24 students from Lancing College, West Sussex, studying a range of subjects at A-level, visited Krakow and Berlin on a visit led by Head of Modern Languages at Lancing College Dr Mark Palmer. Dr Palmer is a member of the Imperial War Museum Holocaust Education Fellowship Programme. The group visited the former Nazi concentration and death camp at Auschwitz, near Krakow, before flying to Berlin to investigate sites relating to the deportation of Berlin’s Jews, the events of the Holocaust and its commemoration today. There was also time to visit sites relating to the post-war division of Berlin and Germany, and the role of the city during the Cold War before the Berlin Wall came down.
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Krakow and Berlin Itinerary
Krakow and Berlin Itinerary
Below is the itinerary that was followed by students on their 7-day visit.
If you would like to find out more about the places to visit on an educational visit to Krakow and Berlin, please see the ‘Places to Visit’ section below.
Day 1
Day 2
- Coach journey to the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Guided tour of Auschwitz I then Auschwitz II
- Lunch in the Art Deco restaurant opposite Auschwitz I
- Return to Krakow, via the sites of the Podgórze ghetto, Schindler's factory and Płastów concentration camp
- Time to view parts of Krakow’s old Jewish quarter (Kazimierz) on foot, before dinner at a Jewish restaurant, the Ariel Restaurant
Day 3
- Transfer flight to Berlin and coach transport to hotel
- Introductory walk around Berlin:
Potsdamer Platz
Holocaust Memorial
Reichstag
Brandenburg Gate
Unter den Linden
Bebelplatz site of the book burning
- Evening visit to the Reichstag to view Berlin from the dome
Day 4
- Coach to Bayerischer Viertel area to view commemoration project incorporating anti-Jewish laws commemorated on street signs
- Stop-off to view the German Resistance Memorial - Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand - in the Bender Block, home to Hitler’s Army command centre during the Third Reich
- Visit to the Grunewald Station memorial to Berlin’s deported Jews
- Visit to the Wannsee Conference House education centre for a guided tour and education session on how the Second World War and the Holocaust are remembered in Germany today
- Evening visit to Oranienburgerstrasse / Hackische Höfe to experience Berlin ‘café life’
Day 5
- Guided tour of the Jewish Museum
- Walk through the old Jewish quarter, Scheunenviertel, also known as Spandauer Vorstadt
Rosenstrasse Memorial
Grosse Hamburger Strasse Memorial
Koppenplatz Memorial
Neue Synagogue
Anne Frank Zentrum Museum
Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt Museum
- Evening visit to the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in the former East Berlin
Day 6
- Visit to Checkpoint Charlie Museum
- Coach journey into former East Berlin for a brief visit to the Stasi Prison museum and a guided tour of the former Stasi Headquarters
- Return to central Berlin for a feedback session / project work
Day 7
Group split into two for a visit to either the new Holocaust Memorial visitor centre or the German Resistance Museum
- Visit to view the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
- Shopping at the famous KaDeWe department store
- Return travel to the UK
Places to Visit in Krakow and Berlin
If you are planning a visit to Krakow or Berlin to learn about the Holocaust, the Second World War or the Cold War, visit some of the places below. You could also visit the following websites for further information.
http://www.berlin-tourist-information.de/index.en.php
http://www.poland-tourism.pl
http://www.krakow.pl/en/
http://www.cracowonline.com
KRAKOW
Ariel Restaurant
Address: Restaurant Ariel, Ul. Szeroka 18
Kazimierz, Polska
Tel: (12) 421 7922
The Ariel is a traditional Jewish restaurant that can cater for moderately sized groups, in the heart of Kazimierz, the old Jewish district of Krakow. Live klezmer music sometimes features at the restaurant to accompany your meal.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Address: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau
ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 20
32-603 Oświęcim, Polska
Tel: +48 033 844 81 02
Website: http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl
The former Nazi Concentration and Death Camp at Auschwitz is located just over an hour’s drive from the city of Krakow, and consists of two main sites. The solid brick buildings at the first site, Auschwitz I, housed the main administrative areas of the camp, as well as the camp kitchen, infirmary blocks, punishment block and lodgings for those who were identified as being fit for work, mostly at hard labour tasks in the camp and surrounding area. The site was originally a Polish Army barracks, and was converted for use by the Nazis. The Auschwitz I complex now houses displays and exhibitions about the camp’s former role. The articles on display may be shocking or upsetting for some visitors. The basement of block 11, the ‘punishment block’, contains airless solitary confinement cells, dark cells and standing cells. A wall where many people from the local area were brought and shot has been reconstructed between blocks 10 and 11 and is now a memorial site.
Auschwitz II is a much larger site than Auschwitz I, about a five to ten minute coach journey away. It was the site of the transportation of many Jewish victims directly into the camp, and for about 80% of most transports, to immediate death by gassing. Four large gas chambers designed specifically to quickly kill as many people as possible in one go, were constructed at the site in 1943. The gas chambers were later demolished by the fleeing Nazi administration but the ruins of the gas chambers remain, as do the desolate rows of draughty huts of the former women’s camp. A memorial to the victims of the Holocaust is situated inside the camp grounds, near the ruins of one gas chamber. Groups must book in advance for a guided tour of both sites.
Podgórze ghetto, Schindler's factory and Płastów concentration camp
Kazimierz, the historic Jewish district of Krakow, used to be a town in its own right and became part of the city in 1800 when the region of Poland that incorporates Krakow became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1494 Poland’s king had forced the Jewish population of Krakow out of the city and many had settled in Kazimierz, where exiled Jews from elsewhere in Europe joined them. At the start of the Second World War Kazimierz was home to a thriving Jewish population of around 70,000 people. In 1941 most of the Kazimierz Jews were ‘resettled’ by the Nazis, and the remaining 20,000 were forced to move into a walled ghetto in Podgórze, a far poorer district of the city, in an area that had previously accommodated only 2 to 3 thousand people. From there, and following the final liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, the Jews were sent either to Auschwitz or to Płastów slave labour camp in Krakow, became a concentration camp from 1944. Only 1 to 2 thousand individuals of Krakow’s pre-war Jewish population survived; today a very small Jewish population remains in Kazimierz. Jewish Synagogues and a museum of Jewish culture can be visited in the area, and there is a Ghetto Museum on the corner of Targowa Street and Bohaterów Getta Square. The square was the assembling point for Jews being taken to Płaszów or to the train station for transport to Auschwitz. Some signs of the ghetto remain at Lwowska Street and in the backyard of a school at Limanowskiego Street, and near Bohaterów Getta Square at 4 Lipowa Street, the gates of Oskar Schindler’s factory can be seen. Schindler’s efforts to save some of the Jewish population by employing them as slave labour in his factory was the focus of Stephen Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List.
BERLIN
Anne Frank Zentrum
Address: Rosenthaler Strasse 39, 10178 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30 28 88 65 600
Website: http://www.annefrank.de
The Anne Frank Zentrum is the German partner of the Anne Frank House organisation in Amsterdam. The Anne Frank Zentrum works for prevention against right-wing extremism, discrimination and anti-Semitism. The Anne Frank Zentrum museum near Hakescher Markt in the old Jewish quarter of houses a permanent exhibition about the experiences of Berlin’s Jews. Temporary exhibitions are also hosted by the museum.
Bayerischer Viertel
Bayerischer Viertel (the ‘Bavarian Quarter’) is a mostly residential area of Berlin, and the location of an unusual community commemoration project. A network of streets radiating from Bayerischer Platz bear witness to the harsh anti-Semitic laws of Nazi rule, by reproducing the laws in words and pictures for all to see as they go about their daily business. The memorial project is worth taking a group to see although it is not on the usual tourist route, and is in a normal residential area.
Bebelplatz
On 10 May 1933 hundreds of ‘non-German’ books were committed to flames at the infamous book burning in Bebelplatz, the courtyard opposite Humboldt University on Berlin’s showpiece boulevard, Unter den Linden. Today a memorial at the site, modelled on the idea of empty bookshelves, serves as a reminder of the portentous event and the catastrophic racial theories that it signified.
Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt Museum
Address: Rosenthaler Strasse 39, 10178 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30 28 59 94 07
Website: http://www.blindes-vertrauen.de/introduction.html
The Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt Museum is the site of a workshop for blind and deaf Jewish workers, whose owner (Otto Weidt) tried to save his workers from deportation to concentration camps. He hid one family in a small room behind a fake cupboard, although the attempt was unsuccessful and the family were eventually deported. The museum tells the story of the site and commemorates Otto Weidt’s actions.
Checkpoint Charlie Museum
Address: Friedrichstraße 43-45, D-10969 Berlin-Kreuzberg
Post address: Postfach 61 02 26, D-10923 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 25 37 25 0
Website: http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/checkpoint-charlie.htm
http://www.mauermuseum.de/english/frame-index-mauer.html
Checkpoint Charlie, established in 1961 on Friedrichstrasse, was the third checkpoint through which military personnel and tourists could enter East Berlin, on registering with the East German border guards. It existed until 1990. The famous Checkpoint Charlie Museum was situated looking out over the border (having moved from its original home on Bernauer Strasse in 1962) to document the border guard system and the brave attempts of escapees and their helpers. It contains many weird and wonderful contraptions that helped people to escape from the oppressive regime in the GDR, and tells the story of the Berlin Wall and the people whose lives it affected so deeply. It also houses a rich collection of art connected to the Berlin Wall and the Cold War.
Fernsehturm
Address: Berliner Fernsehturm, Panoramastrasse 1A, D-10178 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 242 33 33
Website: http://www.berlinerfernsehturm.de
The Television Tower, or Fernsehturm, was built after the division of the city by the Berlin Wall, and was completed in 1969. The former GDR saw the necessity to build a powerful transmitter in the middle of the eastern part of Berlin and also wanted the Television Tower to be an architectural and political symbol. Post-reunification the interior of the tower was modernised and fantastic views of Berlin can be seen from the top of the tower.
German Resistance Memorial Centre
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand)
Address: Stauffenberg Strasse 13 – 14, 10785 Berlin Tiergarten
Tel: +49-30-26 99 50 00
Website: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/index-e.php
The German Resistance Memorial Centre is a site of remembrance, political studies, active learning, documentation and research. The courtyard site is where Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and three co-conspirators were shot to death for their part in planning a failed attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944. A plaque and a statue in the courtyard commemorate the attempt and executions. Inside, an extensive permanent exhibition, temporary special exhibitions, events and a range of publications document and illustrate resistance to National Socialism, but the displays are in German only.
Grosse Hamburger Strasse Memorial
Grosse Hamburger Strasse once ran through the centre of Jewish life in Berlin. In this street a memorial to Jewish people deported to Nazi concentration camps is situated at the site of a former Jewish cemetery. In 1942 the site began to be used as the collection point for local Jews who were to be deported. Allied bombing eventually obliterated the cemetery. The memorial consists of a stone tablet inscribed with a description of the site’s history and the words: ‘Vergesst das nie, Wehret dem krieg, Hütet den frieden’ – ‘Never forget, Guard against war, Protect peace’. A sculpture of men, women and children awaiting their unknown fate accompanies the memorial.
Grunewald Station Memorial
Berlin’s Jewish residents were deported from the city via Grunewald Station. Here they where they were loaded onto transports and sent to concentration and death camps in Germany and Poland. Memorials at the station entrance and on the now disused railway lines testify to the number of Jews deported, and the dates and destinations of the transports. There is also a sculpted memorial wall showing imprints of human outlines in the rock, signifying the voids where people had once been that were created by the deportations.
Holocaust Memorial
Address: Cora-Berliner-Strasse 1 D – 10117, Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 / 200 766 - 0
Website: http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en/
The ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ is a massive construction in Berlin city centre, consisting of many different sized stone blocks located on undulating terrain to create an uneasy feeling for those walking into and through the memorial. Taking up a large chunk of prime real estate in Berlin city centre, and having taken over 15 years to come to fruition, the project has proved very controversial. Visitors can decide for themselves if they think the memorial is suitable, effective and moving, and have the opportunity to learn more about the events commemorated by the memorial in the visitor’s centre situated underneath the memorial site.
Jewish Museum
Address: Lindenstrasse 9-14, 10969 Berlin - Kreuzberg
Tel: +49 30 25 99 33 00
Website: http://www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de
The Jewish Museum's permanent historical exhibition extends over 3,000 square meters and invites visitors to journey through two thousand years of German-Jewish life. Temporary exhibitions, contemporary art installations, cabinet displays as well as various interactive multimedia shows in the Rafael Roth Learning Centre complement its range of themes. Guided tours for groups are available on request.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Address: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, Kurfürstendamm, 10789, Berlin
Website: http://www.classictic.com/venues/50.html
In the heart of Berlin’s shopping district, near the Kurfürstendamm and the Ka De We department store, the striking Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church juts into the skyline as a testimony to the destruction wrought on the city by Allied bombing during the Second World War. The half-destroyed church steeple has been left untouched as a memorial to those killed during the bombing, and a modern church has been erected right next to it signifying survival and regeneration.
Koppenplatz Memorial
The Scheunenviertel area of Berlin, also known as Spandauer Vorstadt, is the old Jewish quarter of the city. Many memorials to the victims of the Holocaust can be found in the area. One example is a memorial in a small square called Koppenplatz, situated at the northern end of Grosse Hamburger Strasse. The memorial takes the form of a small table and two chairs. One of the chairs is lying on its back, as if it has been overturned in a scuffle or in the owner’s haste to leave. The sculpture signifies the rapid forced evacuation of Jewish residents’ from their homes in the area surrounding the park during the Second World War.
Neue Synagogue
Address: Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin - Centrum Judaicum
Tel: +49 30 88 02 84 51
Website: http://mysql.snafu.de/cjudaicum/index.html
The New Synagogue was consecrated in 1866 to meet the needs of Berlin’s rapidly growing Jewish population. With 3,200 seats, it became the largest Jewish house of worship in Germany. The synagogue escaped major damage during the Pogrom of November 1938 (known as ‘Kristallnacht’), but it was severely damaged by Allied bombing later in the war. In 1958 the main room of the synagogue was demolished and only the parts of the building closest to the street remained structurally intact. In May 1995 the building was reopened and now houses permanent and temporary exhibitions about the building, and the diversity and traditions of Jewish life in Berlin.
Olympic Stadium (not included on the TPYF itinerary due to fixtures)
Address: Olympischer Platz 3, 14053 Berlin – Charlottenburg
Tel: +49 303 00 63430
Website: http://www.berlin-tourist-information.de/cgi-bin/sehenswertes.pl?id=13678
The Olympic Stadium was constructed from 1935–36 to plans by the architect Werner March as the central building of the Reich sports field for the 1936 Olympic Games. The sports field includes the Maifeld, which was originally designed for and used for Nazi political rallies. The stadium is one of Berlin's best remaining examples of Third Reich architecture. Sports fixtures still take place in the stadium today, including the final match of the 2006 football World Cup, so it is not always possible to visit if a fixture is arranged.
Potsdamer Platz
Once the core of Berlin’s busy city centre, with businesses, bars and Europe’s first (hand-operated) traffic light, the Second World War brought near-complete destruction to Potsdamer Platz, soon followed by years of desolation and neglect. From the 1960s until 1989 the Berlin Wall and the infamous ‘death strip’ on the eastern side cut straight through the centre of the plot. Following reunification the site once more became a focus for entertainment, business and commerce, famously becaming Europe’s largest redevelopment project. Work on the site is now largely complete and it functions once again as a modern and vibrant city centre and transport hub.
