Ghosts beneath the gables
ONE January morning, Susanne Bucker, a family doctor in Berlin, awoke with a sense of dread.
National elections loomed, and Elon Musk – billionaire, provocateur and previously US President Donald Trump's most vocal cheerleader – had begun publicly backing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party whose leaders have downplayed the Holocaust and dabbled in Nazi rhetoric.
Bucker penned a letter to her neighbours.
'Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,' she wrote, expressing her fear that fascism was again taking root in Germany.
Elmar Bessen and Caroline Frey in their house once belonging to a former SS doctor in Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke, May 8, 2025. On the outskirts of Berlin, Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke is an idyllic neighborhood with a sinister past, and a symbol of Germany's effort to both remember and forget. (Patrick Junker/The New York Times)
That message sparked a quiet resistance. Within weeks, some 40 residents lit candles in their gardens as part of a nationwide 'chain of lights' against hate, hanging pro-democracy signs in their windows.
'I think we have a special responsibility,' said Bucker, 62, sipping tea in her living room. 'Because we live on an estate that was built by perpetrators, for perpetrators.'
Her neighbourhood, Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke – or 'Forest Estate' – is nestled in a leafy corner of southwest Berlin.
Once designed as a picture-perfect 'Aryan' idyll, it now faces its Nazi past head-on.
In Berlin's southwest, the forest settlement Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke is idyllic and today, the dwellings, with steep A-frame roofs, wooden shutters, and tidy gardens are sought-after homes, beloved by their inhabitants. — Patrick Junker/The New York Times
It's postcard pretty: peaked-roof cottages, wooden shutters, quiet paths and a thick forest shielding the homes from the outside world.
In summer, a short stroll in flip-flops and a swimsuit leads straight to the lake.
It looks idyllic. But dig deeper – literally – and its sinister roots surface.
Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke was built in the late 1930s as an 'elite community' for the SS, Hitler's paramilitary wing that orchestrated much of the Holocaust.
Joachim, with his mother and older brother outside their house, has lived in Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke since 1946; and (right) Joachim standing outside his house. — Patrick Junker/The New York Times
Known then as the SS-Kameradschaftssiedlung (SS Camaraderie Estate), it housed some 600 dwellings, from small flats to cottages, assigned according to SS rank.
It was a physical embodiment of the Nazis' 'blood and soil' ideology – their fantasy of Aryans living close to nature.
The estate was built with war in mind: cellars doubled as bomb shelters, tree cover offered camouflage from Allied air raids.
A sign at the entrance now reads: 'The peaceful atmosphere that the settlement, embedded in the landscape, conveys to the unbiased observer today makes it difficult to recall its history.'
Yet that history still surfaces – like the swastika-stamped coins or household objects residents (or their dogs) occasionally dig up.
'The residents found ideal living conditions – an idyll,' said historian Matthias Donath. 'And at the same time, they planned monstrous crimes.'
Donath's research recently revealed that one former resident, Joachim Caesar, went on to head agricultural operations at Auschwitz.
For decades, post-war Germany simply didn't talk about places like this.
'One method of survival in a destroyed and morally devastated Germany was repression,' said Donath.
That meant many residents didn't know what kind of ground they were living on – until a neighbour told them.
'Some people say, 'It's 80 years ago; it has nothing to do with me,'' said Susanne Guthler, 67, who moved in with her family in 2000.
'For me, it's the opposite. I want to know what happened, here in my house. It's intimidating to hear about families drowning themselves in the Krumme Lanke or hanging in the attic. But you can't move forward with silence.'
As Soviet troops closed in during 1945, some SS families fled. Others, historians say, likely died by suicide.
'The SS estate was not a place to hide,' said historian Hanno Hochmuth. 'The soldiers may have opened the doors to find dead bodies – or floating in the Krumme Lanke lake.'
After the war, the estate fell in the American sector of occupied Berlin. Vacant homes were given to resistance fighters, Jewish survivors and refugees.
Michael Joachim, moved into his house in 1946 when he was 3 years old, in Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke, May 8, 2025. On the outskirts of Berlin, Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke is an idyllic neighborhood with a sinister past, and a symbol of Germany's effort to both remember and forget. (Patrick Junker/The New York Times)
The houses, once designed to breed future Nazis, were suddenly teeming with the displaced.
Street names were changed. New memories began forming.
Gisela Michaelis moved in when she was five, in 1945, with her mother and siblings after fleeing the Red Army. Her father, a Wehrmacht soldier, never returned.
Now 85, she still lives in the same 84-square-metre row house.
'There were endless children here,' she recalled. 'It was a beautiful childhood.'
She and her friends would sneak kindling from the forest and play in the old cellars.
But even after the war, not all the SS vanished. Some may have quietly returned.
'This was typical of post-war Germany,' said Hochmuth. 'Persecutors, bystanders and victims, all living door to door without too much struggle. There was a tendency to forget, to want to start over.'
Michael Joachim, now 82, moved to the estate as a toddler in 1946.
His father told stories of families who had taken their own lives as the war ended: 'That neighbour went into the Krumme Lanke with his whole family. That one hung himself in the attic.'
He also remembered a quiet Jewish couple who lived where Bucker does now.
'Only later did I think, 'What kind of a fate must they have had?''
The estate's past began to resurface in the 1980s, when a grassroots 'Dig Where You Stand' movement encouraged locals to research their communities.
One historian uncovered that the Nazi housing project had been funded not by the SS but by a semi-public housing firm called GAGFAH.
Ingrid Fiedler, now 86, moved in during the 1980s – unaware of its origins, despite working for GAGFAH herself.
One day, while cycling with her husband near the lake, a couple asked where the 'SS estate' was.
'The next day at work, my colleague said, 'Don't you know you live there?' That was news to me,' she said.
Still, she stayed. 'I lived through the Hitler time. But if people keep voting this way, we're going to have it all again. I don't want that.'
The estate was declared a protected historical site in 1992, recognised for its Nazi-era architecture. But attempts to reckon with its past continued to stall.
Historian Karin Grimme said she couldn't find a single resident willing to be interviewed in the 1990s.
In the 2000s, the estate was privatised. Old records, including tenant contracts, were likely lost or discarded.
In summer, a short stroll in flip-flops and a swimsuit leads straight to the Krumme Lanke lake. It looks idyllic. But dig deeper – literally – and its sinister roots surface. — Patrick Junker/The New York Times
Yet some buyers stumbled on the past anyway.
When Elmar Bassen and Caroline Frey bought their home in 2011, the seller – a journalist – handed them a book titled Medicine Without Humanity and informed them that a war criminal had once lived there.
Joachim Mrugowsky, former chief of the Waffen-SS's Hygiene Institute, was tried and executed in Nuremberg for conducting horrific medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
'At first, we thought, 'Can we do that? Can we move here?'' said Frey. 'It was like, 'Are the bricks evil?''
In the end, they stayed.
'Maybe our liberal worldview is just what this place needs,' said Frey.
Their nine-year-old foster son plays in the garden. They hung anti-AfD signs in their windows ahead of the election.
'We want to remember,' Frey said. 'Because remembering this horrifying thing might help it not happen again.' — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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