Dachau

While in Munich I visited Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Dachau is a town about 20 minutes from Munich and very easily accessible. While I was not particularly excited about going there, I felt like I needed to. And though it wasn't the most enjoyable day, I am very glad that I went. Everyone should go.

I planned to go by myself, but I found out that the New Europe tour company offered a guided tour from Munich, so I joined that group. It was a good decision. The visit would have been overwhelming and terribly sad alone.

I had thought that Dachau was just the concentration camp, but it is actually a whole town with the camp on the outskirts. After driving through the town, a cheery cafe and visitor's center are the first things you see after disembarking from the bus. Not what I was expecting. Walk a little ways down a gravel path and you arrive at the entrance to the camp.

You walk through the famous gate with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work shall set you free" or the more concise "Work liberates") set into the ironwork. This was all a lie, of course. The harder a prisoner worked the faster he died.

Once through the gate it is Roll Call Square. A huge, empty space where prisoners and guards would assemble throughout the day. To the left in this picture are barracks and to the right are administrative buildings with offices and places where prisoners would be processed once they arrived. Now those buildings house a museum and memorials.

The barracks were all destroyed after the war. They were in horrible condition during the camp's operation, and then afterwards they were used to house soldiers, prisoners, and refugees. They deteriorated until they were finally torn down. Two reconstructed barracks stand there today. They are set up to show the different phases of Dachau.

Dachau was the very first concentration camp. It was built in 1933 and continued to operate until the Americans liberated it in 1945. The first prisoners were political enemies of the Nazi party. Later, Jewish people, homosexuals, Catholics, Gypsies, artists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the handicapped, Poles, etc...everyone Hitler deemed sub-human were sent here. Dachau was the only camp in existence during the entire twelve years of the Third Reich. It was the "model" camp that others were based on. There was even an SS training facility at Dachau where soldiers and guards were housed and turned into prime fighting Nazis. Dachau is also unique among the camps because just about every terrible thing that the Nazis did happened there. It was not "just" an "extermination facility," for instance. It was first a work camp, but medical and scientific experiments happened there, executions happened there, the "final solution" happened there...It is estimated that 200,000 people were prisoners at Dachau during the twelve years of its existence, and that about 26,000 died there, though precise numbers will probably never be known. Record keeping became increasingly inaccurate toward the end of the war, so they don't know how many people actually were sent to the camp or how many people were murdered or died there.

The reconstructions of the barracks are a good visual slap in the face. At first each prisoner had his own little space and bunk and a shelf for his things. Then in the next room you see what the sleeping space looked like a little later on...no shelf, tiny personal space, smaller bunk. Then in the next room...no dividers between the bunks so that more people could be squished in. At one point, 2000 people were living in barracks designed for 200.

I won't talk any more about the atrocities and the terrible, awful, unimaginable things that happened there since it is just too much and I am afraid that to try to write about it would trivialize it and I don't want to do that.

Instead I will focus on how the camp has been turned into a memorial site and what is there now. One of the most memorable parts for me was the huge sculpture that is placed directly in front of what was the headquarters of the camp. It looks like barbed wire from a distance.

Once closer you can see abstract, twisted human figures struggling in agony and entangled in what looks like a fence. Everything is black metal. The sculpture is in memory of the prisoners who flung themselves into the electrified fences surrounding the camp in order to commit suicide. Not much more to say. If you want a closer look.*

A road runs down the camp.

Barracks used to be on either side, but now there are raised, numbered gravel foundations outlining where the buildings used to be. They are supposed to symbolize mass graves.

Because so few of the original buildings are standing, it was difficult to understand the massive scale of the camp. Then I saw this picture:

It was taken right after liberation in 1945 and shows the road and the barracks and all the people. So huge.

The crematorium, which had to be expanded since the death rate kept increasing, and the gas chambers are outside of the main camp walls. Interestingly, they don't know if mass murders happened in the gas chambers. They were a fairly late addition at Dachau and the documentation is elusive. Although most likely the gas chambers were used (horribly labelled "showers" to keep prisoners from refusing to enter), there is no conclusive evidence.

