Path of Resistance: Berlin’s Hidden Holocaust Stories

The starting point for this tour is the Neue Synagogue, New Synagogue. Constructed in 1866, the Synagogue was the largest and most magnificent in Berlin, a literal representation of the thriving 160,000 Berlin Jewish community members. Saved from vandals during the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom. The Synagogue remained in use until 1940 until being confiscated by the Army and used to store military uniforms. In November 1943, the Synagogue was severely damaged in an allied bombing raid. The main hall was torn down in 1958, partly rebuilt in 1988 and officially reopened in 1995. Today the Synagogue houses the Centrum Judaicum foundation, an institution for preserving Jewish memory and tradition.

Founded in 1779, the Jewish boy's school was the first Jewish school in Germany without fees. Although a Jewish institution the school was open to all faiths and promoted liberal Jewishness and accepted female students in 1931. In the Fall of 1941, the deportation of Jews to the newly conquered territories to the East resulted in banning all Jewish schools. In 1942, the Reich Main Security office under the SS turned the building into a transit camp. The windows were barred, and Jews were crammed inside to await deportation.

Between 1672 and 1827, some 12,000 Jewish community members were buried here. On the orders of the Gestapo, the SS destroyed the cemetery in 1943, smashing thousands of gravestones, throwing away remains and playing football with skulls. In April 1945 burials once again took place. Almost 2500 German soldiers and Berlin civilians killed during the fighting or shot by the SS for hanging white flags from their windows are buried in mass graves.

Located in a hidden courtyard is Otto Weidt'd Workshop for the Blind. Weidt supported by his wife Else employed more than 30 blind and deaf Jewish workers between 1940 to 1945. As tensions grew, Weidt endeavoured to protect his mostly blind and deaf employees from persecution and deportation, regularly bribing Gestapo officers and falsifying documents. Even going as far as to travel to Auschwitz concentration camp to break one of his employees out.

A remarkable story, on the 27th of February 1943, the Gestapo, Waffen-SS and Berlin Police arrested , two-thousand Jewish men, married to non-Jewish German women. Outraged, the wives of those detained numbering in the hundreds gathered to protest. Despite periodic threats of being shot if the women did not disperse the women would scatter briefly, only to return in larger numbers to continue protesting. As pressure mounted Goebbels authorized the prisoner's release.

The Lustgarten is framed on three sides by the Berlin Cathedral, the Altes Museum and the Zeughaus. Before the Nazi's, the Lustgarten was a favourite location for protests and speeches. One week after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor 200,000 Berliner's protested the new Government. Strict regulations imposed by the Nazi's over the coming month's restricted Germans' right to protest, hefty fines and arrests made protesting the Nazi regime very dangerous. In 1934, the Lustgarten was paved over to make way for Nazi propaganda rallies, swearing-in ceremonies and military parades.

The magnificent Zeughaus is the oldest building along Unter den Linden constructed in 1730 as an artillery arsenal. On March 21, 1943, the Zeughaus was chosen to exhibit captured Soviet weapons. Major General Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, a member of the Wehrmacht resistance, was chosen to lead the exhibit. Despite 27 failed assassination attempts to kill Adolf Hitler. Gersdorff was resolute to succeed and agreed to blow himself up with the Führer. With two concealed Bristish clam mines, he planned to throw himself around Hitler in a death embrace that would blow them both up. A detailed coup d'état was in place and ready to go, learn what happens next on this tour.

The monument is a moving site in the middle of this busy city and stands as Germany’s central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.

On 10 May 1933, members of the Nazi German Student Union and their professors gathered here in Bebel Platz adjacent the historical and prestigious Humboldt University. In a nationwide action “against the un-German spirit”. Students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of books that were deemed "un-German".

The almost life-size sculpture, Trains to Life – Trains to Death. The monument depicts two groups of Jewish children's contrasting fates during the Nazi era. The groups gaze in opposing directions representing the Jewish children whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport to England and the suffering of those deported to concentration camps. Designed by sculpture Frank Meisle, himself among those rescued by the Kindertransporte travelling from here to England in 1939.