You know the courtyard where they executed Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators. It's open to the public. I got to walk through it.
The whole site is now the German Resistance Memorial. And the road has since been renamed to Stauffenbergstraße after Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.
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| The Bendler Block as seen from the road, or rather the front door of my hotel. |
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| A picture of the courtyard from July 20, 1944. |
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| The courtyard as it is today. Not much has changed. |
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| Propaganda posters from the '30s. |
Two floors are permanent exhibitions. The first floor is an exhibition about Jewish women victims of the Third Reich. I got about half way through that, but those stories are very difficult to take.
The second floor has a very large exhibit about the German resistance. Unfortunately, most of it was in German only. The only English I found was in the room about the communist university students who organized a very slipshod resistance ring and were subsequently executed (they never committed any acts of resistance and were caught by a janitor for throwing leaflets from an auditorium balcony). So that was a bit disappointing, but I'm gonna guess I am not the target audience.
It was really sobering to see that site.
Yep, it's one thing to see it in a movie, another to actually walk that ground... Thanks for the pics and the info on the museum.
ReplyDeleteOh, exactly! One of the guys at the conference questioned why people go to see things like the Stasi Prison and WWII sites, etc... I have to say I was dumbfounded that he even had to ask. If one wants to know the depravations humans can induce en masse to other humans, walking around the grounds is one of the best ways to keep close the knowledge of those horrors.
DeleteConcur, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
DeleteSome people aren't interested in depravations and no one has ever learned from history. "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is a meaningless statement.
Delete> the Bendler Block ( I don't know if the movie was filmed there,
ReplyDelete> but the real events took place there)
There was a lot of a fuzz here in Germany when Tom Cruise applied for filming at the Bendlerblock. It even was denied at the beginning, some rumours relating the prohibition to his affairs with scientology.
Finally he got exceptional permission for one day and three night scenes, including Stauffenberg's execution at the courtyard. One condition, though: completely forbidden to hang swastikas around the place.
Oh wow. So it was filmed there.
DeleteThe bit about the swastikas is interesting. It was just a movie.