Berlin Memorials

Portion of the Wall near the old Luftwaffe building. The Luftwaffe building was so close to the Wall (on the Eastern side) that one day, after hours, an office worker strung a zip line from one of the windows, tossed it to a friend across the Wall, and glided himself, and his wife and son into West Berlin. Yeah, the windows were bricked up after that.

Neue Wache ("New Guardhouse"-it was new in 1816). After WWII it was a memorial to the victims of fascism, now it's a memorial to the "victims of war and tyranny." It houses the tombs of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim. The statue is a copy of the Kathe Kollwitz statue, Mother with Her Dead Son

Holocaust Memorial

Unter den Linden is one of my favorite places in Berlin. I like to walk up and down it while eating donuts and drinking coffee. Unter den Linden means "under the linden trees" and it has been a main drag since at least the 15th Century. Hitler, apparently deliriously over-confident in the beauty of the swastika, cut down the trees and replaced them with Nazi flags. The Germans were not happy about that one, and he actually replanted the trees. Ooo, ouch! Pride comes before the fall, Hit. I hear the Hellespont hasn't been whipped in a while.


Unter den Linden, Frederick the Great Statue, looking East
















Unter den Linden, a few minutes and about 100 meters later, looking West.