Day 3
Flossenburg
It was an early start. I was back in
Gaby's house for breakfast. It was 7:00 am, She had alerady left for
work. We had to cut into the really hard bread. Solidad was my only
company for breakfast when we started. Soon Lucy joined us. Our
conversations were around education in Chile and India. We soon left
the house packing some sandwiches for John and Cecilia. The bus
awaited us at the Mensa. It was fully loaded and off to Flossenburg.
Flossenburg was the location of a
former concentration camp. It was a work camp and not an
extermination camp. Work camps were places where people were brought
in for hard labour. They were given colour codes to be
differentiated. A green triangle signified a career criminal, a black
triangle signified an anti social, a red triangle was political
objector, blue was an immigrant, and pink was for the homosexual and
purple was for the Jehova's witness. If the person was a jew an
inverted yellow triangle was added to the existing triangle. So by
seeing them one could be identified.
The camp existed from 1942 to 1945 till
the americans liberated them. In 1945 there were about 100,000
prisoners in the camp and were liberated of which it is said that
30000 were killed.
The camp hosted citizens from 22
countries which included almost all of europe. To our surprise there
seemed to be one chinese and seven from the USA.
The camp site was not eerie to see at
first. The stories they said were not compelling in the beginning.
But as we progressed, it became harder to hear. There is a place
where it reads, “Work will set you Free”. It is really nice to
hear this but it actually meant that, if you work very hard every day
you will die fast and then you will be burnt in that oven and your
smoke will be free. What an interpretation!
This was the place where bodies people
were burnt in threes and fours as there were about 80-90 people dying
every day and all of them had to be disposed. So the bodies would be
kept on a table and their jugular vein cut off so that they bleed out
all their blood. The golden teeth/filling was pulled out, their hair
was shaved and then they were filled in the oven. The gold was melted
to make jewelry and the hair was sent to make beds. The clothes were
probably recycled.
The valley of death was a place where
people were lined up and shot. Now there is a memorial of nations
that underlines the suffering. Close to it is a church that has
beautiful glass work with significant allegorical reference to the
suffering. This church was built by the survivors.
A compelling fact about this camp was
that Dietrich Bonhoffer a protestant theologian was killed here. I
have read a lot about him and used his works extensively in retreats.
In a book called Contact with god, Tony De Mello Quotes, Bonhoffer,
“When Jesus says follow me, he is asking you if you are willing to
die for me”. He joined the resistance against hitler and also
planned to assassinate him. But in the process was imprisoned and
hanged in Flossenburg along with eight of his companions. It was
quite a place to be in.
A video of the survivors was very
informative. It gave more intricate details of life in the camps. The
survivors were filmed on the spot when they had gathered for a
reunion.
The experience was very different from
the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and the New York. Those museums
gave an eerie feeling about the whole thing but this was less
traumatic but had a whole lot of information that made you go through
life as it was in real time. Associating it with what happened in Sri
Lanka or Cambodia was easier.
The ride back was very relaxing as all
of us slept in the bus except the Driver of course!
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