'We planted trees among the rubble': The dark WW2 history written into Germany's parks
Eighty years after the end of World War Two, blasted trees and rubble forests tell a hidden story of wartime bombardment and Nazi terror.
In the early 1950s, Rudolf Schröder, a young gardener, led a group of apprentices through the abandoned plots of bombed houses in post-war Dresden. Their quest: to find tree saplings for planting along the city's streets. Dresden was still ravaged by the firebombing in February 1945 that killed tens of thousands of civilians. But slowly, here and in other cities across Germany, survivors were starting a green recovery.
"We searched the ruins of buildings with gardens for saplings and found lots of them – linden trees, maple, oak. We dug them up, and planted the best ones along the streets," recalls Schröder, who was born in 1933, speaking from his home in Dresden. "It was a hard time, but we were full of hope."
Saplings were hard to find as so many trees in public parks had been destroyed, and had to be replaced with stock from nurseries outside of the bombed city. It was when those nurseries ran out that Schröder and his friends resorted to the abandoned gardens – where many saplings had sprung up as the plots were left untended. There were enough young trees for some to be taken and replanted along the streets to cheer up the public, and others to be left in place, according to Schröder. Today, some of those rubble-sourced street trees planted by Schröder and his team still stand, for example along the Krenkelstraße street in Dresden, he says.
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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250429-we-planted-trees-among-the-rubble-the-dark-ww2-history-written-into-germanys-parks