Day Eleven: Berlin and Bonhoeffer, Part 1
Our Columbia Theological Seminary group of 14 left the Lutheran group of 15 and headed back to Berlin. It was about a 2 ½ hour train ride.

Our focus now shifts from the Reformation to Bonhoeffer and the Nazi Regime. After lunch, we only had one event planned, a visit to Topography of Terror. This new building is located on this site where the most important institutions of the Nazi apparatus of terror and persecution were located between 1933 and 1945: the headquarters of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the Reich SS Leadership and Security Service (SD) of the SS and, from 1939 on, the Reich Security Main Office. The original building was intentionally destroyed because of the awful things that happened there. But a new building was built to remember and learn from the past. There aren’t many pictures to show you. The day was spent learning about how Hitler deliberately decreased the freedoms of the people, eventually erasing the line between police and party. It’s like if the Republicans or Democrats taking over the army and all local police.
      He passed many laws, for example in 1933 when all those with a Jewish heritage had to leave any position in public service: military, judges, teachers, etc. In 1936 a law was passed that anyone can be arrested or detained without a judicial review. Opposition to the government was banned which then led to many of the arrests. Concentration camps were forced labor camps to intimidate, humiliate, and break peoples spirits. Most were let out after a certain period. The Jewish people were the minority in the concentration camps. Extermination camps were part of the Holocaust and created to kill on a mass scale. Especially toward the end of the war, most of the Jewish population were sent here. The progression led from being arrested, either for owning a banned book, speaking out against the government, or having a Jewish heritage among other crimes, then being sent to a prison or concentration camp, and after a period, either being released, sent to an extermination camp, or staying in the forced labor camp.
     This is exactly what happened with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was arrested, then sent to Tegel Prison, then Buchenwald Concentration Camp for 7 weeks, and then to the extermination camp at Flossenberg. It was sobering to see the systematic way Hitler eroded the freedoms of the German people, all in the name of making Germany a great nation again.
A special exhibit as on display about how Martin Luther’s words were used by both the Nazi regime and the Resistance.

The Regime saw Hitler as completing or carrying on Luther’s work: both being great German leaders, saving the people, and speaking out against Jewish People.

The Resistance used Luther’s words to speak about standing up to the powers of this world, being free in Christ, and following the Bible and God alone. These words are from Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer…


      Topography of Terror is located next to the Berlin Wall. This time I was able to get up close to it and even touch it.

The top is rounded which made it impossible to get a grip on it should you try to climb it get over. Then you’d have to face the barbed wire, spikes on the ground, land mines, and guards if you were going to make your way to freedom.

On a lighter note, there are Berlin Bears all over painted in different ways. It added a fun and festive atmosphere to an otherwise serious, drab, dreary day. Here is the one at the US Embassy.

The one in front of the Blue Man Group.

And a fun one, just because!

Then there was the Grimm’s Hotel room I was in. Anyone want to guess which fairy tale story my room was?