Author: Franny Marshall

Graffiti as Remembrance and Protest

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The Berlin Wall is an incredible symbol of the divisions that wars uphold long after an armistice is signed. Built sixteen years after WWII ended, the Wall served as a physical separation for Berlin and Germany itself for twenty-eight years. It also created a clear divide between NATO in the west and the Eastern Bloc, further polarizing the democratic and socialist institutions of Europe. The day that we arrived in Berlin we went to the area Potsdamer Platz, only one train stop away from our hotel. In the center of the intersection there was a panel

of the Berlin Wall painted in support of peace in Ukraine and against the Belarusian government and Vladimir Putin. This was far from the only show of support for Ukraine in Berlin, yet I found it particularly striking to use a medium such as the Berlin Wall to demonstrate this political message of peace. I felt this again the next day when exploring the East Side Gallery with several of my colleagues. The Gallery is a mile long stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been turned into a public art gallery, with the entire street side of it lined in various murals. Almost all of these had a political message ingrained in them, whether this was directly stated in the painting or took some digging using the posted informational QR codes. One of these depicts a man jumping over the wall while looking back at a crowd of people, and another had a caption which translates to “Politics is the continuation of war by other means.” Another has a more cartoonish look to it, with characters such as a walking ashtray and a DJ-ing mushroom, meant to depict events in Berlin after the fall of the Wall.  

While I had seen a mural portion of the Berlin Wall before at the University of Virginia, it meant so much more to experience it as it once stood. Using the Berlin Wall as a canvas allows people to express their views of the world around them while combining it with a direct connection to the history of the Wall itself. Messages of peace and celebration as well as of political protest being displayed on something that was built to separate people gave me a sense of hope for how this area has been able to heal. To imagine what it was like for a city and its communities to be separated and later reunited helped resonate just how far Berlin has come in the years since World War II, and what efforts have been made to remember their past, both the good and the bad. 

War Alliances in Life and Death

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Being on the same ground where the Battle of Normandy took place helped me better understand the experiences of those who fought and died there. How the dead are remembered across Normandy varied, and the German, American, and British cemeteries each held unique displays to honor their fallen soldiers. The ways in which these men are buried speak to each country’s culture and feelings towards the war. What struck me the most about these cemeteries were the grave markers. In the German cemetery there are crosses dispersed among the yard in groups of five, but individual markers are plain: identical square blocks low to the ground. In the American cemetery the markers are taller and either in the shape of a cross or the Star of David. In the British cemetery the markers are also taller, yet the shape of each depended on nationalities, with the British being a simple rounded rectangle and the Polish coming to a point at the top. The format of the words engraved on each stone also varies. Those at the German cemetery list the rank, name, as well as dates of birth and death. If this information is unknown, it simply states the number of “German Soldiers” in that plot. At the American cemetery the graves list each soldier’s name, rank, branch, and division, as well as their home state and date of death. The graves at the British cemetery each have an image to depict service branch and list names and date of death, often accompanied by a cross and a quotation. The inscription could be individualized by families or simply read “Known unto God.”

 

The type of information given at each cemetery exhibit the feelings of each country and their relationship to Normandy during the war. The German cemetery was the least landscaped and the graves were the most identical of the three, fitting with their military traditions of acting as one unit and taking pride in their common service as opposed to anything else. There were no German flags to be seen, and the only plant life sustained by the cemetery are the lawn and the trees. In contrast, the American cemetery has several flags flying, and the British cemetery is full of flower beds along the graves and wisteria vines near the entrance. The American cemetery specifically requests reverence at, with “Silence” signs posted and bells playing the national anthem as well as a recording of “Taps.” The British cemetery is not as outwardly nationalistic. I saw no flags and their dedication to not leaving anyone unburied meant that there several countries are represented there, including Egypt, Poland, and Germany. For me, the closest feeling to patriotism was evoked by several graves which read: “There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.” Each site pays homage to their soldiers in varying ways, which made me think of their individual roles in World War II and their cultural practices.

A Tour of Polish Remembrance in Krakow

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The tour of Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow provided a unique insight into the modern national identity of Poland. The tour guide provided at the museum led us quickly through the narrow exhibits, explaining how WWII affected Poland politically and socially. The most beneficial aspect of having a tour guide at this museum in my opinion was the ability to perceive how a Polish person today views their country’s place in the war and in the Holocaust. Our tour guide stated how proud she was to be Polish through and through and spoke on the closeness of Slavic states because of the treatment they received from Nazis. The deportation of Poles during the war is exhibited in this museum, and firsthand accounts of Polish people in ghettoes are shown as well. It also displayed a sort of shrine to Poland, with lights spelling out L.O.P P, the Air Defense League of Poland, Polish flags, the crest of Poland, and more. Seeing all of this gave me an even deeper sympathy to how the people of Poland were treated during this era and a broader perspective on how they defended themselves.  

Our guide made sure to emphasize to us how poorly Polish people were treated by the Nazis, including some of her own ancestors. This was a very interesting perspective to hear from yet some of her comments left me wondering about her bias towards her nation. At one point she stated matter-of-factly that Poland was the only occupied nation which did not collaborate with the Nazis. On the other hand, she also mentioned how people who chose to comply with the Nazis could not be blamed as themselves and their families were most likely going to be put in danger otherwise. It seemed slightly hypocritical to me to be proud that the Polish government did not collaborate yet also stating that collaboration and compliance on an individual level was justified for fear of repercussion. The patriotism of Poland and its people was clearly conveyed in this tour, both by our guide and by the exhibits of Polish pride during this era. Polish people were and continue to be proud of their nation and coming out safely on the other side of Nazi and later Soviet occupation.  

The Wrens at Bletchley Park

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Bletchley Park, located fifty miles from London, is an estate which hosted the Ultra project during WWII. The purpose of Ultra was to break coded German messages and doing so required a large corps of people with varying skills. All of them needed to be able to keep the nature of their work a secret. Engineers and mathematicians as well as computer operators contributed to the codebreaking effort. The staff grew from 150 at the start in 1939 to nearly 10,000 by the end of the war. The majority of those employed at Bletchley were women, specifically members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, aka Wrens.

The exhibits at Bletchley Park had a model of a Bombe machine, with a button which allowed visitors to run it within certain settings to witness how it worked. The hut which focused on the Wrens used actors to describe their work at Bletchley. This worked alongside placards in the room, which described how the workers in Hut 11 would receive a “menu” or instructions from Hut 6 for what settings to put the Bombe in. This involved turning the 108 drums exactly as they needed to be in order to move on in the codebreaking and translation process. This work had to be incredibly careful and required significant effort and focus to operate the machines properly, and the Wrens provided the numbers and skills needed for this project. The exhibits at Bletchley on the process of codebreaking showed how the Wrens’ operating of the Bombe machines was a vital step in the process of decoding and conveyed to me just how necessary their work was yet how overlooked it is oftentimes. The conditions in the spaces where Wrens worked are described on placards as stuffy, dark, and claustrophobic. Being inside the huts felt this way to me even without experiencing them alongside the number of machines and people they worked amongst every day. The Bombe machines, as shown in pictures at the site, nearly reached the short ceiling and were set up in rows along the entire length of the hut. Operating the Bombe required precision, because putting a plug in the wrong spot or shifting the gear slightly over could cause a delay in finding the correct settings to decode with and, thus, waste time that could be used finding lifesaving pieces of information. The tenacity of the Wrens and all staff at Bletchley made the Ultra operation as successful as possible, even under the stressful conditions of their work.