70th End of World War II in Berlin

All of you who are Bill's and my generation remember pictures like these of Berlin and other German cities with populations over 200,000, showing what Germany looked like in 1945.  In Berlin the destruction was so total and extensive (I'm guessing in size comparable to the area from Fairfax City to DC's Kennedy Stadium) that representatives of the Allied powers who first saw Berlin believed it would never recover.  70 years later the scorched areas have been rebuilt, even if not all scars are gone.

 

Besides rebuilding the cities, Berlin and the united Germany have also been hard at work trying to mend some of the invisible wounds from its wartime and Nazi past. Serious integration efforts have been made to reach out to religious and ethnic minorities, synagogues, churches and mosques. Many political refugees and desperate immigrants get asylum plus shelter, health care, and education, and eventually jobs.  Housing is a major issue considering that Germany has 80million people living in an area the size of Texas; yet all communities are expected to take in refugees. Berlin with its already existing lack of sufficient affordable housing has particularly severe problems finding places for all its newcomers. Nevertheless, this approach seems to work in most cities and villages; unfortunately, not in all.  There are a few pockets, usually areas with high unemployment, where a tiny minority of the local inhabitants lead active hate campaigns against immigrants. In one of the poorer Berlin suburbs, for example, public housing for immigrants that was under construction was willfully set on fire.  The great majority of Germans do not support such activities, but any undemocratic behavior gets a lot more media coverage than the mostly successful integration efforts.  

As a consequence of its policies, Germany has become a very active immigration country, taking in many people from many different countries, including Syria. Berlin has grown to the second largest Turkish city next to Istanbul.  Many Russian Jews have moved to Berlin to live here.  In the past two years many Gypsies have made Berlin their mainstay.  

Of course, then there are the many newcomers from the European Union and from all over the world who are attracted to Berlin for its innovative and creative economy.  Some come for a little while only.  Many more like its start-up and can-do philosophy so much that they stay for good.