Reichstag
Address: Platz der Republik, Tiergarten
Tel: 2 27-0
Website: http://www.lodging-germany.com/info/Berlin/berlin-5reichstag.htm
http://www.berlin-tourist-information.de/index.en.php
http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/index.html
The Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament (Bundestag), is one of Berlin's most historical landmarks. It is close to the Brandenburg Gate and before reunification, it was right next to the Berlin Wall. It was constructed between 1884 and 1894, mainly funded with wartime reparation money from France. The famous inscription 'Dem Deutschen Volke' (To the German People) was added in 1916. In 1933 fire broke out in the building, destroying much of the Reichstag. It is to date still unclear who started the fire, but the Communists were blamed. It gave a boost to Hitler's Party, the NSDAP, who would soon come to power. The building was further damaged at the end of the war, when the Soviets entered Berlin. The picture of a Red Army Soldier raising the Soviet flag on the Reichstag is one of the most famous 20th century images and symbolised Germany's defeat. More recently a massive glass dome designed by the British architect Sir Norman Foster has rejuvenated the heart of the original building. Views of Berlin from the dome are spectacular.
Rosenstrasse Memorial
The Rosenstrasse Memorial is a monument to the German wives of Jewish men, who demonstrated (successfully) in an unprecedented public protest to free their husbands and sons arrested by the Nazis, in 1943.
Stasi Headquarters
Address: Forschungs-und Gedenkstätte Normannenstrasse,
Ruschestrasse 103, Haus 1, 10365 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 55 36 854
Website: http://www.stasimuseum.de
Formally known as the Forschungs-und Gedenkstatte Normannenstrasse, the Stasi museum is the former headquarters of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (state security service) in the former East Germany. Lives were controlled and destroyed from the banal yet ominous building. Visitors can take a guided tour of the building and visit exhibitions showing the techniques and machines used for spying on GDR citizens, or Communist propagandist art for instance. The office once occupied by the Stasi boss, Erich Meilke, has remained unchanged since the 1950s. English language tours must be pre-booked.
Stasi Prison Museum
Address: Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, Genslerstrasse 66,
D-13055 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 98 60 82 30 / 32
Website: http://www.stiftung-hsh.de
Originally a Soviet ‘special’ prison, the eerie and unsettling site of the main remand prison for people detained by the former East German Ministry of State Security, or 'Stasi', has been a Memorial since 1994. The vast majority of the buildings, equipment and furniture and fittings in the prison have survived, so the Memorial provides an authentic picture of prison conditions in the GDR. At the time of the TPYF project, pre-booked group tours only were available.
Unter den Linden
Unter den Linden is the historic artery that runs through 1.5km of central Berlin, eastwards from the Brandenburg Gate. Many sites of great historical importance line the street, and those of particular interest for groups looking at the history of the city during the Nazi era include the site of the book burning opposite Humboldt University (see above), and the Neue Wache. The Neue Wache was originally a guardhouse accommodating the Royal Palace Guards (built 1818). In 1931 the Prussian Government made it into a memorial for the fallen soldiers in the First World War, and it has since become Germany’s central memorial to all of the victims of war. It houses the tombs of an unknown soldier, a resistance fighter, and a concentration camp victim, and a sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz showing a mother mourning her dead son is the central feature of the memorial.
Wannsee Conference House
Address: Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58, D-14109 Berlin
Tel: +49 - 30 - 80 50 01 0
Website: http://www.ghwk.de/engl/kopfengl.htm
On the shores of Lake Wannsee, in a gentrified and tree-lined suburb of Berlin, the Wannsee Conference House education centre provides an insight into how and why the systematic murder of the European Jews was possible. In this building an important meeting took place in January 1942, crystallising some of the administrative and bureaucratic details of the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’. Notes taken at that meeting, which are today known as the ‘Wannsee Protocol’, form the most important piece of documentary evidence relating to the Holocaust. Fifteen top officials of the Nazi bureaucracy and the SS attended the Wannsee conference, which was led by Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office. The minutes of the meeting were written by Adolf Eichmann. A comprehensive exhibition tells the story of the Holocaust, and education sessions are available on request.
