Berlin Part 2

I did not want to wake up when the alarm clock went off at 6am on Day 3. However, I dragged myself out of bed eventually to continue our exploration of Berlin.

The Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin

After breakfast, we hopped onto a bus to get to the first stop of the day - the Charlottenburg Palace. Charlottenburg is the heart of the former West Berlin and the palace is actually the reason for the whole city to be built. It was originally built in 1699 by Elector Frederick III for his wife Sophie Charlotte.

In the courtyard of the palace

The gardens at the back of the palace and a beautiful fountain

More of the baroque garden.

I also saw a fox in one of the bushes. He was quite cute!

Sachsenhausen (Houses of the Saxons)

Then we had to rush to get on to the train to Oranienburg, a quiet suburb which became one of the first places to house a Nazi concentration camp, one of the few on German soil.

The main entrance to the camp and the fence surrounding it

The prisoners were used by the Nazi army to try out new footwear for the army. They were made to march for hours under the sun on various surfaces in order to choose the most durable footwear for the army soldiers.

Where new footwear was tried out by the camp inmates

Most of the prisoners were Jews but there were also political prisoners such as Communists, gypsies, homosexuals and foreign nationals.

2 barracks which housed Jewish prisoners

Their living conditions were atrocious. They had to share tiny beds and bathrooms. Take for example the washing rooms shown below. Only several minutes were allowed for 400 prisoners to wash at these fountains every morning. Some ended up being trampled by their fellow inmates during the rush to leave the room on time when the time for washing was up.

2 fountains to 400 prisoners!!

3 prisoners had to fit into each of these bunkbeds, measuring 70cm wide each

The camp grounds were quite huge, and there was this wall which had lots of photographs and explanation of the events that occurred in the camp as well as famous inmates.

Wall depicting the events that occurred in the camp

Although this camp is not quite as big as the Auschwitz camp in Poland, the Germans had also built a crematorium here for the mass incineration of prisoners who were first killed by gassing with Zyklon B in fake shower rooms. 100,000 people died in this camp. The prisoners would first be led to the crematorium, having been told that they needed to shower. After their clothes had been taken off, they would be crammed into a room with fake shower heads which actually emitted deadly gas and not water. The dead bodies would then be burnt. The ashes were cast into a nearby canal.

The entry to one of the gas chambers and crematorium...creepy

One of the crematoriums where the Jews were led to their death

Gruesome, isn't it? We then moved on to see the barracks where the political prisoners were held. Their living conditions were relatively more luxurious than the Jewish barracks but they were at real risk of being executed at any time.

Political prisoners had roomier accomodation but could still be executed at a whim

There were tall posts from which prisoners could be hung, leading to bone dislocation and a slow death.

Posts where prisoners were suspended from

After the Nazis were defeated in 1945, the Red Army took over the camp and turned the camp into Special Camp No. 7, interning Nazis and killing 12,000 of them before the camp was finally closed in 1950.
A memorial was erected to remember all the people that had died at the camp.

The memorial to all the people who died

I was surprised that I still managed to eat my lunch after all that depressing revelation of what human beings could do to one another.

The Markisches Museum

Next stop, the Markisches Museum. This rather annoyingly was closed when my sister and I arrived. So we just took pictures with the huge statue outside..:)

Gosh he's a tall lad

The Television Tower
We took the tram back to the city centre and saw the Television Tower which is 365 m high. Apparently the height was chosen so that every school child would have no difficulty remembering it.

The television tower

The Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral)
This is the biggest cathedral in Berlin with a huge green dome which can be seen for miles around. It was built between 1894-1905. It was damaged during the second World War but was then reconstructed into a simplified form of the original.

Berliner Dom

We then went to visit some of the museums on Museum Island before heading back to the hotel. It had been a tiring but enjoyable trip. Our flight back to London was early the next morning and before we knew it we were back in the UK, wishing that we could have had a few more days in Berlin!!