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Berlin - Memorial Plötzensee
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee
From 1933 to 1945, almost 3,000 people were executed in the Plötzensee prison in Berlin. Today, the cells and a small documentation center can be visited.
However, it is now more than difficult to imagine that this "Ged?kstørte" used to be one of the most cruel places on earth, where blood had flowed, people had been executed by hanging and their suffering recorded for entertainment. Nowadays, the place is tastefully decorated with a few well-placed wreaths and painted in a friendly modern light color, which makes it friendly and welcoming - An excursion destination where families with children are welcome and can feel safe.
The guillotine shortly after the war
I remember the first time I visited the place. It was at the end of the 70s and already on the way into the building I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and the creepiness was overwhelming. If I had had any doubts about what kind of place it was, the doubts evaporated instantly. Back then, the place was neither very friendly nor welcoming. It was raw and brutal, as it was when the atrocities were committed. In short, I don't like what they have turned the place into. I think it is good that we are sometimes reminded of what has happened in places like Pl?zenssee. And the fact that we can almost feel the evil that took place there helps us to understand that it must never happen again. For the same reason, I also believe that it is a misunderstanding that children should be able to come everywhere and therefore we turn these places into nice and cosy playgrounds . This is NOT for children.
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee
In the period 1933-45, 2,891 people were executed. The first 3 years the executioner used an ax and he beheaded 45 prisoners. Later until 1939, guillotine was used. After this, gallows were in use, where 8 people could be hung at the same time. 90 people who were part of the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, were executed here. The last as late as April 9, 1945.
The urn containing ashes from all the German concentration camps
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee has created an online database
containing all the 2892 who were executed in
Plötzensee during the Nazi era.
Adress:
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee
Hüttigfad
13627 Berlin-Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Opening hours:
March - October
D>aily: 9.00 - 17.00
November - February
Daily: 9.00 - 16.00
Public transport:
U-Bahnhof Turmstrasse or S-Bahnhof Beusselstrasse
Subsequent Bus 123 to "Gedenkstätte Plötzensee" (3 minutes on foot)
L
ink:
From the outside
Wanted
Berlin is always worth a visit - summer or winter - but where to go? Here are some slightly unusual and very different suggestions for places I like to go.
Interesting places
A B C
"Beelitz-Heilstätten" - Old military hospital |
Bendlerblock" - Memorial and museum |
"Berlin Untervelten" - Berlin's "Underworld" |
"Bernauer Straße" - About the Berlin Wall etc. |
"Bornholmer Straße - Former border crossing east/west |
"Boxhagener Platz - Green area and flea market" |
D E F
 "Europacenter" - Shopping center etc. |  "Flakturm Humboldthain" - Bunker facility WW2 |  "Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg" - Busy airport |
 "Flughafen Berlin Tempelhof" - Recreational area. |  "Escape tunnels between East and West Berlin" - Cold War | 
"Friedhof Invalidenhof" - Soldiers Cemetery |
 "Führerbunker" - History of the bunker. Primarily post-war |  "Not finished yet |
"Not finished yet |
G H I J K
"Old Danish Embassy" - Tiergarten Gedenkstätte Plötzensee"
- Memorial "Glienicker Brücke"- Dividing East/ West - "Pallasstrasse bunker"
Bunker i centrum " Weissensee Jewish Cemetery - Jewish cemetery Karlshorst - German-Russian Museum"
L M N O P Q R S "Majakowskiring" Prenzlauer Berg" "Schöneberg town hall" - JFK tale" "Schwerbelastungskörper" - Pressure gauge " Friedhof Grunewald-Forst - Cemetery for suicides SS residences Zehlendorf
S T U V X Y Z "Stasimuseum" - Stasimuseum Teufelsberg" - NSA in Grunewald "Tiergarten" - The Nordic Embassies" "Tiergarten - Siegessäule" 67 meter tall victory column "Villa Riefenstahl - Leni Riefenstahls House "Zionskirche Prenzlauerberg - Where Bonhoeffer preached
Recreational areas:
Food and drinks:
"Biergarden am Neuen See" in the Tiergarten. Biergarden "Prater" - From 1837 and the
oldest Biergarden "Schleusenkrug", "Biergarden in Tiergarten". "Mustafas Gemüse Kebap" - known all over Berlin "Restaurant Zillemarkt" - Unfortunately closed by now "Zur letzten Instanz" - Oldest restaurant in Berlin
Postcard Berlin, Sebastianstraße, Berliner Mauer
Shortcut to postcards of the Berlin Wall
A recommendation
Berlin's landmark is a bear
I have visited Berlin for many years. The first time was in the late 70s with a school
class where the stay made such a big impression on me that I have been coming there
very often ever since.
