The history lesson - Four walks in two days

December 29, 2013

MC has lived in Germany for well over a year. He has taken advantage of his free time, history major that he is. And he took us to places we never took him. (1) And we learned things that we did not know - things that will stay with us, perhaps posing more questions than they answer.

 Nuremberg:

I. We went to the Documentation Center/Nazi Party Rally Grounds (2) in Nuremberg on the last Sunday of the year.

Outside of the Documentation Center - MC, DH, LD

 The museum exhibit there is detailed. It explains the rise of the Third Reich and the reason for the Rally Grounds locating in Nuremberg. It was an attempt to improve the local economy. The economy was dead so the community threw out the "anti-Nazi" mayor and elected one who invited the Nazi Party to use an expanse of land - and improve adjacent swampland - for their rally grounds and meeting area. [The Party was initially identified with Munich, not Nuremberg. But Nuremburg extended the invitation and the economic environment changed dramatically with the building projects as well as the feeding and housing of party members.] The community thrived and bought into this charismatic leader, or mis-leader as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian, refered to der fuhrer.(3)

The museum barely mentions the war, but does mention the targeted "undesirable" groups. The language has evolved over time. In the past I had always heard references to "the gypsies." Here they are referred to as the Sinti and the Roma, rather than "gypsies." I was familiar with the term "Roma," but learned that "Sinti" are a self-identified subgroup of the Roma.

Towards the end of the museum presentations are two exhibits some might miss. One is the last video (there are numerous video interviews throughout the museum). In this one a grandmother talks of the excitement and enthusiasm they had singing the party songs and marching. My paraphrasing of the rough translation - She said she sang a "rally song" about the flag to her granddaughter and one of her friends. "What are you talking about? What is this? ridiculed the young people. "What were we thinking?" questioned the old woman, ashamed at how easily she was misled.

The other was a work of art. In it are florescent tubes attached as rails to railroad ties. In between the "rails" are cards with the names of the victims. The exhibit explains that only 60 thousand names were displayed. Imagine the length of these "tracks" had all the victims been represented.

View 1.

View 2.

The cards

Zeppelin Rally Ground

 II. After viewing the Zepplinfield - where assemblies were held - we traveled on to the Palace of Justice. Up a few flights of stairs is Courtroom 600.(4)

Courtroom 600

The courtroom, significantly renovated. The lighting is not the same. During the trials the windows were covered for security.

As a child I sat in the hall at my home (I was supposed to be in bed) and listened to one of those television programs I was too young to watch. I now believe it was Judgement at Nuremberg, perhaps a teleplay or a televised version of the movie. I will never forget the "testimony" I heard about incidents in the camps. One story in particular still haunts me.

I knew very little about the trials and their consequences other than that those major decision makers who were not already dead were generally convicted and sentenced to death or long prison terms. This exhibit explains more about all of those who took part in the trials. It includes the later trials and the political influences that allowed many to escape execution or completion of prison terms.

I knew nothing of Justice Robert Jackson, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who stepped aside from his duties on the court to serve as prosecutor in Nuremberg (What an amazing man!). (5)

I did not realize that some had argued for summary execution of "perpetrators."(6) 

This relatively small, but powerful exhibition raised as many questions as it answered for me. I learned names of "perpetrators" I had never heard before.  And it was the righteous end, the prosecution, conviction and execution of sentences - as we had started the day with the rise and fall of the Nazis.

Our guide was thoughtful in his tour as he was the previous day, at Flossenburg.

I am not sure why I focused on this individual, but I took this photo, perhaps as a warning to elementary students.
After his stint as an elementary school teacher, he was an editor and a major member of the Nazi party and a primary player in the Nazi propaganda machine.

December 28, 2013

Flossenburg

III. The Flossenburg Concentration Camp (7)

I had never heard of the camp at Flossenburg. It was a work camp, not an extermination camp. Even so, some 30,000 men, women, and children died there, from illness and starvation and, yes, execution.

Reviewing the map

Camp guard tower

Text of one part of the exhibit.

