Posted on 10/30/2010 4:51:41 PM PDT by Free America52
I was in Hamburg Germany this week for business, and had the fortune (?) of visiting the memorial at Berger-Belsen, one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. By the time the camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945, there were 12,000-13,000 Jews dying every day from starvation and disease.
It is one of the most notorious of all Nazi concentration camps for several reasons:
1) Anne Frank and her sister Margot died in this camp.
2) As the allied forces pushed their way into Germany, Hitler had prisoners from camps in the encroachment areas moved to other prisons. Berger-Belsen received many of these prisoners and severely overloaded an already overloaded camp. Deaths became staggerlingly high.
Here are two historical clips that will make your hair stand up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzdtPcNwRtM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxSxQlwR6s&feature=related
Several things really stuck out to me:
1) In a very eerie way, the Berger-Belsen grounds were very quiet. There were no birds, no animals, no insects or any sort of non-plant life although the prison was surrounded by thousands of acres of forest. According to local lore, no living thing exists.
2) This was not a re-enactment with buildings, etc., this was just a solemn walk through a beautiful place where some very horrible things happened. The area is simply breathtakingly beautiful.
3) They have a fabulous museum on site that tells the whole story. I could spend 1-2 days just in the museum.
I am 54 years old, and this was the most emotional experience in my life (outside of life / death issues). I will forever be touched, and plan to make a German vacation visiting more of these camps.
It is impossible to describe ...
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzdtPcNwRtM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxSxQlwR6s&feature=related
Did they misspell it?
I suppose as far as concebtration camps go, you have some points - however the death camps in Poland you may find considerably more disturbing. Those would be: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, and Majdanek.
I visited Auschwitz on a trip to Krakow. I visited Auschwitz I (the administrative HQ) and Auschwitz II Birkenau (the entrance is often used in films like Schindler’s List).
Like Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau is most destroyed with mostly the foundation left. It was Auschwitz I, the old Polish Cavalry base, that is horrific.
I almost passed out in the building where they took the children’s clothes, shoes, hair, etc and put them in piles.
I worry about the Left taking over and this type of thing happening. They have the will, just not the support, ... yet.
I was at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on Tuesday. I’m still processing it. Terrible place, like looking into the pits of hell.
Plus I’m jet-lagged.
I had never before believed in haunted places, but Dachau was just evil.
I had the chance to visit Hiroshima when I was 17 ... read about it before going ... saw the A-Bomb building, the temple at ground zero. Spooky.
Thanks for sharing
Twice.
Never Again has been forgotten and is ringing hollow. Too many have already forgotten 9/11 and the Holocaust. How can anyone forgot such evil? I can close my eyes and still see the Towers burning and people jumping to their deaths. These camps of horror and evil were left to remind the world yet the world has forgotten.
Evil is on the march again, IMO.
“Bergen-Belsen “
You are correct, thanks for correcting. I flew for 12 hours today after being out of town since last Saturday. We made the visit yesterday. With the 6 hour time difference and a long day of flying, it seems forever ago. But you are correct, I had the name wrong.
No kidding. It is 1939 all over again. Or worse, 1914.
Past Your Eyes: Twice.
Someone tries to express their profound experience of visiting a former Nazi death camp, and you mock a misspelling?
"Hospice Nurse" eh? Figures. From the hospice nurses I've known, you're par for the course. Fill any useless eaters with morphine lately?
And as for you, Past Your Eyes - your own tagline sums you up perfectly.
It’s too bad that people can’t also visit the many sites where Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and other communists murdered millions of people outright, or worked them to death. Neo-Stalinist and career KGB assassin Vladimir Putin wouldn’t allow that kind of tourism.
You may have been at Bergen-Belsen, but I’d bet money you weren’t a Berger-Belsen. FWIW
Aren’t you a delightful person? Happy Halloween.
Agree,
The death camps of Eastern Europe have the stench of Hell pervading them. The crimes of the Einsatzgruppen and of the killing camps are a grave stain upon humanity. Move your boot through the bone fragments about Treblinka and you will begin to understand.
I lived & worked in Hamburg 1979-84. Also visited Bergen Belsen by myself and once with my parents when they visited me.
My dad was with Army Air Force out of England and was flying in and out of Bergen Belsen carrying out the survivors. He remembers carry two emaciated men - one on each shoulder.
Yes, the place is eerily quiet...hard to describe until one experiences it.
My dad actually sobbed at the memory.
Seeing the piles - Hier legen funf tausand toten - Here lay 5,000 dead - there were many piles.
No bird, squirrels nothing....all of a sudden from above at treetop level, two jets came in for landing breaking the silence.
I visited the archives/museum and read the notes/records in German and it was like I was back in my office in Hamburg.
They even used the same file binders back then...the ones with the hole in the front.
It was an unforgettable experience especially as I was able to read the German archives.
Bergen-Belsen is where Anne Frank died. That young girl had intelligence and grit, and I’m sorry we in the rest of the world never got to know her better.
Thanks for sharing your trip and thoughts. Sobering.
Most people call it "Bergen-Belsen"
That's what the signs around there say.
Yes. Most people cannot name the nazi concentration camps. They have forgotten the death camps. They think it’s a “Jew” thing. They are wrong. Humanity is teetering on the brink of much worse and refuses to see it.
