This dramatic piece of Spang (aka battle damage) caught my eye as I was walking through Pankow (north-east Berlin) today!
The “Historischer Friedhof Pankow” cemetery lies on the corner of Wilhelm-Kuhr-Straße and Kreuzstraße in Pankow, near the Bürgerpark public park. The cemetery has been closed since 1971, however a handful of graves remain, including this mausoleum, which was built in 1904 to house the remains of Hermann Killisch von Horn (the man who was responsible for building the nearby Bürgerpark).
As you can see, the mausoleum’s facade is covered with traces of machine gun fire from fighting which raged in Pankow as part of the Red Army’s assault on Berlin at the end of the Second World War.
The story goes that during the battle of Berlin, Wehrmacht and Volkssturm soldiers are reported to have barricaded themselves in the cemetery buildings (and in the mausoleum).
Here, the ragged German troops (most of whom would have been elderly men or teenage boys) staged a desperate last stand against the waves of Red Army riflemen who were advancing through the district of Pankow.
The bullet holes, which show the intensity of the Soviet fire, are still plastered across the front door of the mausoleum, 80 years on…