Germany, Poland and Denmark   August 2006

Took the usual EasyJet to Berlin and rented a car. Spent a couple of days in Berlin. Went to Treptower Park where there is a large memorial to the Soviets killed in the battle for Berlin. This is a gigantic monument and was in the process of being renovated.  Then drove up to the Polish Baltic coast, visiting Sachsenhausen Concentration camp on the way up. Sachsenhausen was quite a large camp but not on the same scale as Auschwitz. About 200,000 people were imprisoned here between 1936 and 1945,mostly political prisoners, criminals and homosexuals with about 100,000 deaths estimated. The unique thing about this camp was that it was used after the war as a Soviet Special camp. The tyranny of the Soviets merely carried on from the Nazis and imprisoned and tortured their own political prisoners here. They closed it in 1950 and it is estimated that as many as 12,000 died during this period. After 1950 the East German regime then used it for their own purposes, largely as an army camp. It wasn't until the 1960's that is became a Memorial site and only really after the fall the the Iron Curtain that it truely was made a National Memorial and museum.

Treptower Park, Soviet War Memorial, Berlin

In honour of the Red Army's fallen                                             Soviet sword smashing the Swastika

The Holocaust Memorial near Brandenburg Gate             Site of Hitlers bunker

The site of the Fuerher Bunker has just recently been marked with an information board right slap bang were the bunker was. For years this place was a bit of a no-no to Berliners. Nobody really wanted to know, yet thousands of people every year came in search of Hitlers bunker and were unable to find it. We found it last year when we were in Berlin and now this year it has officially been recognised with its new information board. It is just behind the Holocaust Memorial, not far from the Brandenburg Gate in Gertrud Kolmar Strasse.

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Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Gateway to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, an hours drive north of Berlin.

The usual cynical inscription...'Work sets you free'.......no it doesn't!!

The impressive and very 'Soviet' staute, put up in the 1960's, with all the countries of those who suffered here.

Polish Baltic coast near Misdroy and Swinemunde

  Polska!       'What does it say?'....'I dunno !'                                                             Our hotel in Stettin

Our Hotel in Stettin which used to be in Germany but after the war, Stalin insisted that the Polish border be moved some considerable distance westwards and the natural border between Germany and Poland should be the river Oder ( the Oder/Neisse line). Germany lost considerable territory but Stalin was adamant that this should be and of course defeated Germany was in no position to do anything about it. This border was not officially recognised by West Germany for many years after the war, indeed it still remains a contencsious issue. Stettin was renamed in Polish to Szczecin and all remaining Germans forcibly removed, but it still retains its German feel and the German language is still widely understood and spoken here.

                                Polish coast                                                         We rented a little hut near Griefswald

Prora, Hitler's massive holiday resort that was never completed. Its one of the largest constructions in Europe yet few know about it. It is located on the Baltic Island of Ruegen and is noted as a particularly striking example of Third Reich architecture. The buildings hug the beautiful Baltic coastline just meters from the golden sandy beaches and extend almost 5 kilometers and were to house 20,000 people. Now boarded up and empty save for a small section used as a museum, this was an interesting place to visit.

                             Part of Prora                                                              swimming near Prora  

Prora from the air. The colossus of the Baltic                    

Hansestadt Stralsund, a beautiful town that was unfortunately in the old Eastern Germany and consequently was badly neglected by the  Bolsheviks. Nowadays one can see a lot of reconstruction but these fine old Hanseatic towns on the Baltic are still a long way off 'western' standards. The reunification of Germany is still on-going.