How Did ‘Swastika Trees’ Appear in a German Forest?

Image by Wikipedia

By Daniel J. Solomon December 20, 2016

Long after Germans pulled down monuments to Nazi rule, there remained a forest outside Berlin that each fall would commemorate the Third Reich.

Planted by an unknown person, the forest in the town of Zernikow was mostly evergreen pine trees. But a few strategically placed trees belonged to a different breed and would turn yellow every autumn, carving a swastika into the landscape that could only be seen from the air.

The German government discovered the Nazi relic in the 1990’s and cut down the trees to prevent them from becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis. Experts have speculated the trees might have been planted by the Hitler Youth.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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