Anyone who's read half a history book knows there are plenty of ghosts in Berlin. We've played the game a lot: examining bullet holes here, imagining long-disappeared buildings there, wondering what the nights and days were like on the street we now call our own. And while I've always been more aghast at the stature and cheek of most Soviet-era memorials, I was certainly chilled when we rode up through the gates of the Soviet WWII memorial in Pankow. There are plenty of ghosts here.The grounds of the Ehrenmal Schönholzer Heide were, during
the second World War, used for a forced labor camp; it was after the war when the Soviets buried some 13,000 Red Army soldiers en masse here. At the time, they could only identify a fifth of the bodies (the names of whom appear on bronze plaques surrounding the memorial.) Stalin has his say at the gates: "They gave their lives for your happiness."Not that one really wants to argue geo-political rights and wrongs when wandering over the graves of thousands. The space is decaying, slowly; bronze torches have lost their symbolic glass flames, weeds clog most of the flowerbeds, the officers' memorial under a hulking obelisk claims a few rotten tulips. The whole place feels angry, exhausted and completely forgotten.
