## The City That Did Not Forget
Berlin’s memory of the airlift, and of Halvorsen within it, is documented in physical and institutional terms. The Allied Museum in the Dahlem district of Berlin maintains an extensive collection related to the airlift, including photographs, documents, and material artifacts. The Airlift Memorial at Tempelhof bears the names of the 78 people who died in accidents during the operation. The names are inscribed in stone at a site that remains a commemorated place in the city.
Tempelhof Airport itself was closed as a commercial and general aviation airport in 2008, after decades of service. The building, a monumental structure built partly under the Third Reich and finished during and after World War II, is a designated historical monument. The runways were converted to a public park, Tempelhofer Feld, which opened in 2010. Berliners use it for cycling, kite-flying, barbecuing, and community events on the same surface where C-54s once landed at intervals of less than a minute.
For the airlift’s seventieth anniversary in 2018, the city organized commemorations that drew significant attendance. Former West Berliners who had been children during the blockade were invited to participate. The event connected people in their late seventies and early eighties with an event that had formed part of their early memory, and with Americans who had sustained their city through that period.
Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s governing mayor, issued a statement on Halvorsen’s death in February 2022 that described his act as “deeply human” and said it had “never been forgotten.” The statement was official, but its specificity to Halvorsen rather than to the airlift in general reflected the particular place he occupied in the city’s memory.