final solution 3

as you will gather, these matters impose on us.

 

more to the point than berlin were the exhibits at auschwitz.

this was not simply about the extermination of the jewish people.

many nationalities were considered inferior and targetted for harsh and fatal treatment.

 

however the jewish memorial in camp block 27 was much more succinct than the berlin museum.

 

using minimal photos and text it was shown that the shaping of youth by hitler into cruel, violent people was hitlers stated aim.

the exhibits showed clearly the outcome of how you shape your youth.

 

what happened raises for us questions about culpability

it raises theological questions - how to understand all this

we have no answers other than to note that the consistent position of jewish people in europe has been that of outsider despite times of acceptance and even protection.

 

europe now has achieved what generations seem to have sought - a largely jew free zone

the final solution 2 berlin and beyond

WWII monuments are not easy to find in Berlin.

Some of this is because of rebuilding after the war, some of it must be a policy to move on.

The Berlin wall is a more pleasing historical detail.

 

The Jewish museum has an exhaustive display narrating the history of Jews in Germany. By exhaustive I mean German.  Every German museum we went to  had so much detailed information available that a stroll through a museum has a prolegomena and 20 chapters with appendices and footnotes (all on your own audioguide).  So much detail.  So long to tell a story.

 

And so it is with the Jewish museum - a display where the intent seems to me to be to an apology for the life of Jews in Germany, arguing that Jewish people have always been a part of Germany and Germans to boot.

So we saw history of Jewish traditions in Germany as well as Jewish contributions to German life when and where that was allowed.  Particularly 18th and 19th centuries saw a flowering of Jewish participation in German life in philosophy, science, literature, business and film.  Continual tensions were noted and the possibility of Jews being blamed and scapegoated were noted.

 

The years before WWII show that many German Jews did manage to leave Germany, many from 1936 on - to London, USA, Sth Africa.

Extermination was clearly part of the grand plan which, surprising to me, didn't get the space in the museum I would have expected.

As I got to the close of the exhibits I found myself asking 'Did anyone apologise?'.

In all I saw I could not find reference to apology, to repentance, to setting new social policy.

Certainly the proponents of teh Nazi ideal - those few brought to trial - were belligerent, believing they had done right and would do the same again.

One of the 1947 trial judges spoke of a total lack of remorse. Speaking 20 years later he raised the impossibility of determining justice in these post war trial. How do you determine the value of 6 million lives?.  Germany was broke and couldn't pay.  So they invented a legal fiction of seeking compensation when a father had been exterminated by calculating the number of years any children would have needed support before they could earn a living.

 

This is a core question.  How do you determine the value of one life?  How do you determine the value of 6 million Jewish lives? Or hundreds of thousands of Roma, Polish, Russians?

 

The century which was supposed to be the flowering of rationality gave birth to extraodrinary exterminations in at least 3 continents.

 

And I was left with the feeling that the Jewish museum was still wanting to find a place in the German nation fo the Jewish people.

 

More to the point were the exhibits at Auschwitz. This was not simply about the extermination of the Jewish people.  Many nationalities were considered inferior and targeted for harsh or fatal treatment.

 

The Jewish memorial in block 27 was much more succint than the museum in Berlin.  Using mainly photographs and minimal text it showed the intentional shaping of youth by Hitler into cruel, violent people (this was Hitler's stated aim) and showed the outcome of how you shape your youth.

The mechanical efficiency of the final solution defies comprehension.

the final solution 1

the Jewish fate has drawn us wherever we go.

<by day 3 of our trip we were at Mittelbau-Dora where little reamins of a large work camp.  The SS thought of the morale of the camp internees by providing a brothel (from female inmates) for the men of the camp. They didn't extend this thoughtfulness to food.

 

Mittelbau provided workers for various projects and industries. In particular was a huge underground tunnel and workshop areas. This was started before Hitler but he saw potential.  The first inmates lived in underground tunnels and lasted 3 months before cold and deprivation killed them.

 

The work was on V2 rockets which had been transferred there.  These rockets were designed to inflict maximum vengeance on England.  Thousands of workers including civilians from surrounding towns worked underground on this and other defence projects. Civilians could treat inmates as they liked - ignore, kindness, brutality.

 

A young man acted as tour guide and did a great job of translating into English.  He quite clearly and often pointed out that the locals knew what was going on.  We questioned him later about this - how did his German tourists respond?  He thought well - only a few denied or got angry.  It seems the policy is to use concentration camps as a means of social policy to encourage tolerance.  His view was that <germany must at all costs resist discrimination against any people groups lest they reinvent the conditions for oppression. He implied history departments at universities were committed to this view.

pilgrim itinerary

lets put together a simple to follow plan of our journey:

 

10 may - drive to Poland stay at old communist hotel in ceramic producing town of Boleslawiec

11 may - drive to Polish mountains in the hope of walking. Stayed at Sklarska Poreba in sthn Silesia

12 may - too wet to walk so head to Oswiecim via fully wooden 16thC church of Szrenica near Jelena Gora

13 may - tour Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps then drive to Krakow

14 & 15 may -  in Krakow walking and seeing town sights

16 may -  drive over border to Slovakia and head to Levoca - a quaint walled town with lovely town square

17 may -  have quiet day around Levoca

18 may -  drive to high tatras near Horni Smokovec and do walk in mountain

19 may -  another walk in high tatras before driving to Dedinky at the bottom of slovansky raj national park

20 may -  ross does 6 hour walk through slovansky raj while jen sleeps in. late in the day head to Eger in Hungary

21 may -  check out Eger including organ concert in cathedral and discovery of amazing ice cream shop. drive that evening to Budapest

22 may -  Explore Budapest

23 may -  drive via ´Danube Bend' including Esztergom and arrive late in Sopron near Austrian border. Ross is involved in the (his) great tick discovery.

