It was a few years ago, December in Berlin and I was with some friends at a celebration at Alexanderplatz next to the typical Weihnachtsmarkt. When the fireworks began, explosions of colour, noise and lights fell in the middle of the intense cold and the first snowflakes. Around me, everyone gaped to the wonderful show in the sky while enjoying a glass of ‘Glühwein’.

Me, however, could only think how ironic life is. 70 years ago, no Berliner would have stayed in the middle of the street looking at the sky laughing and enjoying: that wave of green, red colour flares (TIs) and white colour, air burst markers, was only the prelude to the rain of fire and bombs that minutes later would be dropped by hundreds of bombers flying over the city.

But Berliner sense of humor not fail: those flares resembling bunches of grapes or upside down fir trees when detonated in the air, hundreds falling on the Reich capital to illuminate it, were known by 1940s Berliners as ‘Weihnachtsbäume’ or ‘Christbäume’ (Christmas trees).

However, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I returned to the pleasant feeling of living in peace and harmony, far from Nazism and the air bombings that so many cities suffered. That was the night that the idea of ​​starting a blog about Berlin and the bombings crossed my mind, to share the thousands of stories from both sides who had to live those terrible moments of war and death.

𝐅𝐫𝐨̈𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐢𝐡𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐧, 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞.

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