Coming to Grips

Berlin is a city which surely seems to have come to grip with its past. There are reminders everywhere of the good and the bad. Close to the Brandenburg gate, for example, a small row of crosses with photos serves as a memorial to a few of the people, mostly young, who lost their lives trying to escape to the west. When I was there, a group of young schoolkids was there on a field trip.

The Neue Wache is another memorial. It's a quiet room, bathed in natural light from a hole in the ceiling. The sculpture is of a mother cradling her dead son in her arms. The inscription in front reads, "To the victims of war and tyrrany". Outside the memorial, a plaque elaborates that this is a memorial to all who have been persecuted because of their religion, ethnicity, orientation, weakness, and political convictions.


Elsewhere in the city, there are numerous other memorials and reminders. The German Historical Museum traces the history of the land from the Middle Ages, and doesn't hold back when depicting the time from 1933 - 1945.