Nazis and Commies

Berlin was so intense. We were there five days that were packed with class and tours of everything relating to WWII… Jewish Berlin, Nazi Headquarters, Nazi Church, etc. This city has literally been torn apart and the people are still trying to put it back together. Our tour guide, Gabriel, is a British historian who has been living in Berlin for 8 years and has a lot to offer us as far as learning.

On Sunday (the one before last now), we went to a Lutheran church service then we got a history lesson at a church that was built by the Nazis. You wouldn’t believe how they incorporated Nazi propaganda and ideology with Christian doctrine. It was actually quite frightening. Martin Luther Memorial Church was built in 1933 when Hitler came to power. There are tiles of soldiers (Hitler’s storm troopers portrayed as the average father), strong women with many children (so they can grow up and fight in Hitler’s army), and the hammer and sickle (the symbol they ripped off from the communists). The crucifix does not portray Jesus as a suffering sacrifice rather a strong man bearing pain. Apparently, the Nazis focused on the resurrection because Germany was to have its own resurrection after its death in WWI. They also exploited the figure of Martin Luther because he was a German fighting non-Germans who said some questionable things about Jews who didn’t convert. Hitler really didn’t have any desire to make a Christian empire. He just used the church to further his own agenda even though he saw Christianity as too weak with its ideas of brotherhood, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians, Protestant and Catholic alike, bought into the Nazi program that promoted national pride and patriotism. It took years for Christians to realize that Nazism was completely evil and it was too late. Martin Neimoller said after the war that one should always beware of someone who tells you to follow a man – all men are sinners- and who speaks lightly of death.

A couple days later, we had a tour of some Nazi sites like the Propaganda ministry headquarters lead by Goebbels (who does not look very Aryan himself), Hitler’s bunker and his headquarters/office. I couldn’t believe I was standing where Hitler used to live and where he married Eva Braun and later killed himself. Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge was a 22 year old woman who wrote down the dictation of his last will and testament. She reported that she expected some sort of explanation for the Holocaust or some repentant attitude. But Hitler only said the same hateful words as he always had. After he had killed himself with a cyanide tablet and a shot to the head (he did not want to wake up in Russia), she was making copies of the will as he had ordered. Junge says she was making the copies to the sounds of machine guns and the approaching Soviet soldiers and that it was so ironic because it was such a beautiful day outside.

I found my own irony that day. It was a gorgeous day in Berlin- the most beautiful day I could’ve imagined in the city. But something awful happened that morning. I was on the S-bahn (aboveground train) with my professor, his wife, and three girlfriends and we only made it one stop before we heard an announcement in German and had to get off the train. Julie, who speaks German, asked a woman what was going on. The woman told her that a man had jumped in front of the train when we were coming to the station. He was somewhere under the train, surely dead from the impact. We took a moment to pray and tried to process the shock. How could a man step in front of our train? What was going on in his life that made living worse than dying? It was interesting to see how the Germans dealt with the issue. We felt lots of concern and shock for this man. The Germans must have been in shock but didn’t express much but the need to be thorough and efficient in the situation at hand. The poor driver seemed very agitated and probably used; his own sanity was compromised because another selfishly stepped in front of the train. Well, that was the event that set the tone for our day of learning about the Nazis.

Later, we switched to learning about science and technology in Germany. We visited Humboldt University where some big names learned and taught. Karl Marx was a student there and Einstein taught there before emigrating to the U.S. We got to go into the hall where Einstein gave lectures and read his research findings on the theory of relativity! Great minds have come out of Germany.

On our way from Berlin to Prague, we stopped in Wittenberg. Wittenberg was put on the map by the one and only Martin Luther. We saw the monastery that became his home with Katarina, his wife, and the church where he nailed the 95 Theses. I never thought I’d go to Luther’s hometown but I was somewhat bothered by the fact that very few people are still practicing Christians. Only 14% are Lutheran and 2-3% Catholic in Wittenberg because it was so heavily influenced by Communism for 40 years. The people in Eastern Europe are hardly religious anymore because the USSR beat it out of them. Poland somehow hung on to their Catholicism because it is deeply rooted in their national identity. It also helped that Pope John Paul II was the first Polish Pope. Poland is very closely linked to Rome.

I want to write about Prague and now Krakow as well…I am constantly behind but there are more stories to tell…