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.
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