Free Republic

The airport used to deliver supplies to West Berliners during the Cold War will be transformed into a refugee shelter this week, Berlin state government announced on Sunday. Refugees will begin moving into Berlin’s disused Tempelhof Airport “in the next few days,” Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, told broadcaster RBB. As the former airport winds down after last weekend’s Lollapalooza festival, 800 refugees are set to move into one of the former hangars. […] The eventual aim is to transform two of the former hangars into accommodation blocks, Berliner Morgenpost reports. …

Berlin-Tempelhof, Hitler’s favourite airport, could yet be rescued by one of the world’s most influential Jewish philanthropists. Cosmetics billionaire, New York socialite and art collector Ronald Lauder – son of the celebrated Estée Lauder - is behind a €350m (£235m) project to turn the Third Reich architectural relic into a luxury fly-in health clinic for Europe’s super rich. Berlin's cash-strapped city fathers earlier this year finally cleared the way to develop the proposed new Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) on the site of the present Schönefeld airport to the south east of the city, handling an annual 22 million passengers. Inner...