Dachau
Having studied Nazism and German contemporary history three times over, a lot of my time in Germany was spent visiting relics of that time. These two photos are from Dauchau - the first and 'model' camp for political opponents, jews, gyspsies and other 'undesirables'. Whilst it wasn't an 'extermination camp' as such, it was hell and many many people died here as a result of violence, overwork, starvation and disease.
Most of the original buidlings were torn down after US liberation , but the positions of the rows and rows of old dormitories are marked by these rectangles full of stones.
There is also a gruesome museum, the original on-site SS prison (aka 'the bunker'), a crematorium and an unused gas chamber. A range of religious and sectarian memorials dot the huge grounds, and a group of Carmelite nuns keep a constant vigil onsite.
I left feeling thoroughly freaked out and couldn't stop questioning how you deal with this legacy, and who you hold responsible for it.
Terezin/Theresianstadt
From Prague I took a day trip to Terezin, a bizarre little town that the Nazis took over early in 1938. The town was built inside two forts - a big and a small - in the late 1700s so it is entirely walled. The Nazis turned the small fort into a Gestapo prison in 1938, but let the original inhabitants remain in the large fort, about a km down the road, for a year before they drove them out and turned the large fort into a holding camp.
At this point they were in the process of building their network of death camps and needed somewhere to store their growing list of opponents and innocent prisoners. From the Nazis' point of view Terezin was logistically perfect - they had a prison that was already completely built and pretty well escape-proof, then down the road they had a range of buildings and infrastructure at their disposal in a town that, also walled, was essentially another prison.
The camp inmates generally stayed in Terezin for a few years before being sent to Aushwitz, or other camps in Poland, Czech,Slovakia, Hungary and other German occupied territories. But then, as the liberation of those camps became inevitable, the Nazis forced thousands of them to march on the so called 'Death Marches' for days on end back to Terezin. So there are lots of stories of prisoners who survived Terezin, then survived Auschwitz, only to die on the road back, or die shortly after returning, or die in the Typhoid outbreak that followed.
Even after the defeat of the Nazis a lot of the prisoners weren't allowed to leave the camp as it was quarantined.
A lot of artists were interned at the camp or in the gestapo prison, and a huge amount of their artworks from the time were hidden and survived the war. There is a really great musuem chronicalling the works and telling the (usually tragic) stories of their creators. There is also a totally devastating exhibition of children's artwork.
These days, on the face of it, Terezin is a regular Czech country town, though its numbers are below the pre war figures. How the inhabitants live here is beyond me. It is a seriously, seriously spooky town, and i guess they just can't afford to live anywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment