Neuengamme Concentration Camp

These last few days have been perfect out. Warm, sunny, and just a bit of a breeze. After class yesterday, I drug Teagan to Verden, the "Rider's City" where the Deutsches Pferdemuseum is. There are horses everywhere. Well, I never saw a live horse, but bike racks have horse designs, statues, and the sidewalk has horse shoes with names--I'm guessing sort of like "bricks" you can buy and have your name put on in support of something.  What was super exciting about these horse shoes was that I was determined to find a name I know..and I did!

Teagan in front of the Pferdesmuseum.

The Pferdemuseum itself was neat.  Unfortunately, no pictures allowed.  I didn't know horses were used in WWII.  The museum had the goggles and gas masks worn by horses for protection. Wild. Lots of bones and skeletons, stuff on floating teeth, types of saddles (side saddle, AP saddle, some very strange saddles!) some horrific bits from forever ago that made me cringe as well as a series of bits showing the process of production of the popular Aurigan (similar to KK) bits. There was a preserved fetus and of course preserved guts of sorts. Lots of fun.

Und die toten Anderer Volker und Nationen.

Today was a bit more challenging.  It was unfitting to put this gorgeous of a day and Neuengamme Concentration camp together.  My hope was to get to Bergen-Belsen today, but apparently transportation is more difficult to that site on Saturdays.  I'm going to do my best to get there...somehow!  Anyway, I headed to Hamburg with the rest of the group and from there split for Neuengamme, another train and a bus ride farther.  With a little work, I managed to get off the bus at the right place, but the "camp" looked like a park so I kept wandering the streets looking for something that looked similar to Buchenwald...that's what I have to compare to.  I saw lots of neat things in my wandering, including some impressive stables and nice-looking horses out in fields along neat winding roads with flowers.

 

When I finally figured out that the first place I had been was indeed the edge of the camp (it was recognizable a bit farther in!), I went back and spent the next 3 hours there, hardly meeting another person.  It was empty, yet bright and full of life.  Other than the path, all was grass with gorgeous trees and bushes and flowers.  I will never fully comprehend what happenend in these camps, but the "sunny" atmosphere of the place and the day pushed me farther from reality.  As I waited for the bus at the end of the day, I wrote, "So many died here.  The paradox of life and death.  It was a struggle for me to realize all that this ground here has seen, its history, its story.  It is so beautiful I can hardly think of it as a concentration camp."

Perhaps there is truth here, that somehow, some way, beauty can return without forgetting the horrors of the past.  We still see the "scars"--building remains, graves, memorials, art.  The pain and suffering are not buried but remembered and respected as they give depth and meaning to the beauty that now is.  The beauty of life in the shadow of the cross.

Pax.