Escape from Berlin, 1945: a Family Journey

Dear Readers, this article is different than my normal Urban Decay topics. Still, it is a story of decay - of the catastrophic collapse of an evil government and the fate of some of its innocent victims. This is the story of how my family escaped from Berlin in April of 1945 during the chaotic final days of the Second World War in Europe, when the Soviet armies were entering Berlin.

My family came from Greece and moved to Germany in 1938, when my grandfather got a job in Berlin. He was a highway engineer. At this time, the Germans were building the autobahns and were at the forefront of highway technology. My grandfather (Opa) and mother were Greek-born, while my grandmother (Oma) and Aunt Hellas were German-born. Needless to say, moving to Germany in 1938 was a terrible strategic decision.

The family moved to a flat in the Charlottenberg area of Berlin, near the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station and near the 1936 Olympic stadium complex. My mother remembers that they lived on the second floor at the corner of Ratzeburger Allee and Ebereschenallee. These buildings survived the war with little damage, and the area is still a quiet residential district. Some of the apartment blocks are rather severe. I have seen similar apartments in Polish cities.

My mother was a young girl then and did not remember the exact the address of the flat. But when I showed her this picture of the door with twin portholes, she immediately recognized it (you can see it in Photograph 1 behind the yellow car). She said when you entered, one flight of steps led up and another led down to the basement, which was very frightening.

This is Steubenplatz today, with Ebereschenallee coming in from the right. My mother remembers that one store facing the platz in the 1940s was a pharmacy.

This is the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station. The location and shape is likely the same as in the 1940s, and the vertical beams with rivets may be pre-war.

My mother and Hellas went to school. My mother remembers that girls and boys were separated by a barbed wire fence. The teachers were very strict, and everyone had to rise and say, "Heil Hitler." She also remembered seeing Jewish people wearing the large yellow stars on their clothes. A correspondent from Germany wrote that jews in the Reich were forced to wear the yellow star as late as September 1941 (I thought it was much earlier). Jews of German origin were first deported in October of 1940 in south Germany, and mass deportations continued as late as October 1941. 

School class portrait, 1942? Mobile phone scan from paper print in album.

After the war started, the family applied to leave Germany, but because my grandmother and Hellas were German-born, they were not allowed to leave. The family was not in a wealth category in which they could buy an exit permit by turning over valuable assets (such as art) or properties.

Opa in his office, 1943 (photographer and exact location unknown)

As the war progressed, my grandfather lost his job. Oma's Uncle Max and his wife took over the apartment so that it would appear to be leased to a German family. Opa had to remain hidden in one room in the flat for fear that he might be arrested. My mother said that other residents surely knew that a Greek family was in the flat, but no one ever turned them in to the police. The ladies were blond and spoke fluent German, so they could leave the flat and move about. The family sold possessions to raise money for food. They had only two food vouchers, for the two German-born  members of the household. I assume Max and his wife shared their food.

For 18 months, the Allies bombed Berlin day and night, and for most nights, residents had to shelter in the cellars. But Opa had to remain hidden upstairs even during the bombings. One day, a bomb fell through the bathrooms and the tub from above crashed through the ceiling. Luckily, the bomb did not explode. She remembers Opa listening to the BBC on a wireless receiver with a blanket over his head to muffle the sound. Listening to foreign radio was an offense that would lead to execution.

Late in the war, the authorities evacuated Aunt Hellas and other school-age girls to the woods of Prussia to escape the bombing. But she and a young actress or opera singer knew someone important in the Goebbels propaganda organization, and they secured travel permits to return to Berlin.

My mother said one day she and Oma were out shopping for vegetables and heard noises of gunfire. The civilian population had been so thoroughly insulated from real news by the government's propaganda, they had no idea the Soviet army was entering the city. Today, we find this hard to believe. But totalitarian governments know that control of the media means they can dominate the populace. 

This is a map of Soviet advance from:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/maps/1945W/1BF/Berlin/1BF_1UF_Berlin_Apr19-28_45.jpg

They rushed home, grabbed a few possessions, and went to the train station. Prior to this, residents were not allowed to leave Berlin, but all order must have broken down. Amazingly, even as the Nazi government was collapsing, trains were still running. I assume they went to the Westend Bahnhof. My mother and Oma went one day, while Opa and Hellas followed a day later. 

