Anne Frank Zentrum
The centre documents the life story of Anne Frank in the permanent exhibition “Anne Frank – a story for today”, with lots of family photos and quotes from her diary. This is the German partner of Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and a recognised institution working to prevent right-wing extremism, discrimination and anti-Semitism.
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
The memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe is widely known as the Holocaust Memorial – a huge site between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz with 2,711 concrete pillars. Despite all the gloomy forecasts, it has become a lively place. Beneath the abstract memorial is the concrete history in the Information Centre, with portraits, names and biographies read out loud.
Denkmal zur Bücherverbrennung
The memorial of the Book-Burning commemorates the public burning of books by the Nazis on 10 May 1933. In the middle of Bebelplatz, a glass window in the ground with glaring white empty shelves beneath it symbolises the restriction on every kind of intellectual freedom under National Socialism.
Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen
This complex, planned on the drawing board as an ideal type of concentration camp, was intended as an architectural expression of National Socialism, designed to subject the prisoners actually and symbolically to the absolute power of the SS. Between 1936 and 1945 more than 200,000 prisoners from many European countries were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Today it’s an international memorial and place of learning.
www.gedenkstaette-sachsenhausen.de
TIP: Tickets for a “Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Tour” are available at the reception desk of your A&O. Ask for insider tours!
Topographie des Terrors
Next to Martin Gropius Building, opposite the Prussian Parliament, behind a tatty remnant of the Wall is an area of wasteland: The Prince Albrecht site. Between 1933 and 1945 it was the location of the headquarters of the most important Nazi organisations for surveillance and persecution: the Gestapo, the SS leadership, the Security Service of the SS and from 1939 the Reich Main Security Office. An open-air exhibition shows the history of these Nazi institutions and of the site. From autumn 2007 to 2009 a glass building will be erected here, designed by the architects Heinle, Wischer and Partners.