memorial

The Soviet Memorial in the Tiergarten is one of the many war memorials that can be found around Berlin. From the prominent memorials erected by the Soviet Union after the end of the Second World War, this is the most famous and most visited since it lies close to Berlin's leading tourist destinations.

Soviet Memorial in the Tiergarten

Berlin
6 min read
17/11/202008/12/2020

The Berlin Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is the biggest of the three war memorials the USSR left in Berlin after the end of the Second World War. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky as a memorial for 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin between April and May 1945. It opened four years after World War II on May 8, 1949, and it used to serve as the central war memorial in East Berlin.

Berlin Soviet Memorial: Treptower Park

Berlin
5 min read
08/05/202021/12/2023

These Budapest Bullet Holes are how I called them before I realised what do they mean. I first saw them when I was walking around the Parliament Building, and I thought it was a little bit weird to have small iron balls over a wall. For a moment I thought it was some kind of abstract art and then I remembered the scars of the Second World War in Berlin and everything connected.

Budapest Bullet Holes: A Memorial to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Budapest
3 min read
27/05/201916/02/2024

When you walk along the Danube Promenade, next to the Hungarian Parliament Building, you will find a memorial called Shoes on the Danube Bank. The monument was conceived by Can Togay, with the help from sculptor Gyula Pauer, to remember and honor the Jews that were murdered by Arrow Cross, a fascist militia, during the last months of the Second World War in Budapest.

Steps to the River’s Edge: Budapest’s Shoes on the Danube Bank

Budapest
4 min read
24/04/201912/03/2024

The House where the Wannsee Conference happened during the Second World War belonged to Reinhard Heydrich, who got the house as an entertainment center for those who belonged to the SS and their families. And Reinhard Heydrich was an essential man inside the Nazi Party. Above him, only Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler. He used the house as a meeting place for 15 other officials that got together to decide something that was described in a bureaucratic way. But, without any euphemistic terminology, those people had lunch while they talked about how the Holocaust would happen.

A Visit to the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin

Berlin
6 min read
04/01/201912/03/2024

Located in the western outskirts of Berlin, the Berlin-Grunewald station was used to deport Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in the east. Today, where all of this happened, there is the Platform 17 Memorial inaugurated in January 1998 to commemorate the deportation done by Deutsche Reichsbahn during the years of Nazi Germany.

Platform 17 Memorial Berlin: A Site of Holocaust Remembrance

Berlin
5 min read
30/10/201812/03/2024

Hidden along the streets of Alt-Hohenschönhausen there is a memorial that seems to be long forgotten by people. This Soviet War Memorial is a grim reminder of the pain and struggles that the Red Army went through when it liberated Berlin from Nazism.

The Soviet War Memorial in Alt-Hohenschönhausen

Berlin
4 min read
21/09/201811/04/2024

The original Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is known in German as Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. It was built in the 1890s by a Kaiser Wilhelm II and his consort Augusta Victoria as an initiative to counter the German socialist movement by a return to traditional religious values.

Understanding the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the Heart of West Berlin

Berlin
6 min read
17/08/201827/04/2024

You can still see the tall gothic tower of St. Nicholas Church from almost anywhere in Hamburg. But this Gothic Revival church doesn’t mark the skyline of the city like it used to when it was the tallest construction on Earth, from 1874 to 1876. Nowadays, the church is the second-tallest structure in Hamburg and a memorial to everything that happened during the Second World War.

The View from St. Nicholas Church in Hamburg

Germany, Hamburg
8 min read
14/12/201712/05/2024