The 1946 photograph above shows a tank graveyard near Westend Bahnhof, from :
https://www.stadtmuseum.de/sites/default/files/styles/mfp_popup/public/mediapool/gallerie/berlin-1945-panzerfriedhof-gueterbahnhof-westend.jpg.

Their destination was a small town in the Schwarzwald (southwest Germany) named Reichental, where the family had vacationed before the war. Everyone with any sense tried to flee to the west, away from the Soviets. The train ride was terrible. When allied planes flew overhead, everyone got off and sheltered in ditches or fled into fields because the planes strafed the trains. People were packed tight into cattle cars. 

Oma had a brother, Kurt, who had died near Kursk (Russia). His wife was on the train with two children. The baby died, and my mother said they threw the baby out because there was no room. It is hard to believe horrors like this. I do not know if the family was ever in touch with Kurt's wife after the war and do not know what happened to Max and his wife. 

My mother, Hellas, Oma, and Opa spent a few months in Reichental and then moved to a United Nations refugee camp. Three of them briefly returned to the apartment in Berlin, I assume to recover documents and possibly some possessions. But essentially they had lost everything. They eventually made it back to Greece in the late-1940s. They had endured a decade of war, tragedy, and turmoil. 

Dear Readers, this was only 72 years ago, in what had been one of the most urbane, educated, and developed countries in the world. So many millions of innocent people suffered and died. But despite the lessons of history, many people are still susceptible to the hollow promises of demagogues and frauds. Consider the 2016 election in the USA and the scammer who entered the White House. Note how he adopted the classic techniques of fascists to ferment discord within the nation, feign victimization of a particular demographic, manufacture enemies, and then make hollow promises that only he can save the nation. 

Be eternally grateful that we still have an open press free of government censorship in USA. Beware of propaganda tools that parrot the party line and manufacture an alternative fantasy (i.e., Fox News). And beware of banning books in schools and libraries to control the narrative of history and deceive the populace. These are classic tools of totalitarian and fascist governments.

Remain vigilant and never let a war like this happen again.

Massive 20th Century Architecture: Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, Germany

In the late 1930s, Nazi Germany was in the ascendency. It was recovering from the devastating inflation of the Weimar era and from the Great Depression, was rebuilding its industry and finances, was flexing its military power, and wanted to demonstrate to the world that it was a technological leader. What better way than to build the world's most modern and sophisticated airport? The leaders of the Third Reich conceived their new airport to be an architectural testament to German supremacy and superiority.

In addition to demonstrating the wealth and technological superiority of the Reich, the new airport was to become one of the cornerstones of a new Berlin, to be renamed Germania. The plan was for thousands of grungy old plebeian apartments and commercial buildings to be razed and replaced with monumental architecture. In the late-1930s, wholesale building demolition began, and some construction started, including the new airport. But by 1940, the war intervened, money and manpower were siphoned away to the war effort, and Germania never came to fruition.

The broad open site where Tempenhof is located had been used for aviation since the beginning of the 20th century. Orville and Wilbur Wright demonstrated their mechanized flying machine on the Tempelhof fair ground in 1909. The Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg web page has a Tempelhof timeline. A modest terminal building was built in 1927, and this older building continued to serve as the commercial airport through World War II. Amazingly, Lufthansa continued to fly passengers out of Berlin until April 1945, just days before the end of the war.

Main entry hall of Tempelhof airport, in use until 2008.

The monumental new terminal was built between 1936 and 1941, designed by a Prof. Ernst Sagebiel, who was closely associated with the Luftwaffe. Initially, it appears as if money was no object, because not only was the scale of the building monumental, but the very finest marble and limestone were used in the decoration. The building was never completed. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, all work on Germania ended. And although mostly functional, the new monumental building was never used by the Nazi government as a passenger terminal. Instead, it was converted into an aircraft factory. Fighter planes were built or repaired in the main entry hall and underground tunnels, pushed out onto the tarmac, and flown off into combat.

During the war, the Tempelhof suffered very little bomb damage. Our guide said the likely reason is the Allies knew they would need an airfield after victory, so they made sure to not bomb the site. Initially in 1945, the Soviets occupied Tempenhof. An explosion of mysterious origin destroyed the roof of the main entrance hall. Therefore, the roof you see in the first photograph is post-war and about 3 m lower than the original.

