Bunkering down: exploring Berlin’s underbelly
Visitors get grim glimpse into wartime world of average citizen
BERLIN— I’m in a dark concrete passage, huddled cheek by jowl with perhaps 30 other folks — so close that I can smell what they had for breakfast. (Something involving an unfortunate amount of onions to my right and, even more unfortunately, I suspect, kippers to my left).
All eyes are trained on Nick Jackson, a bespectacled English bloke in an orange construction vest, who is gripping a tiny flashlight.
“Avoid touching the walls. They’re covered in poisonous paint,” he tells us, as we collectively flinch away from the cool concrete.
“So touching the walls, licking the walls (has anyone ever done that, I wonder?) — not a good idea,” he advises.
We’ll only spend 90 minutes in this subterranean warren of 30 rooms, which twists and turns down three levels within the Gesundbrunnen Ubahn station in Berlin.
But between 1941 and 1945, up to 5,000 Germans at a time spent countless hours in this dim labyrinth.
Illuminated by toxic glow-in-the-dark barium and phosphorous paint, they listened for the drone of airplane engines and the booming of bombs — and wondered what wreckage awaited them when the skies went silent again.
“Above ground, there’s very little left from the Second World War, but underground, everything the Nazis (which he pronounces ‘Nasties’) built or used is roughly still here,” explains Jackson, who leads this “Dark Worlds” tour for the Berliner Unterwelten association, a group dedicated to exploring and documenting the city’s vast network of air-raid shelters, caverns and abandoned railway tunnels. The government is adamant about avoiding the creation of anything that might be perceived as a Nazi shrine, but because this bunker was used by civilians, rather than the regime, visitors are allowed a grim glimpse into the wartime world of the average Berlin citizen. While no one would wish to muster sympathy for the Nazis, who perpetrated such unimaginable horrors, “Germans were also victims of the war,” Jackson points out.
Berlin was bombed 320 times during the war — more than any other German town, he says. “Ninety per cent of Berlin was damaged; 27 per cent was smashed to bits,” Jackson reveals. The British also launched frequent “nuisance raids,” where they flew over without dropping explosives, meaning Berliners rushed to shelters roughly every 48 hours.
“There was no reserved seating. It was first come, first served, and there were tales of people being crushed to death,” our guide says, leading us through a doorway marked “Zum Frauen-abort.” This passage — the women’s bathroom — is as narrow as the first, with a row of about half-a-dozen toilets lining one wall. “Getting to the restroom took hours. Never enough for the ladies, is there?” Jackson quips, before undermining his momentary levity with the revelation that the cubicles around the toilets were removed after desperate souls
“There was no reserved seating. It was first come, first served, and there were tales of people being crushed to death.”
took advantage of the locking doors to commit suicide.
Down a flight of stairs, we enter a room where two glass cases feature artifacts like gas masks — made by slave labour from concentration camps — and a board game for children that taught them what to do in a bomb raid. “If you win the game, you survive, and mum makes you tea,” Jackson concludes wryly.
Passing through quarters stacked with bunk beds, we squeeze onto hard wooden benches to pause and reflect upon what we would have brought with us into a shelter, knowing they might be our only remaining possessions when we emerged. “Socks.” “A winter coat.” “Food and water.” “Photos,” voices call out. “A knife,” suggest several women, coaxing an expression of mock shock from Jackson. “I’m not sure what you ladies are going to do with those knives,” he says warily, “but you’re frightening me.”
Then we’re off to explore more rooms, more display cases. Some are chock-a-block with objects constructed from the detritus of war, like a helmet drilled with holes that served as a colander or shoes made out of tire rubber. Others feature relics salvaged from an erstwhile Nazi bunker, including a smashed Enigma machine, a pin and button emblazoned with swastikas, a blood pressure cuff, lunch tickets from Hitler’s canteen, and — strangely — a ceramic bunny and a tiny figurine of what appears to be Snow White and the seven dwarves. Still more are stocked with grenades and rusty guns.
One entire room is devoted to the possessions of dead soldiers — helmets with telltale holes, pistols, a pipe, dentures. Jackson pauses in front of a case filled with items that belonged to a fellow called Schneider, as the name carved on a small black case suggests. “He was a bit flash. Had big feet,” our guide says, gesturing to the large worn boots that lay alongside a watch, gas mask, toothbrush, comb and condoms. “He never got around to using the condoms,” Jackson notes drily. We emerge from the maze a more sober, silent group than when we entered, breathing the wintry air gratefully into our lungs. Jackson, having revisited the squalid senselessness of war 100 times or more, squares his shoulders and leaves the dark world behind, heading into the pale sunlight in search of a curry. Amy Laughinghouse is a freelance writer based in London.