24 may - tick discovery solved. Explore Sopron. Drive to Vienna and set up in camp.

25-26 may - Walk our feet off in vienna. Discover best ice cream place - Zanoni and Zanoni. Check out Schonbrunn - summer palace of the Hapsburgs. Eat the biggest schnitzels ever seen in suburb of Vienna. Explored the city on trams.

27 may - leave Vienna and follow Danube river stopping overnight at Melc.

28 may - cross into Czech Republic and head for Lake Lipno for possibility of nature and walking but...

29 may - wet and will be so for a few days so headed to Cesky Krumlov - well-restored renaissance town on an S shaped river with a castle. Stayed in a garret room with a castle view and ate Czech food and toured castle.

30 may - late in day headed for Prague and found good room at very wet camping place. All power to GPS on mobile phone!!

31 may - 2 jun. Explored Prague's Jewish quarter with it's museums. Ross to Communist museum, Jen to Mucha museum. Explore Prague Castle gardens.

3 jun - drive south again to Austria via Linz and head to Salzkammergut lakes staying at Altmunster on (lake) Traunsee.

4 jun - drive through lakes area, through Salzburg and down to the start of the Grossglocker drive over the Alps.

 

Next we are heading thru Switzerland to finish with 2 weeks in France.

a confusion of danks

ok so we got it right that you say 'danke'' - even add the 'schoen' if you are feeling cocky - when you have dealings with germans.

then we crossed into poland and got our heads and tongues around 'dzekuje' (jehn-koo-yeh)

then we zipped over the mountains to lovely slovakia and found ourselves saying 'd'akujem' (dyah-koo-yehm) to beer and sausage sellers

a speedy trip through hungary required us to say 'koszonom' (kur-sur-nurm) to our garlic soup man - different and easy.

a couple of days in vienna and on the danube brought back the german as we gasped over huge wien schnitzels

now in czech republic we should be saying 'dekuji' (dya-queue-ee) for our beer and cabbage soup

 

cool huh?

2 problems

our pronounciation guide is written by a yank but we don't know whether he is east coast west coast mid west or texan

our brains are now porridge

 

WE WILL HAVE GREAT SYMPATHY FOR NON-ANGLOS WHEN WE RETURN

 

dchzeers

roszvece & jendobry

polska

well we left germany behind and into the land of the plains people - the polonians

we headed south into lower silesia and stayed in bolawiesiec - a small town which is the centre of the ceramic (read blue and white) industry in poland.

we sampled zummt food for cold weather - sour soup with egg and sausage (zurek), potato pancakes with sour cream and pierogi a polish version of ravioli.

weather got rainy so we headed to the mountain - sklarska poreba - google it - and stayed in nice pension taling with the family.

tuesday was rainy and foggy and chairlift to mt sreniza not working so we made haste for ozweicim - which has another much more sinister name.

 

we set up the tent at a catholic centre for peace and dialogue and froze thru the night. i got up at 4.20am for some reason and it was like daylight.

all through the night we could hear trains - some, who knows, still are hauling miles of human filled cattle cars.

 

and so to visit both the auschwitz and birkenau extermination camps.

you probably remember the statistics - around 1.3 million jews blotted out through the gas chambers in these camps.

roma were on the extermination hit list as well as soviets, religious dudes such as jwitnesses and homosexuals.

in addition to infoprmation we has seen in germany at mittelbau and the jewish museum we now had a polish perspective - as oppressed people who made up a sizable group in the concentrations camps.

there is little to say

how can you understand the purposeful dehumanising and extermination of a people group - and those who did it had been trained to be cruel and relentless and violent.

 

we drove to krakow last night, stazing at camping nr 46 smok and today have wandered the town and just hit the internet after a concert at the krakow philharmina with the krakow phil choir. thez performed an amaying piece called Sleep by eric whittaker (USA) as well as rossini, elgar, schuman, faure, brahms. the concert was 10 bucks ea. tomorrow night there is a mendolssohn concert - symphony 1 and 3 and piano concerto - thats a lot of sleeping!

 

we will wander some more tomorrow in kazimierz - the old jewish area.

 

crojcsz and dzjejcn

poland

travel has a predictable pattern.

excitement & some nervousness as you set off.

especially if you are going somewhere new & exotic.

then you get there & figure a few things out and get comfortable with the money, the transport, the food etc.

 

so it is for us.

i was not looking forward to  driving in  berlin

but it turned out to not be a problem

then yesterday we left the safety of germany

and crossed into poland with no polish money.

 

but of course people live here & bank here, ...

so now we feel at home after a night in a hotel - a real  bed.

we are looking forward to eating polish  food after our meat breakfast.

 

we are in boleslawiec which is not pronounced as it looks.

it is raining so  our plans to  do walking in the sudetes mountains may have to change

anyway now that we feel comfortable in boleslawiec and can pronounce the name we may stay here

 

or steel ourselves and move on

 

blessings

rossnjen