The office and administration buildings were built in the severe style popular in Nazi architecture. They were massive and purposeful, intended to portray power and permanence. Notice in the second photograph, part of the facade is clean. Our tour guide told us that a portion of the film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, was filmed here. The film crew cleaned part of the facade to make it look fresh, but neglected to clean the rest of the wall.

My photographs really don't convey the scale of this building, which was 1.2 km long. At the time of construction, it may have been the largest building on earth. The long curved roof that you see in the right side of the photograph was not only a cover over the aircraft loading and unloaded area, but was also intended to serve as bleachers where over 100,000 loyal citizens of the Reich could watch parades and political assemblies. Stairs were built in towers to funnel these thousands up to the roof.

This is one of the stairs that would be used by the people heading for the roof. It is a double spiral stair, where one side is for uphill traffic and the other for downhill.

After descending from the roof, our guide led us into a long hallway that had not been completed. The ceiling, still blackened from the 1945 fires, shows the original design. This roof is 3 m higher than the post-war roof in the main entrance hall.

This is the view of the tarmac under the cantilevered roof. In the 1930s, when planes were smaller, a plane could pull in under this huge roof and passengers would be protected from the weather. Part of the roofed area was enclosed to serve as hangars.

Tempelhof played a critical role in the famous Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. The Soviet Union had closed all ground-level access to Berlin, and the United States and United Kingdom supplied West Berlin with food and fuel by aircraft. At its peak, one plane landed every 3 minutes, was unloaded, and flew away. Supporting the German population in West Berlin at incredible cost and not abandoning the city to the Soviet Union was a major propaganda coup and did much to make the German people look upon the Allies favorably. As stated on the web site of the State Department Office of the Historian, "It also transformed Berlin, once equated with Prussian militarism and Nazism, into a symbol of democracy and freedom in the fight against Communism."

The photograph above is titled, "U.S. Navy Douglas R4D and U.S. Air Force C-47 aircraft unload at Tempelhof Airport during the Berlin Airlift. The first aircraft is a C-47A-90-DL (s/n 43-15672)." from  U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation, photo No. 2000.043.012 (in the public domain).

The terminal was in use until 1988. One of the main problems was the runways were too short for many modern aircraft. Because the site was surrounded by city, there was no practical way to extend the runways.

Much of the interior decoration looks like it came from the post-war modernism 1960s. It is quite appealing when done well.

For many decades, the US Air Force occupied part of the complex. Air Force personnel lived in the city, but recreation facilities were on the upper floors. Our guide told us that occasionally a former airman stationed at Templehof came on the tour and remembered his posting here with fondness.

In the deepest parts of the basements, bomb shelters were set up for civilians during World War II. To make children feel less uncomfortable, quotes and figures from German folklore were painted on the walls.

Today the huge complex is largely unused. Tourists take the guided walking tours and pose in the main entrance hall. The Berlin police rents part of one office building. The organization that runs Templehof is trying to attract new tenants. Rock concerts and trade shows were held in some of the hangars.

But the concerts are on hold. An organization that helps refugees has rented (or used) sections of the former hangars to house hundreds of Middle Eastern refugees from. They put up temporary walls and bunk beds; I am not sure about food services or sanitation. A New York Times article describes this new phase of the airport's evolving history.

Berlin has been building a new Berlin Brandenburg Airport adjacent to the existing Schönefeld Airport. The new Brandenburg has cost €5.4 billion, is delayed, and has been plagued by cost overruns, significant technical issues, construction flaws, bankruptcies, and corruption. Our guide said the new terminal may need to be torn down and totally replaced at a cost of more than €10 billion! Pity they can't reuse Tempelhof.

The architectural design of a wide cantilevered roof extending out over the parked airplanes was copied by the architects of the Pan American Airlines Worldport at Idlewild (later Kennedy) Airport in New York. It was a striking design for the modern jet era, and from the air, the building looked like a flying saucer. Note that PanAm was also a major user of Templehof for 4 decades. After PanAm went bankrupt in 1991, Delta took over the Worldport. Passing through several times in the early 2000s, I recall that the building looked tired and grungy. A 2013 Vanity Fair article outlines how the The National Trust for Historic Preservation and other preservationists tried to save the Worldport, but the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was uninterested. The photograph above is from 2013, when I was lucky enough to land at Kennedy while demolition was underway. (I also flew out of Idlewild in 1962, but I was too young to care about architecture.)

Photographs at Tempelhof taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with 14mm and 18-55mm Fuji lenses.