Habs History Trip to Berlin

Day two started with a trek up to Oranienburg, on the outskirts of Berlin, where the group spent the morning visiting the Concentration Camp Memorial at Sachsenhausen. The guide, Niklaus, whose grandfather had been an inmate, provided us with a riveting, if chilling, picture of both the history of the camp – and its central place in the concentration camp system as a whole – and how it functioned.

In the afternoon, pupils and staff travelled back to eastern Berlin and to the Russo-German Museum at Karlshorst, where Marshal Zhukov and the representatives of the other Allies received Germany’s Unconditional Surrender in the early hours of 9 May 1945. Later, as evening set in, we visited the Soviet War Memorial at Treptower Park, with its dominating statue depicting Nikolai Masalov, carrying a recued German child in one hand and wielding a sword, which is smashing a swastika, in the other.

In the light of this November’s anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the third day was focused on the history of the German Democratic Republic. It began with a walk down the old Stalinsallee, now Karl Marx Allee, to Café Moscow. The group then took a bus to the former Stasi (Ministry of State Security) prison at Hohenschoenhausen, where all attempted escapees were imprisoned and interrogated.

This was followed by a visit to the former headquarters of the Stasi at Normannestrasse, where pupils and staff were able to gain a fuller appreciation of both the extent of state surveillance and the methods employed to keep a watchful eye on dissent. After a brief visit to the German History Museum and some free time in the Gedarmenmarkt, the group retired to the appropriately named ‘Twelve Apostles’ for their last supper.