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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