The first times I visited the city, it was brutally divided into East and West and
separated by the famous and infamous Berlin Wall, which from one day to the next
separated families and friends.
The history of the construction of the Berlin Wall is long and begins in the division of Germany
after World War II, where the four victors and allies - the Soviet Union, the United States, England and France divided the country
between them. The capital, Berlin, from which the Allies were to jointly rule Germany, was also divided into four occupation zones,
which each Allied ruled, however, in accordance with the overall agreements the four Allies had jointly
But the marriage was not a happy one and, in short, the differences between the United States, England and France, on the one hand, and
the Soviet Union, on the other, became so big that cooperation was almost impossible.
The lack of cooperation led the Soviet Union to voluntarily decide to form the state of the GDR
in their part of Germany, where West Berlin were located - now as a desert island in the east.
In the GDR, however, they had the problem that many of its inhabitants would rather live in the somewhat richer "West", where the Americans, unlike the Russians,
provided financial assistance for the reconstruction after the "total war". In the Soviet-occupied German territories, the Russians instead
dismantled most of the production equipment and moved it to the Soviet Union, and to make matters worse, the Germans were also ordered to
pay war damages.
As the flow of refugees from the GDR increased, often by several thousand people a day, the
then government of the GDR felt compelled, with the consent of the Soviet Union, to confine its population, otherwise within a few years there would be so few people
left in the state no longer really would work. The flight to the West among young people, skilled and highly educated was so that the situation was unsustainable
and something had to be done.
The iconic photo of the soldier who escaped from the
GDR to the west
Well arrived in West Berlin, you had to sign up in e.g. the Marienfelde refugee camp to apply for a residence permit.
Here one was interrogated and later typically assigned to a job according to qualifications and an apartment. Many former GDR citizens have passed through
Marienfelde, where there now also is a museum. It is estimated that approx. 1.35 million people passed through the camp in Marienfelde until the fall of
the wall in 1989.
West Berlin was a thorn in the side of the so-called communist regimes, which on several
occasions tried to get the West Allies to leave Berlin and thus let it become part of the GDR, but when that failed, the Berlin Wall or "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall"
as it was officially called in the GDR was built in 1961.
"Notaufnahmelager"
Marienfelde (refugee camp)
The "Schandmauer" - or wall of shame as it was called in most of the western world - came to surround the whole of West Berlin.
The day of shame - 13 August 1961 - was the day when a 41 km long wall was started and further developed the following years right up to the fall of the wall in 1989. Memorial
It is estimated that approx. 14,000 border soldiers guarded the wall
- which by the way consisted of several walls - even though 860,000 mines had been laid, more than 300
watchtowers erected, trenches built and more than 600 well-trained watchdogs exposed.
Throughout the period from 1961 - 1989, it is estimated that there were more than 5,000 escape attempts and that
a little more than 3,000 people were apprehended. Some of these escape attempts took place through the 57 escape
tunnels dug under the Berlin Wall. In all, it is believed that 190 died during escape attempts.
World War II and the Berlin Wall - even after its dismantling - have of course left their mark
on the city of Berlin and there is no doubt that these events have had a colossal historical significance, but one
must not forget that Berlin is also an extremely interesting and modern city, where life is lived and where the
cultural offerings are enormous.
Wanted
GDR elite in Pankow
The GDR had otherwise promised its population that after some hard years
of toil and toil, the reward would come, but when you could see, not
least via western TV, how the nation actually fell further and further
behind in relation to the west, many began to doubt truth value of the
statement. For the same reason, large parts of the population began to
seep to the west and this could most easily happen via Berlin, where the
borders between the various sectors were still open.
When a GDR citizen had decided to become a "republican
refugee", he or she typically dressed like people from the West
and then subsequently bought a train ticket to Berlin , if one did not already live there. In Berlin, the trip typically continued by "U-bahn" to West Berlin.
During such an escape, no significant luggage could be included, as one would easily be recognized as what one was - a refugee - and then taken to the police
station for questioning and imprisonment. Although there was free passage to West Berlin, many East German border guards were posted at the border and were
largely solely responsible for keeping an eye on any refugees.
