Last night I went to two French social gatherings. The last of which was with the rotary club that initiated the schools exchanging students. You will notice in the picture that I was drinking Baileys with only a little bit of coffee for dessert along with a grilled banana and chocolate. After this, we attended a "fete de musique" (music festival). All over France, different towns had these. I took a picture of this "band" that played the bagpipes and drums as they marched through the streets. This morning, I went to a concentration camp (Struthof); I felt nauseous the entire time. The pictures and displays they set up in the museum and former concentration camp were unsettling to say the least. The propensity that a human being has to enact this violence and barbarism on a fellow human being was revealed in all its gore as I walked through this place that housed 52,000 "criminals" (people who didn't support the Nazi party), resistance fighters, Jews and others, 22,000 of whom were hanged, shot or cremated at this exact cite. Or they died from starvation, disease or medical experimentation. That's a disturbing thought and it was chilling to walk through this place and imagine the suffering and agony that occurred from 1941-1944 when the Nazis abandoned the area. They showed the rooms where people were imprisoned and tortured--I have a photograph in the cell for solitary confinement. Also, I saw the crematorium, a room with a drain used to kill people, and many other gruesome things. The barracks for sleeping no longer exist, instead, there are gravel lots to show where the dorms would have been for sleeping. I am still processing all that I saw and read about. Actually being on such a cite, though, enable me to see the atrocity of the Holocaust in a whole new way. One of the prisoners explained her life as a Jew in a concentration camp as this: "What am I? A bag of bones, a human wreck?" This place definitely had a profound and haunting impact on me.
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4 comments:
You are very brave! I left with tears in my eyes. The shadow in the monument shouted out at me "how could you let this happen to me". I had no answer.
It is important that you saw this place so that whenever people deny that the holocaust happened you can say that I was there and have seen the evidence.
Every person I've ever known who has visited a concentration camp says exactly what you said. They're completely blown away with having the reality of it at their finger tips. I would say what a great experience, but great isn't really the right word. Let me know if you think of the right one.
I've really enjoyed traveling viacariously via your blog.
Au revoir, mon ami.
P.
As heartwrenching as the experience was for you, I hope that you will be able to bring a little of it back to our students - I don't think they have an inkling of what the holocoust entailed, or understand that it still happens today.
I hope you are still enjoying yourself. I heard through Karly D. that the music festivle was a wonderful experience.
hey its max. didnt know u went 2 FRANCE!!!!! u r so lucky!!!!!
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