berlin cold war intelligence gathering ruins
dragons and devils tim sharp
Tim Sharp
I don’t remember why I chose to approach Teufelsberg (Devil’s Hill) the way I did, probably it was the least number of changes on the suburban railway from where I was staying in Berlin. Anyway, I got off the train at Grunewald Station and slightly disoriented but curious, followed a sign to the ‘Platform 17 Memorial’. It turned out to be a memorial to the enormous number of Jewish inhabitants who were transported from this station between the autumn of 1941 and spring 1944. The single track runs between two platforms each with a wide rusted iron grid running its length. The platforms are edged with strips of iron sufficiently wide to contain the embossed dates, victim numbers and —if known— their destinations. Initially these were the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos, but includes later transports to Ravensburg / Sachenhausen, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Minsk and Riga. I walk down one side of the platform as it slowly becomes dark, the shadows of the overarching trees smearing the text like ink from those interminable administrative lists staining the platform edge. I am alone here and this adds to the impact. I walk the other side of the platform, then re-cross, returning slowly to my starting point. Because I’ve been concentrating on reading the engraved details, I’m slightly startled to find the figure of a young woman standing at the end/beginning of platform 17.
She is half turned, facing away from me. Her clothing, hair and demeanour are heavily biased towards a punk/Goth aesthetic —black T-shirt and jeans with a flock of shiny safety pins and looping chains. Her head is partially shaved, one hand holds a droopy black jacket. She is motionless. As I draw nearer I notice her biceps are tattooed, the same both sides: barbed wire. Her whole appearance resonates with the context and my mood. I’ve just decided to talk to her when a whole group of people appear. She waves as they converge. A few carry flags. They are from Israel and she is their guide. I decide I don’t want to engage with a crowd and flee in the direction of Devil’s Hill. It’s a slow uphill walk all the way. I take a wrong turning in fact, counting on the road veering to the left which it doesn’t. Instead I meet a walker coming towards me. He says I might as well keep going and take the road up over Dragon Hill, advice that instantly turns my little mistake into a medieval quest, and filling my mind’s eye with unreliable maps of unlikely lands with blank spaces filled with monsters. It is a short, steep climb onto a grass-covered plateau criss-crossed by well-trodden desire pathways. It also gives me the first view of my goal – the remains of the US-manned Field Station Berlin in the British sector.
10 on site review 46 :: travel
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