Berianidze
03-17-2006, 01:31 PM
Berlin, March 16 (DPA) Berlin, one of the prominent venues for the World Cup Football this year, is dotted with places reminding visitors about the end of World War II and the Soviet occupation.
A massive bronze statue of a soldier bearing a little girl on his left arm, holding a sword in his right hand while crushing a Nazi swastika symbol with his foot dominates a hill in Berlin's Treptower Park. The Soviet memorial, 11 metres in height and weighing 60 tonnes, recalls the conquering of the German capital by the Red Army at the end of World War II.
Some 20,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the last weeks of the war when they stormed Berlin. There are numerous monuments or other remnants in Berlin, which hark back to the end of the war. Others recall the Soviet occupation or show the reverence once paid to communist leaders in former East Germany.
Not all of them are so martial in style as the complex in Treptower Park, which stretches for hundreds of metres. Here you can see another soldier kneeling with a helmet in his left hand and a Kalashnikov in the right. Quotes by Stalin are engraved in yellow lettering into the stone blocks.
'The war brings forth thousands of heroes prepared to give up their lives for the freedom of their homeland,' reads one of the quotes. Visitors find it difficult to decide whether they should sympathise or reject such emotional appeals.
As one Italian visitor pointed out: 'I think it's important to remember the war and the victory over fascism. But I don't know, if you have to do that with Stalin.'
A few minutes walking distance from the Brandenburg Gate, you can still see the first two Soviet F-34 tanks to reach Berlin. Along with two heavy artillery pieces, they flank the entrance to a memorial containing the remains of 2,500 Russian soldiers. All of these men fell during the fighting, which lasted from late April to early May 1945.
Memories of the Red Army are also visible at the newly-renovated Reichstag parliament building. After the Red Army conquered downtown Berlin and occupied the Reichstag in late April 1945, numerous soldiers scratched their names onto the walls of the building.
Marshall Georgi Shukov, one of the Soviet commanders-in-chief, recalled in his memoirs: 'Many of the pillars and walls of the Reichstag were covered by the scrawls of our soldiers.'
Most of them were removed during renovation work. Only a few names remain and these are protected for posterity by a pane of plexiglass.
Those searching for hints of communism and socialism in Berlin do not have to look far. The huge bust of Ernst Thaelmann, a workers' leader and one-time chairman of the German Communist Party murdered by the Nazis, has survived the radical changes in the park named after him and his right fist is still raised defiantly.
Visitors can still admire Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as larger-than-life bronze figures near the Palace of the Republic, the former East German parliament building earmarked for demolition.
Even Lenin made his way to Berlin. A 19-metre tall Lenin statue made of granite once stood on the UN site in Friedrichshain. It was dismantled in 1991 and the German film, 'Good Bye Lenin', a smash hit in cinemas across the land, reconstructs the scene in which the detached head was lifted off by a crane.
The reappearance of Lenin's statue is in doubt as politicians are still squabbling over it. The Berlin Senate would like to exhibit the statue in a museum, which the conservative CDU party opposes in the belief that it should remain in its present location.
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/8416.php/Marx_Lenin_Stalin_live_on_in_Berlin
A massive bronze statue of a soldier bearing a little girl on his left arm, holding a sword in his right hand while crushing a Nazi swastika symbol with his foot dominates a hill in Berlin's Treptower Park. The Soviet memorial, 11 metres in height and weighing 60 tonnes, recalls the conquering of the German capital by the Red Army at the end of World War II.
Some 20,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the last weeks of the war when they stormed Berlin. There are numerous monuments or other remnants in Berlin, which hark back to the end of the war. Others recall the Soviet occupation or show the reverence once paid to communist leaders in former East Germany.
Not all of them are so martial in style as the complex in Treptower Park, which stretches for hundreds of metres. Here you can see another soldier kneeling with a helmet in his left hand and a Kalashnikov in the right. Quotes by Stalin are engraved in yellow lettering into the stone blocks.
'The war brings forth thousands of heroes prepared to give up their lives for the freedom of their homeland,' reads one of the quotes. Visitors find it difficult to decide whether they should sympathise or reject such emotional appeals.
As one Italian visitor pointed out: 'I think it's important to remember the war and the victory over fascism. But I don't know, if you have to do that with Stalin.'
A few minutes walking distance from the Brandenburg Gate, you can still see the first two Soviet F-34 tanks to reach Berlin. Along with two heavy artillery pieces, they flank the entrance to a memorial containing the remains of 2,500 Russian soldiers. All of these men fell during the fighting, which lasted from late April to early May 1945.
Memories of the Red Army are also visible at the newly-renovated Reichstag parliament building. After the Red Army conquered downtown Berlin and occupied the Reichstag in late April 1945, numerous soldiers scratched their names onto the walls of the building.
Marshall Georgi Shukov, one of the Soviet commanders-in-chief, recalled in his memoirs: 'Many of the pillars and walls of the Reichstag were covered by the scrawls of our soldiers.'
Most of them were removed during renovation work. Only a few names remain and these are protected for posterity by a pane of plexiglass.
Those searching for hints of communism and socialism in Berlin do not have to look far. The huge bust of Ernst Thaelmann, a workers' leader and one-time chairman of the German Communist Party murdered by the Nazis, has survived the radical changes in the park named after him and his right fist is still raised defiantly.
Visitors can still admire Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as larger-than-life bronze figures near the Palace of the Republic, the former East German parliament building earmarked for demolition.
Even Lenin made his way to Berlin. A 19-metre tall Lenin statue made of granite once stood on the UN site in Friedrichshain. It was dismantled in 1991 and the German film, 'Good Bye Lenin', a smash hit in cinemas across the land, reconstructs the scene in which the detached head was lifted off by a crane.
The reappearance of Lenin's statue is in doubt as politicians are still squabbling over it. The Berlin Senate would like to exhibit the statue in a museum, which the conservative CDU party opposes in the belief that it should remain in its present location.
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/8416.php/Marx_Lenin_Stalin_live_on_in_Berlin