Berlin - lessons in East European history
Wednesday 6 August and we´re back in Berlin. We plan to spend a day here but there´s so much to see and do it´s hard to know where to start. We need to get our tent poles mended and find a shop in Karl Marx Allee which can do this for us. Then we head to our main visit of the day - the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The site consists of 2711 concrete stellae erected in a grid pattern on undulating ground. There is some ambiguity about the whole structure and little explanation as to why it is the way it is but the visitor quickly forms their own idea. Underground is a very good exhibition. Some things we noted as we visited..
The language is deliberate. Millions of Jews were murdered - not eliminated or exterminated - but a very personal murder. This comes out in the pictures of the early mobile murder squads which murdered groups of people in villages throughout Poland.
Although the exhibition mentions the Roma, disabled, communists, homosexuals and political opponents who were murdered, the title only refers to the Jews. this has provoked some controversy. The bigger thought that emerges (and which we have been coming to terms with throughout Eastern Europe) is how the Germans have successfully dealt with their own terrible past. The German people were victims of Nazi terror and amends have been made efforts have been made to understand and atone for what happened to ordinary German people. More importantly. Germany has managed to apologise to the victims in other countries and to build a new and better society.
Russia, by contrast has failed to even begin the process of apologising to its own people for their treatment under the Soviet regime. As for other countries and peoples. the Government appears to continue to be in denial. In Poland we talked about WWII and how it started on 1 September 1939 with the German naval shelling of a shore station near Gdansk. The UK immediately declared war on Germany in support of Poland. But, weeks, on 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland as well! We did nothing about this. The Baltic States view the USSR as an aggressive invader of their countries as Nazi Germany was later to be.
At the root of this is the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that divided Europe into a German Soviet spheres of influence. In our school history, we learnt that the purpose of this was for the USSR to buy time to re-arm and defend itself against the Nazis. In reality, it used the time between the outbreak of the war and the June 1942 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to invade most of Eastern Europe!
East Europeans thus bear a hatred towards Russians just as many Europeans did towards the Germans after the war. However, Russia has done little or nothing to come to terms with this reality. In their history books they still talk of the great Patriotic War from June 22, 1941. For them, the Second World War started then. To acknowledge that it started in September 1939, would pose difficult questions for Russians about what their leaders were up to and why Stalin provided extensive material support to Hitler during these years.
But Russians will only begin to come to terms with this when they can read about it and such is the state of press freedom in Russia today that there is little chance of that happening.
Andy has just finished reading Anna Politkovskaya´s Russian Diaries, a chilling account of the rise of oppression in Russia under Putin. Anna, of course was murdered in 2006. Don´´t expect any breakthroughs any time soon.
Next, Isla does some busking by the Brandenburg Gate and earns a respectable amount.
Next visit is to the Reichstag but the queues ares still too long to go inside.
Cycled 0 km (actually 20km but not counting towards total)
Busking earnings 49.80 euros
no punctures
The site consists of 2711 concrete stellae erected in a grid pattern on undulating ground. There is some ambiguity about the whole structure and little explanation as to why it is the way it is but the visitor quickly forms their own idea. Underground is a very good exhibition. Some things we noted as we visited..
The language is deliberate. Millions of Jews were murdered - not eliminated or exterminated - but a very personal murder. This comes out in the pictures of the early mobile murder squads which murdered groups of people in villages throughout Poland.
Although the exhibition mentions the Roma, disabled, communists, homosexuals and political opponents who were murdered, the title only refers to the Jews. this has provoked some controversy. The bigger thought that emerges (and which we have been coming to terms with throughout Eastern Europe) is how the Germans have successfully dealt with their own terrible past. The German people were victims of Nazi terror and amends have been made efforts have been made to understand and atone for what happened to ordinary German people. More importantly. Germany has managed to apologise to the victims in other countries and to build a new and better society.
Russia, by contrast has failed to even begin the process of apologising to its own people for their treatment under the Soviet regime. As for other countries and peoples. the Government appears to continue to be in denial. In Poland we talked about WWII and how it started on 1 September 1939 with the German naval shelling of a shore station near Gdansk. The UK immediately declared war on Germany in support of Poland. But, weeks, on 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland as well! We did nothing about this. The Baltic States view the USSR as an aggressive invader of their countries as Nazi Germany was later to be.
At the root of this is the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that divided Europe into a German Soviet spheres of influence. In our school history, we learnt that the purpose of this was for the USSR to buy time to re-arm and defend itself against the Nazis. In reality, it used the time between the outbreak of the war and the June 1942 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to invade most of Eastern Europe!
East Europeans thus bear a hatred towards Russians just as many Europeans did towards the Germans after the war. However, Russia has done little or nothing to come to terms with this reality. In their history books they still talk of the great Patriotic War from June 22, 1941. For them, the Second World War started then. To acknowledge that it started in September 1939, would pose difficult questions for Russians about what their leaders were up to and why Stalin provided extensive material support to Hitler during these years.
But Russians will only begin to come to terms with this when they can read about it and such is the state of press freedom in Russia today that there is little chance of that happening.
Andy has just finished reading Anna Politkovskaya´s Russian Diaries, a chilling account of the rise of oppression in Russia under Putin. Anna, of course was murdered in 2006. Don´´t expect any breakthroughs any time soon.
Next, Isla does some busking by the Brandenburg Gate and earns a respectable amount.
Next visit is to the Reichstag but the queues ares still too long to go inside.
Cycled 0 km (actually 20km but not counting towards total)
Busking earnings 49.80 euros
no punctures
posted by Andy Wightman at 12:36 PM
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