A “Jew” trying to explain the horrors is often mocked. We are called whiners ahd told to get over it. I have seen that right here from people on threads that have turned my stomach and it has been everything I could do to stop and leave the thread without posting because I would surely be banned.
Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is short but one of the most horrific books about the camps IMHO.
My father was involved with the liberation of Belsen. The actual number of those admitted into the camp as part of the relief effort was severely limited due to all sorts of strange bugs, several soldiers caught mystery diseases and were very sick or died.
...as they should be.
My husband has been to Dachau.....unspeakable.
But have you ever considered how these horrors compare to our own American Holocaust?.
...WE...our United States ..
..have systematically mutilated and killed over 50 million babies..
...we've burned them.... torn them from limb to limb..... and discarded them in furnaces and garbage pits.
WE have as much blood guilt as Germany....and the rest.
The best book I have ever read about that evil is by Gitta Sereny entitled Into That Darkness. It profoundly affected me. Another powerful book, which was written by a survivor, is entitled Hope is the Last to Die by Halina Birenbaum. Never Forget
Wow. I don't prescribe medicine.
The Imam and his evil Regime including his Kapos like Soros and this Congress shoved their DeathCare down the throats of the American people. They want to pick and choose who lives and who dies. Anyone pretending that the DeathCare bill is not another genocide is a useful idiot.
This time, Jews won’t go alone; most of America is on their list.
Anyone who watches “Anne Frank : The Whole Story” and doesn’t come out of it weeping like a baby, isn’t human.
The very recent biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Metaxas is also moving.
The very recent biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Metaxas is also moving.
Berger Belsen?
Finally a new novel by that “Little Big Man” guy?
...to 50 million potential citizens of the USA?
Does no one see ????
No one.
Planned Parenthood IS definitely America’s Auschwitz.
I recommend the documentaries “Maafa21” and “Blood Money” and also “The Truth Behind Abortion” (Will Ford). Definitely every youth should see these movies. There would definitely be an uptick of pro-life believers afterwards.
Geddy Lee of the band Rush...his parents were in that camp. Rush did a song called Red Sector A in tribute to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txQ-J0x4SZY
I think I know how you feel, I had the same experience at the Ann Frank House in Amsterdam. Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and all the other cynics didn’t have the last word. There really is evil in the world and America really is a force for good.
I remember as a small boy growing up in Queens the couple who ran the local deli had numbers tattoed on their arms. I asked my mother why and when she very matter factly explained I was overcome with horror and revulsion. That may have been the incident that has made me a life long reflexive anti-antisemite.
To each of the a-holes that have commented on my misspellig, I have a short message. F-you! It was an honest mistake, don’t take away from the message because of some minor error. Geez ...
Yes we do and if Obama and his minions aren't stopped there will be A LOT more.
I do. I’ve been a pro-life Catholic for many years, and visiting a “death factory” only solidified my beliefs. I also know that good always wins in the end. always.
liberation of one of the death camps,,,
The only one he talked to about it was my Grandmother,,,
He cried like a baby,,,
She told me about it when I got older,,,(camps),,,
He moved away when I was 6 or 7yo,,,
That was the first guy I saw with that “10,000yard stare”...
..this started way before Obama....
..this was allowed to begin in 1973...
..Obama is probably the most hostile administration to the unborn, you are right.....
..but for almost 38 years it has progressed unabated.
Just like the original Holocaust.....folks ignore it until they have to look at the pictures or witness it personally.
Someday.....our nation will have to look at the pictures of our Holocaust....just like Germany did.
Monsters always preen and exult in the destruction of others.....they are known to keep journals, tapes and video of their gruesome carnage.
some day...maybe soon....we won't be able to look away ...
..what was hidden, will be revealed.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a wonderful man.
When the culture of death crossed the 50 million mark with babies they became emboldened and began to push euthanasia.
Terri Schiavo was the "test case" for killing the disabled (the media was taking polls constantly to gauge which talking points were working).
Now Zero wants to MANDATE (not just legalize, but mandate) rationing by death panels.
If Obama isn't stopped politically, the only other thing to save civilization will be civil war.
IMO, even those who do keep it in mind don't pay enough mind to WHY it happened and only focus on WHAT happened.
I read "The Nazi Doctors" by Robert Lifton and found it chilling, but it was when I later read "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek that I gained a greater understanding of the mindset of the Nazis and how they came to do the things they did.
When the population comes to believe that the people in government have the answer to all the problems, and that the ends justify any means, it always leads to people like Hitler and Stalin leading the likeminded in getting rid of any people they view as threats to their vision of the ideal society.
Hayek's book was the warning of where it leads in relatively vague terms. Lifton's book told specifically where that thinking leads, but I didn't grasp WHY they came to act as they did until Hayek's book laid it out for me.
WE are the ones the far left views as the threat to their vision of the ideal society, and if they aren't stopped, WE'LL be the ones disposed of.
I went to Dachau a long time ago, too. It looked like an extremely rustic summer camp. Nothing. You have to look at a lot of photos to understand that a population like the entire city of Cleveland was there, and the barracks that looks like it would house twenty had two hundred.I think the pictures that show the arriving transports are the most horrifying - it’s like they packed up an entire city to dump into the camp.
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