There are plaques by the larger crematorium remembered several female British agents/soldiers who were murdered there. I did not know this, but many POWs and Resistance fighters were taken to Dachau (and other camps) and executed.

While some of the people on the tour watched a 20 minute documentary on Dachau and the Holocaust, I walked down the road to see the memorials that stand at the end of it. (I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. ten or twelve years ago and the videos that they played from the medical experiments and the pictures of the bodies piled outside the crematoriums and the shoes and the eyeglasses still stick so I did not feel that I needed to see more. Plus, I was curious about the monuments that people chose to build at the camp.)

There are four religious memorials: a Russian Orthodox one stands just outside the camp walls, a Protestant one is on the left, a Catholic one (the first to be built) at the very end of the road, and a Jewish one to the right.

I didn't have time to leave the camp and see the Russian Orthodox building. The Protestant one is a modern structure that rises and falls in grey stone. I think it is an actual church with services and everything. The Catholic memorial is a big, roofed hollow column with the front part cut out. So perhaps a three quarter circle is a better description? Oh geometric vocabulary, where are you? A very large crucifix is in the center. On Fridays you can go in and have a silent prayer service with a priest. The Jewish monument was the most interesting to me.

You walk down the ramp:

And find yourself in a dark underground room. One band of light colored stone shoots up the far wall and ends in a circle of light. Your eye naturally follows it from the dark floor straight up to the sky.

I like the physical action of walking down into the pit and then rising up through your gaze. It was powerful.

Behind the memorials is the camp wall and an old guard tower. Now that area behind the wall is a Carmelite convent. What? At least that was my reaction.
Apparently someone donated the land and a Catholic bishop, who was a Dachau survivor, started the convent. Here is the old guard tower up close.

So there is a community of nuns living just outside of Dachau. Literally just. Here is a picture of the chapel taken about a step on the other side of the guard tower. It is hard for me to imagine living there for several reasons, the main one being that Dachau makes you question God--how could He let this happen? So living there as a nun would require extraordinary faith. But I guess if you are a nun you have to have that anyway.

I walked into the chapel and heard the private service going on behind a screened altar. Pretty amazing and unexpected to have a beautiful sanctuary like this at Dachau. The memorials and especially the convent gave a positive hint to what would otherwise be an incredibly traumatic and overwhelmingly agonizing place. I applaud the Dachau memorial site people for what they have done. It is a good mix of what happened, an attempt to give the historical context and reasons why it happened, and a focus on what we do with it now. The site emphasizes remembering in order to prevent something like this from ever happening again. As this memorial so perfectly puts it:

My guide told me that all German soldiers are taken to Dachau and given an extensive tour. They are told that if they are ever asked to do something which conflicts with their basic humanity, they should stop and raise the alarm. What looked like a group of 7th or 8th grade students were at the camp the same time that my group was. While visiting Dachau when you are that young could be rough, I think it is great that Germany takes such pains to educate and remember. We all need to.

There were about twenty young people from all over the world on the tour, which met in Munich at 10am, which is pretty early for that crowd, especially in a beer capital like Munich. And that was just the first of two daily tours! It was encouraging that so many people made the effort to see Dachau.

On the way out of the gates I stopped for a picture of one of the two plaques honoring the American liberators of Dachau. Although difficult to read, this one is in honor of the 20th Armored Division who entered the camp on April 29th, 1945. It made me very proud.

It is hard to fathom everything that happened there and the number of people...and I am still pondering over what I saw. It was a rough day, but I am glad that I went.

*I am usually an unabashed shutter bug, but it felt a little profane to snap away at this place. So I didn't get that many pictures.

Parry Dog

Our wonderful, beautiful, extraordinary Parry went to heaven last weekend. She was thirteen and a half years old, which is very old for a big dog, and she lived a marvelous life. She went to sleep peacefully in my mom's arms.

Here are some of my favorite pictures of her. Most were taken within the last few years, since I was only ten when we brought her home and I didn't have a camera until much later!

