Berlin Day 3 June 1st

There is much debate about what to do. I want to go to three sites to the west of the city and Meryl wanted to go the Martin Gropius Haus and the Jewish Museum. We agree a strategy if one of us does not get to an agreed meeting place but we both hope it's not needed.

It was soon clear, that is a soon as we get on the bus, that it would be busy. The train was crowded and we had to stand. And the weather was not promising. Rain was threatened but it has every day so far. Furthermore, the football fans were out in force: Bayern Munich, again and Stuttgart, for the cup final so the day would be noisy but as before it all seemed good humoured and with out malice.

I set off into the unknown, as it were. The area where my sites exist are in the old GDR part of the city and it soon becomes clear that there is a massive difference between it and the other places we have seen. When I reach my first destination, the streets are shabby, the buildings run down and the signs of poverty are clear. There is a sort of greyness in the people, the layers of street filth and a lack of get up and go that reveals an area of low expectations.

I am visiting a memorial to the Forced Labours of the Third Reich. It a short walk (800 metres) to a site of single story buildings in a small compound. It's been open just one month and I am the only visitor. The details are shocking. What surprised me most is that it's a story that so far has not received a lot of coverage in the general texts I have seen. Yet it involved a staggering number of people: maybe as many as 15 million people from nearly every country in Europe had representatives in these camps and working for very little to support the war effort. Many died, all were very badly treated. One photograph in the building showing their living conditions had a vague resemblance to the huts I visited at Auschwitz. Most of the workers were never paid any form of compensation after the war but when they got home, they were subjected to hostility, most as collaborators.

After this small but illuminating memorial, my next choice was the Staasi Prison. (I know, I do pick a choice of places to visit!). Again, this is a relatively new site and since it offered a guided tour in English, I thought it deserved my presence. The problem, as it turned out, were the instructions of how to get there. They failed to make a minor detail clear: the distance! I set off from the U-bahn station on foot but a little unsure of the direction. However, a young German pointed the way saying it was 10 or 15 minutes walk…he thought! Optimism is the nature of youth, however, and after 20 minutes, and still no sight a postie suggested a tram! At last, I got there, about 90 minutes after leaving the U-bahn station.

The ticket seller in the prison agreed that the directions were unclear but I was in time for the 2.30 tour, which began at 2.50! I had estimated it would last one hour but now I learnt it was 90 minutes. Could I get back to meet Meryl before 5pm??

The tour was as unpleasant as one could expect. It was unpleasant in so far as the mental images created messes with your head, it's the sounds that it makes in your mind as you conjure up the mental images needed to try and understand what it was like, as you try to imagine the experiences of the people incarcerated there. What is challenging is that a group, the USSR, that has just fought a war to destroy the likes of the SS/Gestapo then resort to similar tactics. After 1951 it's the Germans who run the prison but they are no better and may even be worse. The pictures tells one very little as after 1955 it was the mental abuse that did the damage rather than a violence or physical harm.

Our guide, Jonas, said that no German knew what was going on in the prison because it could not be seen from the streets. It was in a Staasi area, surrounded by a wall, so no ordinary citizen could see in. Even if they could its hard to understand what they would have learnt as no prisoner ever went outside, at least according to what we learnt from the guide. However, I recall that after 1945 until, perhaps the 1990's German's claimed, and many historians agreed I believe, that the details of what was going on in the Nazi concentrations camps was not known by ordinary people. That version of events is no longer accepted. Maybe the same will emerge as far as the Staasi is concerned.

So, with my visit over, it was clear I could not get back to The Jewish Museum by 5 pm so I headed for the Hbf as we agreed. And now with book in hand, a biography of Rheinhard Heydrich, music in my ears I waited and Meryl arrived at 5.40: all well; ah…no. Her route looked easy on paper, until she found that the route of her choice via Stadmitte was closed to repairs! Panic and fury meant she arrived suitably annoyed! And stressed. Took a while for calm to be restored!

Another good day in Berlin as the rain began to fall yet again.