Deep in the former east Berlin, the German-Russian Museum (also known as the Karlshorst Museum) is like a little piece of the Soviet Union that has been frozen in time.The German-Russian Museum (Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst) is located at the historic site of the surrender of the German Armed Forces on 8 May 1945 in Berlin-Karlshorst, a place where two former wartime enemies jointly recall some of their common history. It is up until now a unique bilateral institution sponsored by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation. It is the only museum in Germany with a permanent exhibition recalling the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. Along with the genocide of European Jewry and the murder of other populations, this war is part of the large complex of Nazi crimes to which millions fell victim through systematic extermination.
World War II came to an end in Europe with the act of unconditional surrender which took place in the museum’s main building. From 1945 to 1949 the former officers’ mess of the German Armed Forces’ Pioneer School served as the seat of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. After being used for various purposes by the Soviet military, a Soviet surrender museum opened in 1967 and existed until 1994.
