Berlin - Historical love of my life

My plan of attack on all new cities has become to take the local free tour, so my first day in Berlin I did just that.  
Berlin is full of crazy history that happened during the lifetime of people still living today, even during my own lifetime!  The politics behind everything really reminded me that we cannot afford to sit by and wait for change: if you do wait, you will not like the change that comes.

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—

and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

--Martin Niemöller

Top left and bottom right: On May 10, 1933 the students of Humboldt University gathered in this square (Babelplatz) to burn books deemed "un-German."  Again, these were students of Humboldt University, home to FORTY Nobel Prize winners including Schrödinger, Krebs, and Einstein.  These are not dumb people, these are people expected to go out and make marvelous discoveries, contributing massively to society, yet they are fairly easily convinced that anything written by Freud, Hemingway, Helen Keller, their own Albert Einstein and many others held no merit.  And not only that, but that these authors should be sent to concentration camps.  

The thing I found most striking at Babelplatz wasn't the room of empty bookcases kept as a memorial, but the quotation on the bronze plaque several yards away:

"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" 

or "Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people."

Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 

Not only was Heine one of the authors whose works they burned, he wrote this in 1820, over one hundred years before the Nazi book burnings took place here.

Bottom left: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  The artist intended for the 2,711 slabs of concrete of different sizes which rise out of the gently rolling ground to make you uneasy as you walk through it, without using any symbolism or words.  It works.  It is super disorienting as you try to find your way out.  The slabs suddenly too large on all sides, and the memorial is more massive than you thought before you got up close, which is an interesting metaphor in my opinion.

Top right: I stand on the ground where Hitler's body was burned after he committed joint suicide with his new wife in his underground bunker, also in that location.  If you could see around the area: it is now a car park.  As my tour guide said, this shows that Germany admits it is an area of historical interest, "though not necessarily historical importance."  I thought it fitting.