Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - We begin our Work in Germany
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The Adlon Hotel is just a shell. Behind this ruin,
on both sides of the street, stretches an almost
unbroken row of burned and fallen houses. The University
and Royal Library are badly damaged. The former
Royal and Imperial Palace, as well as a number of
other monumental buildings are almost totally
destroyed. Leipzigerstrasse is also a dead street. Only
Goering’s Air Ministry is still standing, and as far
as can be seen, is almost intact. But the most desolate
of all is that part of Berlin directly west of the
Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten. Here almost every
tree has disappeared, they have been burned or cut
down. There are only sooty stumps left on level
terrain which, after the war, was lying in waste for
a long time. Recently they have begun to cultivate
this for a community garden. The whole of the
terrible desolation which characterizes the district
which was once the Tiergarten merges with
something almost as depressing: the enormous stretch of
the East-West Axis is marked by houses as empty
and as dead as in most of the other streets in central
Berlin.
If I were to make a comparison between the
impression the Berlin population made on me this time
and the one I received during my previous visit, I
would say that the tension and the fear on the faces
of the people during the last days of the war, now
had given way to a certain apathy. However, I do
not mean that I saw happy and smiling faces. Life
had not yet become normal. The water supply was
not functioning and I saw long lines of people in
the streets at water pumps. They had with them
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