gbugbee

Please excuse the delay in posting this, and its length. As you can imagine, it involved a lot of reflection and a lot of work. I hope it is worth your time reading it, it was definitely worth my time writing it. Remembering a thing like the Shoah, or the genocide of American Indians, requires a decision (or a series of decisions) not to turn away, not to retreat to a less disturbing narrative that omits or glosses over the really hard parts. That is, in fact, forgetting, erasing the parts of the story that are too painful or too challenging. Erase enough parts, often enough and for long enough, and the whole story changes, becomes a different story. At the heart of remembering is the conviction that it is better to know the truth, however ... read more

Hannah and I came to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon on the Massif Centrale south west of Lyon, 4 days after being in Terezín, and 2 days after visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. It has been balm for the soul. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007518 In the 1940, the SS commandeered a Polish garrison complex in the small town of Oświȩcem, known in German as Auschwitz, and established the first site of their most infamous extermination camp. It was soon expanded to accommodate industrial worksites and barracks for yet more worker/prisoners, covering some . Five gas chamber/crematorium complexes were eventually built on the second site, Auschwitz II / Birkenau. Over a million Jews, Romany, prisoners of war, and political opponents died through over-work, neglect, and murder at the Auschwitz complex. In... read more

The first camp established by the SS at Oświęcim, germanized to Auschwitz, was in what had been a Polish army garrison. That it was an important railroad junction no doubt contributed to its choice. It was to become the hub of 48 camps and sub-camps. Two rows of two-story brick buildings lay behind an administrative complex entered through a gate bearing the cynical slogan, Arbeit Macht Frei. Perhaps the SS’s idea of a practical joke. The inevitable records-keeping facilities occupy the first buildings after the gate. Then come the cells for the seniors Kapos, prisoners co-opted to help control the other prisoners, and the punishment section. Between the administrative compound and the barracks is the assembly field where daily, sometimes more, roll calls were held, regardless of the weather. These could last from minutes to hours ... read more

It would be hard to overestimate the impact of the architecture of this museum. We entered through an 18th (?) century grand house and were then directed down a long set of zigzag stairs to a series of underground corridors labeled “axis of exile” and “axis of the holocaust”. At the end of the underground space, a long set of stairs rises to the top floor of a connected building that resembles nothing so much as a jagged scar when viewed from above. Harsh angles and irregular shapes dominate the entire space. Long narrow windows “slash” across outer walls at times intersecting other windows diagonally. A sunken, trapezoidal “garden of exile” at the upper end of the “axis of exile,” contains 49 regularly-spaced, square columns that rise obliquely 15 or 20 feet from a sloped, cobbled ... read more

Nürnberg was the emotional heartland for National Socialism. A city for nearly a thousand years when it was adopted by Hitler and his movement as its spiritual home, Nürnberg has been a center of culture, commerce, and imperial power for most of its history. Designated by Hitler as the ‘world capital of Germania,’ architect Albert Speer designed and began construction on the 2700 acre Nazi Party Rally Grounds in the southeast corner of historic Nürnberg. Incorporating several existing structures, Speer set out to raise additional monumental structures to create a grand stage on which to enact the ‘morality play’ of German superiority under the leadership of the National Socialists. None of the intended structures were ever completed (a metaphor for the entire National Socialist program?). Today most of what existed at the end of the war ... read more