Im Terrorhaus

Not living in Europe, it's easy to become detached from history. There just isn't a lot of it readily apparent in daily life. No experiences like stepping out of a modern subway (T-Bana) station into the 800-year old Gamla Stan (Old Town) in Stockholm, and buying some snacks from a 7-Eleven inside a medieval building.

Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche

In Germany, and Eastern Europe as well, there is also the lingering sadness of more recent inhumanity. In many towns and cities in this part of the world, there just aren't that many buildings which survived the war. It sometimes seems that each city has its own House of Terror, to commemorate so many victims. Walls with bullet holes, or worse.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen

I'm not able to properly describe the experience of visiting a concentration camp. Certainly, compared to other people, I don't have as deeply emotional or visceral a connection to the events which occurred in places such as these, but there's no mistaking that chilling feeling, of emptiness, and the presence of human suffering. Multiply that by the realization that this was a relatively small camp, and that there were so many others. On top of this, add the atrocities and violence committed by all parties, throughout the world, in the course of waging war. Then consider that even today, there are those who deny such things happened, or even celebrate them.

Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen

After the war, Communism moved in to continue the oppression.

Marx-Engels Platz

Strictly from a philosophical perspective, the basic tenets of Marxism are well-intentioned, and appropriate for their time. Considering human nature, they quickly become impractical, and easily corruptible.

You are now entering Democratic Berlin

When it takes authoritarian rule, paranoia, secret police, heavily defended walls, and Warsaw Pact troops to keep the populace in the system, then the evil of Communism becomes clear, and Eastern Europe is the worse for it.

Berliner Fernsehturm