Baby Boxster: Munich to Rothenburg

It’s a BOY!

Lesley’s ultrasound reveals that we will have bookends; Sean on one end, baby boy Culley on the other with 4 beautiful girls in-between. Grandparent bliss.

Even with such lovely news we have a somber day.

Not far from Munich is Dachau Concentration Camp. It’s a large complex, kept now as a memorial site for remembrance. It is free and open to visitors year round.

You enter the compound the way the prisoners did, through an iron gate set into an archway beneath a guardhouse. The dictum, “Arbeit Macht Frei” is welded into the open metalwork. Translated: “Work Makes (you) Free”. The prisoners became slave labor and were worked to the point of exhaustion and even death. Ironic freedom.

Guard House Entry

Work Sets You Free

You walk out onto the parade grounds where 40-50,000 prisoners stood at attention twice a day in all weather; standing motionless for an hour while they were counted, punishments were carried out and public executions were witnessed. “You are without rights, dishonorable, and defenseless” is a quote attributed to an SS officer in the museum housed in the former maintenance building. All property, rights and human dignity were forfeited when prisoners entered.

I won’t describe in detail all of the horrific conditions or treatment that occurred here, there are just too many dreadful aspects to recount. We’re all acquainted with this gruesome piece of history.

I will tell you about what we saw at the camp.

To one side of the parade ground a memorial designed by a camp survivor has been erected. It depicts human bodies woven into a design of barbed wire meant to depict the people who threw themselves into the electrified fence to end their suffering. Adjacent is a stone wall with “Never Again” inscribed in 5 languages.

Memorial Sculpture by Nandor Glid

Never Again

Memorial Depicting Colored Triangles Prisoners Wore. Different Colors Stood for Different "Crimes".

Seven guard towers impose themselves along the camp wall. Guards with machine guns manned each tower. The walls are topped with barbed wire, fronted by a deep trench and separated from the camp by a wide swath called the death zone. If anyone stepped into it, they were shot.

Guard Tower

Most of the barracks have been destroyed; they are now represented by graveled rectangles. A reconstructed barrack allows a glimpse of the wooden bunks that reached from floor to ceiling and the “living quarters” consisting of rows of wooden benches where 400 men were housed in space meant for 50.

The crematorium remains intact. The ovens used to incinerate the dead stand cold and sinister on this blue-sky day as we contemplate the unthinkable. When the camp was liberated, bodies were stacked in these rooms like firewood awaiting disposal. Behind this building where ashes were discarded is a memorial tombstone for all of the anonymous people who died here.

Crematorium Ovens

Mass Grave

I recently read a piece of historical fiction, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. She tells the story of two female British officers who parachuted into Germany to aid the resistance. Near the crematorium is an execution wall and it is here that the real-life British women parachutists who were captured were killed. A plaque stands in commemoration. Wein’s novelization has chillingly come to life.

There are 4 religious monuments on the site: Russian Orthodox (an estimated 7000 Soviet POWs were executed here), Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. Beyond one wall the tips of white rooftops are visible. This is a Carmelite convent initiated in 1964 by an auxiliary bishop of Munich, (he was also a camp survivor), where the nuns dutifully pray for atonement. The Madonna of Dachau resides in their chapel. She once stood in the priests’ barracks. Symbolic entry to the convent has been cut through one of the guard towers.

Jewish Monument

Carmelite Rooftops

The camp existed for 12 years and was liberated on May 1, 1945. On that day 30,000 were freed from a camp built to house 6,000. One survivor described this day as his second birth.

In this unsettling place where inhumanity is its synonym there are also stories of solidarity and brotherly love, which allowed the survival of some.

Hope midst the despair and survivors to tell the story.

Amen.

We lighten things up with a stop in the walled medieval city of Dinkelsbuhl, (yeah, that's how you spell it). A delightful stroll through bright and intricately painted, high peaked houses and shops. There’s an organ grinder in the platz. His monkey is stuffed and looking a little bored with the whole spectacle.