for two reasons. We had two guests from Calicut via Delhi, Mr. Sajeev Chemmany and Soumya Balakrishnan, the two cosmopolitan citizens in every sense. They were in their usual ‘exploring Europe journey’ via Berlin when we met them at the ZOB in Berlin. Both are media persons based in Delhi. Sajeev is a staunch football player and a good fan of European football. Then our talks revolved round football and European clubs. He whispered me that one of his aims to visit Germany was to buy a Bayen Munich club Jersey! They knew many languages, Malayalam, Hindi, English, Italian, Tamil, Telugu, and many more. They had all information in their hand and plan in their mind. Instead we guided them they brought us to the Free Berlin city walking tour. The tour would start from Brandenburg Gate at 11 am. We thought there would be a very less people for this walking tour and so we reached before the gate around 10.45.

Only then we understood a flood of people had already reached there to participate in the free tour. The concept of this free tour is a walking about 3 hours in the main tourist point of Berlin. The guide would explain the history and importance of each place. He never goes inside of any of the place, but it is a participant’s responsibly to go and spend some euro, if he/ she likes. I was not at all interested to go for that tour, because I thought I knew all the places and I had seen already all the places and I had read the history of the places, the guide would explain. So I was sure, it would be just 3 hours walking and spending of time. But our guests were too much excited and interested to hear each story of the city. We were given some numbers and papers by the walking tour people and they divided us into multiple groups. In our group, they included numbers from 95 to 130. In these 35 people, there were different nationalities. I was guessing the majorly must be Indians and in Indians again the majority must be Keralites. I was proud of my country/ state to feel me proud in a foreign country. That tourist guide guy was looking very impressive and energetic. To make an initial interest to the participant, he asked who were among us staying in that hotel pointing a far away hotel. And he waited 26 seconds to get an answer. Actually nobody was staying there, and then he explained the reason for it. That building was too expensive and placed in the heart of the city. Only big wigs like the ministers, ambassadors of different countries, corporate businessmen could only afford such a highly cost.

Then he gave details the different flags floated in the air. These were different embassies with colourful flags. The flags of France, Britain, USA, Russia, and lots of European countries were waving in the air. He then explained the history of Brandenburg Gate (see my next blog post). He could not control his emotions when he explained the misery the people the Berlin Wall made them. His words were broken and it trembled and sometimes he took time to find a word to explain. The Brandenburg Gate witnessed all the tears and laughs of the Berlin people. Next was German parliament, when it was parliament I just escaped the explanation, because we had already visited the parliament and sat inside of the parliament. (I will write about the journey soon). When he was talking about the parliament I distanced from the group and went to a nearby iron statue. 

I took my camera to take a snap of that statue, but then suddenly the statue covered his face with his hand! I was terrified first; I could not realize what was going on. I stood with my mouth wide open. The statue smiled me! Then only I realized that it was not a real statue but someone had dressed up as a statue of Lenin! I really thought it was an iron statue. He raised his two fingers. I thought something special happened to him and he was showing the victory sign. Then Vivek, standing behind me remembered that he was not showing any victory sign, but he was asking two euro to take a photo with him., I said ‘salaam’ in my  mind and turned to the walking tour party.

But they were not there. I knew if the guide had finished explaining about German Parliament then the only thing the guide would show was Alexander plaza or Topography of Terror, if these were not, then, of course, it would be Check Point Charlie. So we were about to go to Topography of Terror. Then we saw the group were standing just opposite of the Brandenburg Gate and he was explaining something. We trickily reached there and tried to listen to him. The group members were very keen to hear him. Even our guests did not show any interest to greet us; all were enchanted with his powerful and clear words. Then I smelled something serious discussion was going on there. I did not see anything fascinating there, but a part of the street road and a traffic signal before them. All most all were taking photos of that street road. I laughed in mind and wondered that people would have gone mad. Slowly we understood that he was explaining the end of Hitler and his sad death. The place where Hitler committed suicide is now a car park and grassy knoll.

The consensus is that Adolf Hitler took a cyanide capsule and shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945 in his bunker in Berlin. Tanks and troops of Soviet General Vasily Chuikov's Eighth Guards army had fought to within a few blocks of the Reich Chancellery. Adolf Hitler was based in his bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery building. Bomb proof and with its own air recycling plant, the complex had been built without a proper communication system. The only way staff officers could know about the extent of the Red Army’s movement into Berlin was to phone civilians at random (if their phones worked) to ascertain if the Red Army was in their vicinity. Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, had brought his wife and six children to the apparent safety of the bunker. The end was clearly at hand. With Germany lying in ruins after six devastating years of war, and with defeat imminent, Hitler decided to take his own life. On April 28th, Hitler received a report that Himmler, head of the SS, had been in touch with the Allies regarding surrender.

