OG107

Today is VE (Victory in Europe) Day as well as Mother’s Day. While most people are going about their normal business, it’s a very sad day for some people here in Germany.

What happened to Berlin, especially its women, when the defense in the east was shattered and the city fell after a bitter fight is a tragedy that the women here carried throughout the rest of enormously difficult lives. It was the women who cleared the rubble and rebuilt the city.  Many young women never had a chance to be married.  Many widows remained alone for the remainder of their lives.  With a vast number of men born between 1910 and 1926 dead or in captivity, what choice did they have?

The scars and the memories of that bitter time are fading as time moves on. When I lived here 20 years ago, right after the wall fell, you could really feel the war in the eastern part of the city when you saw the bullet holes in the buildings, the mortar scars on the sidewalks and the wasteland of Potsdamer Platz. That seductive, hard edge of Berlin could be found in those reminders of  the war.  They gave it the proud character that somehow fit its reputation as a city with attitude.  It had survived the worst the Allies could throw at it, and occupation for 50 years, and it had the scars to prove it.

Now the bullet holes have been filled in, the sidewalks replaced or repaired, and huge, modern, soulless skyscrapers built on Potsdamer Platz. Berlin has been renovated, modernized, and sanitized.  Maybe I will mourn just a little bit the loss of the crumbling facades in the east, the drab grayness, and the World War Two motorcycles parked on random corners.  I live in southern California, where parents purchase breast augmentation surgeries for their daughters’ 18th birthdays.  In a world where more and more people pay thousands of dollars to purchase some illusory, fake physical perfection, Berlin’s gritty but precious  reminders of the events of 1945 gave me hope that somewhere in the civilized world living history and reality might still be found, not hidden under layers of paint and plaster…or worse, ripped down to build antiseptic, unlovable steel and glass towers.

Since the “beautification” of Berlin and the withdrawal of the occupational forces finding decent military surplus shops has become ever more difficult.  Luckily, proprietor Sergei occasionally opens his overflowing and fabulously musty shop OG107 upon demand.  The first time I spotted this paradise on Senefelderplatz in the Prenzlauer Berg quarter it was bitterly cold and the sun was setting in the hazy mist of coal dust that permeates the air in Berlin in winter. When I entered through the portal into its warmth I stepped back in time 65 years.  Barely able to move amid the racks stuffed with clothing and gear, and slowly adjusting my vision to the sepia light, I eventually noticed Sergei in Canadian WW2 uniform smiling at me. The combination was the perfect blend of German, Soviet, American and Canadian, that type of mixture of military and civilian culture I had come to admire most about Berlin in the early 90’s, but which I had been having trouble finding in recent years.

It’s impossible not to be awed by the sheer volume of merchandise Sergei has managed to cram in such a tiny space.  In this corner of what I call heaven on earth (and he calls a Museum to Human Stupidity), Sergei stocks hundreds of real and reproduction period jackets, boots, uniforms, mess kits, holsters, caps, rucksacks, ammunition pouches and medic bags. I never miss my chance to satisfy my primal urge to bury myself in a triple-stacked rack of vintage uniforms and canvas and leather gear and breathe in deeply.

Then, feeling rushed (I always feel rushed at OG107 even when I have hours), I have to choose which piece will come home with me.  That first visit I walked out with an American paratrooper musette bag that I later outfitted with backpack straps, thinking it was reproduction.  Only after the fact did I found out it was genuine.

That’s the way it goes in OG107.  It’s one of the last places I know of in the city where the remnants of the past are hoarded, treasured and remembered for their role in the horror of the war.  If you go, you might just walk out the door not only with a taste of authentic Berlin, you could walk away with something real in your hands.