So many places got bombed in Berlin during WWII, it was crazy. I may have learned things about Berlin in school, but I certainly don't remember most of it. But to be here and see the places and learn about specific incidents where they happened gives me a whole different understanding of the geography of things. There is so much to take in in just my short time in Berlin that I can’t remember everything, but there are two major times that are sticking out to me. One was in 1933 when they had the book burning. There was a lot of controversy in Berlin before the war. I’m not quite sure all the things that happened in 1933, but that year was big for Hitler beginning to take power in Germany. Also, during the war, Berlin was heavily bombed and almost the entire city was destroyed. So, a lot of the buildings that are here now have been rebuilt or they are just replicas or original buildings but large parts of them have been rebuilt. But to see some of the damage on the buildings that are still standing of where bombs went off is really astounding. This may sound ignorant of me, but I have just started understanding how little I actually know about the Nazi Party and WWII in general. I think we do study the Holocaust from the perspective of the suffering of the Jewish people, which is incredibly important. But being in Berlin has given me more insight into how the Nazi Party came into power and how it all worked…something I had not given much thought to before. But it is astounding the scale of deception, brainwashing, and power that Hitler had over so many people.
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