this is the place where hitler killed himself

Himmler had contacted Count Bernadette of the Swedish Red Cross. Adolf Hitler had always considered Himmler to be the most loyal of his men. When he received a Reuter’s confirmation of the report, witnesses said that he exploded with rage. He accused an SS officer in the bunker, Herman Fegelein, of knowing about what Himmler had planned. Fegelein admitted that he had known about it and, stripped of all his rank and medals, he was marched by SS guards to the Reich Chancellery garden and shot. Early on the morning on April 29, 1945, in a civil ceremony in his bunker, Hitler married his mistress of many years, Eva Braun. The wedding service was held in Hitler’s private sitting room. A low ranking Nazi official who had the authority to perform a civil wedding was brought in by Goebbels. Eva Braun wore a black silk dress for the occasion. In keeping with Nazi requirements, the official had to ask both Hitler and Eva Braun whether they were of pure Ayran blood and whether they were free from hereditary illnesses. Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann signed the register. The next day at a little after 3:30 p.m., they bit into thin glass vials of cyanide. As he did so, Hitler also shot himself in the head with a 7.65 mm Walther pistol.

Though there seems little doubt that Adolf Hitler had already decided that suicide was his only option, and also that of Eva Braun’s, it is probable that these two pieces of information moved that nearer. Hitler had also received confirmation that Mussolini had been caught in Italy, shot and his body, along with that of his mistress, Clara Pettachi, had been hung upside down in a square in Milan. Above all else, Adolf Hitler had decided that such humiliation would not happen to him as he ordered that his body should be burned. According to witnesses, the bodies of Hitler and Braun were wrapped in blankets and carried to the garden just outside the bunker, placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol and set ablaze. In May 1945 a Russian forensics team dug up what was presumed to be the dictator’s body. Part of the skull was missing, apparently the result of the suicide shot. The remaining piece of jaw matched his dental records, according to his captured dental assistants. And there was only one testicle.

You can watch this explanation on Hitler’s death here

I was watching to the faces of the tourists. There were different emotions interchanging, and the common feeling on every face was a feeling of amazing. A dictator who controlled the whole Europe with his thumb, found his death in that spot, was they were thinking that moment. Then the guide led us to the holocaust memorial, that memorial also was, first time I heard about. This time we did not miss him. The 2,711 pillars, planted close together in undulating waves, represent the 6 million murdered Jews. Both the subject matter (which has forced a taboo part of Germany’s past into public consciousness) and the site have raised controversy. The 19,000 square metre block of land, situated just south of the Brandenburg Gate, has a dark past. In 1937, it housed the office of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels; nearby was Hitler’s Chancellery and the infamous bunker where he ended his life. 

Designed by US architect Peter Eisenman, controversial plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe were approved in 199 Architect Peter Eisenman stirred controversy when he unveiled plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The building of the ‘Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe’ has been a protracted process. First proposed in the late 1980s, the project was not approved by politicians until the late 1990s, with American architect Peter Eisenman’s finalised design being presented to the public in 1999. Now, in 2005, here it was: an entire city block covered, seemingly haphazardly, in huge concrete blocks. Some of the ‘stelae’ lay low to the ground, while others stood upright, the tallest reaching a height of 4.7 metres. The Holocaust Memorial is constructed of massive stone blocks arranged on a 19,000 sq m (204,440 sq foot) plot of land between East and West Berlin. 

The stone slabs seem to undulate with the sloping land. There are no plaques, inscriptions, or religious symbols at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The solid rectangular stones have been compared to tombstones and coffins. Visitors to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe can follow a labyrinth of pathways between the massive stone slabs. Architect Peter Eisenman explained that he wanted visitors to feel the loss and disorientation that Jews felt during the Holocaust. Each stone slab at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a unique shape and size. The stone slabs at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial have been coated with a special solution to prevent graffiti.

Critics protest that the Memorial is too abstract and does not present historical information about the Nazi campaign against the Jews. Other people say that the Memorial resembles a vast field of nameless tombstones and captures the horror of the Nazi death camps. People who praise the Berlin Holocaust Memorial say that the stones will become a central part of Berlin's identity. Many people felt that the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe should include inscriptions, artefacts, and historical information. To meet that need, a visitor's centre was constructed beneath the Memorial stones. The Memorial opened to the public on May 12, 2005 and now carries its sombre message to the world. Protests against the Memorial – both its concept and design – have been numerous.

While I was wondering seeing the thousands of the unique and uniform slabs, Vivek who was sitting beside me suddenly lied down on the floor. I was speechless and could not understand what to do next. Many people might feel a kind of depression seeing the very abstract and symbolic structures of thousands of graveyard slabs, so I thought he might have struck with something. Three moments passed, I could not move from the place or even could not close my mouth. I was watching him, and then he did two- three push-ups as he does in a Gymnasium and stood up. Then he whispered in my ear, ‘let’s move forward! The walking tour had already left the place, so we walked fast.