Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
its gates never left, and at the end of the war the camp was used to systematically kill
thousands of Soviet POWs and Jewish prisoners on death marches. After the war the
Soviets used the infrastructure for similar purposes. At the entrance to the camp, its
largest structure, the impossibly detailed
New Museum
, charts the camp's origins from
defunct brewery to a Nazi political prison; the local Nazis filled it with many of their
classmates, colleagues and neighbours.
he camp proper begins under the main watchtower and beyond a gate adorned with
the ominous sign
Arbeit macht frei
(“Work frees”) and within the perimeter walls and
former high-voltage fence - site of frequent inmate suicides. Within the camp many
parts have been chillingly well preserved or reconstructed: a number of prison blocks,
which now house a museum telling the stories of selected inmates; the camp prison,
from which internees seldom returned; the former kitchen and laundry where
harrowing films show the camp on liberation. Just outside the perimeter lie pits where
executions took place and bodies were incinerated.
At the northern tip of the camp an exhibition in a guard tower investigates what the
local populace knew and thought of the camp, via video interviews, while the jumbled
hall next door examines the postwar Soviet Special Camp (1945-50), when the
Russians imprisoned sixty thousand people with suspected Nazi links - though most
were innocent - of which at least 12,000 died.
11
TROPICAL ISLANDS
An old hangar for zeppelins 60km south of Berlin now houses
Tropical Islands
(
T
035477 60
50 50,
W
tropical-islands.de), an indoor landscaped water park, the size of four football fields,
containing pools, lagoons, water slides, waterfalls, whirlpools and saunas as well as a clutch
of bars, restaurants and shops. The quality of the landscaping is first class, and the tropical
shrubbery and birds that flit around its undergrowth get to luxuriate in the constant 27ºC
temperature. A Disneyesque quality is added by interior buildings and monuments - like the
Bali, Borneo, Thai and Samoan pavilions - and regular evening dance shows, but what really
sets the place apart is its laid-back convenience. A wristband received when you enter
electronically tallies all purchases - you settle up on leaving - but best of all, the place is open
all day, every day and allows you to stay overnight. Tents (€24.50/person) can be rented, but
most people just crash on the beach with a mat and blanket, which costs an additional €15
per night on top of the one-off complex entry charge of €29.50. Other one-off additional
charges valid for your entire stay include use of waterslides (€4.50) and the immense, nudist
sauna area (€8). Tropical Islands lies off the A13 motorway from Berlin (exit Staakow), and near
Brand (Niederlausitz) train station where free shuttle buses to the complex meet every train.