Flossenburg provided laborers for the granite quarry. Much of this granite was needed for public buildings (like those in Nuremberg). Later there were sub-camps making armaments.

It is almost impossible to describe the detailed exhibit that provides documentation and information on the perpetrators, the victims, and the survivors. (But see the museum guide in the second link provided below at 7).

Some executed there are famous - names we recognize now, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (3) and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,(8) both opposed to Hitler and executed for treason.

Probably the most important thing I learned from Flossenburg was how extensive the system of labor/work camps was. When I hear "the camps" I think of those like Dachau and Auschwitz and Treblinka. There is a map here in the museum (and one of SS camps provided by the Holocaust Museum, see the link below) with markers for the different camps. Germany is almost covered with marks. Camps were everywhere. (9)


After the exhibit we made our pilgrimage to the "Valley of Death," The memorial at the area of the cemetery of the honored, the pyramid of ashes and the crematorium. It is in this spot that Polish survivors began the efforts of remembrance.

The Valley of Death looking past the pyramid of ashes towards the crematorium.

Insulators on the old electrified fence post

The Cemetery of  Honor

IV. Castle Ruins, Flossenburg.

We left the camp and climbed the summit of the Burgruins of Flossemburg. MC explained that the tour was designed purposefully. You start in the valley at the concentration camp, but end above, on the heights of the castle ruins. The hike is therapeutic. The cold air and exercise helps to clear the head. The sights are amazing. You can breathe again up there.

View from the ruins

Another view

Sun is setting

More of the sunset from the castle ruins above Flossenburg

My lessons:

1. I have a difficult time believing that many in the Germany of the 30s and 40s can deny knowledge of the camps. Camps were everywhere. Perhaps there was no extermination camp in one's back yard, but it would have been difficult to fail to notice the prisoners and camp laborers everywhere - marching off to work in this factory or that one or helping to plant or harvest crops in the neighborhood. It would have been difficult to miss that these prisoners were abused, beaten and starving. There is no "plausible deniablity."

And is it such a big step from the 5 or 10 executions every day or so and thousands of deaths from illness and starvation to the wholesale industrialized slaughter at the death camps?

2.  I resolve to remember the words of two men I met on these walks.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer's warnings to the German people about such zealous following of a leader, creating, in effect, a cult of the leader that can result in him becoming a mis-leader are warnings to us as well. Question authority. Do not blindly follow. Do not allow leaders to demean or diminish the weakest among us or those who are "not like us."

Justice Jackson's admission towards the end of his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials (5) reminds us that the Nazis were not some special kind of demons and we are not special either. We must also answer to humanity and civilization: 

     "The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization. In all our countries it is still a
      struggling and imperfect thing. It does not plead that the United States, or any other
      country, has been blameless of the conditions which made the German people easy
      victims to the blandishments and intimidations of the Nazi conspirators."



NOTES:

(1) In 1997, we took the children to Dachau - to the concentration camp. DH and I had traveled there in 1981. I knew they would receive the information appropriate for their ages (as if the Holocaust is information anyone at any age can really comprehend).


(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_Center_Nazi_Party_Rally_Grounds
     http://museums.nuremberg.de/documentation-centre/index.html

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

(4)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Justice_%28Nuremberg%29
       http://www.memorium-nuremberg.de/exhibition/exhibition.html

(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L50OZSeDXeA
      http://www.roberthjackson.org/the-man/timeline

(6) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/26/britain-execution-nuremberg-nazi-leaders

(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossenb%C3%BCrg_concentration_camp
      http://www.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de/fileadmin/dokumente/RSGB.pdf
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1COz_4qV11U (Warning! Disturbing video from liberation)
      http://www.gedenkstaette-flossenbuerg.de/en/visitor-information/map/

(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Franz_Canaris

(9) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
      http://www.ushmm.org/learn/mapping-initiatives/geographies-of-the-holocaust/mapping-the-ss-concentration-camp-system/

***With thanks for MC for guiding us.***