She loved to swim and take flying leaps off the dock into the lake. She enjoyed relaxing on floats, too.

She even learned how to climb the ladder!

She was very good at "sit" and "shake" because she loved treats.

After a swim it was time for some furious rolling and digging in the muddy sand. There is baby Guinness trying to figure out what in the world Parry is doing.

Parry was a fantastic momma dog to Mango and Guinness. She was patient and never got mad even when they pulled her tail or took her toys or slopped water all over her nose (Guinness liked to "hydrate" Parry all the time.)

She didn't bite us, either, even when we made her wear reindeer ears and jingle bells last Christmas.

Her face went white pretty early and it was so soft. She loved being brushed.

She had a show dog's prance and liked going on walks in the woods. In the past few years she would stay right with you and even spin around to make sure you were still there, while the other two brats ran off chasing imaginary deer and playing hide and go seek and tag.

This might be my favorite.

She had a beautiful smile.

love love

Movie of the Week XIV

Hit the Deck (1955)

This is a really fun, light musical comedy with Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, and Ann Miller starring opposite Vic Damone, Russ Tamblyn (Gideon in Seven Brides), and Tony Martin. There were a lot of sailor movies and a lot of three-couples movies, too. This one is both a Navy and tri-love film. Like On The Town (1949).

I like the actors in this one. Jane Powell is super and she gets to play a mostly grown up woman instead of a teenager in this movie. She is sophisticated and trying to be independent, which is a nice change from some of her other movies. Debbie Reynolds seems so young in this, even though it is three years after Singin' in the Rain! But she was only twenty when Singin' was released, which makes her a very old 23 or so in Hit the Deck. She is spunky and fun, as usual. Here is Jane Powell, Tony Martin, Debbie Reynolds, and Walter Pidgeon, who plays Jane's father, an admiral in the Navy.

Ann Miller is not as famous as the other two actresses today, but she was the fastest tapper in the world at one point and was in loads of musicals. She often plays a supporting role as an actress or dancer who either tempts the leading man away from the leading woman, or is involved with the leading man's sidekick. She is an amazing dancer and is great in Easter Parade (1948) and Kiss Me, Kate (1953). You might call her brassy. She is always loud and feisty. Here she is in Easter Parade singing about "shaking your blues away."

Here the ladies are--Ann Miller, Debbie Reynolds, and Jane Powell. They are singing "Why, oh why, and wherefore, does no one seem to care for me?" They are sad. The three men are not living up to their expectations.

And who are the men? Tony Martin has a silky smooth voice and manners to match. He was married to Cyd Charisse for a long time--60 years, until her death--which is neat. I used to get him confused with Dean Martin. But they are different people. I like Tony Martin in an Esther Williams' movie, Easy to Love (1953). He plays a slick singer trying to get Esther away from the hyper-American-boy Van Johnson. Russ Tamblyn is the acrobat/dancer from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), West Side Story (1961) and many other films and TV shows. He is adorable. Russ and Debbie Reynolds are a super-cute wholesome couple.

His singing is dubbed in the movie, though. It isn't fair since he is with two singers (Tony Martin and Vic Damone), and his talent was dancing. Vic Damone has a great voice and he appeared in some other 1950s musicals, my favorite being Kismet (1955), in which he sings "Stranger in Paradise." I used to listen to that song on repeat driving to and from school. Sorry, Abigail.

So...the story. There are three sailors. They are always getting into trouble. Harmless trouble, but trouble nonetheless. But hurray--they finally have shore leave! They head home but somehow they can't get away from each other. Russ Tamblyn's sister, Jane Powell, meets Vic Damone and there are sparks. Russ is sweet on Debbie Reynolds, and Tony Martin has been engaged to Ann Miller for years. She is tired of waiting for him and is determined to end their relationship.

The love stories are complicated when the three sailors burst in on Jane Powell's "audition" for a musical. She is singing for the show's star in his hotel room; he is a real creep and intends to seduce her.

The sailors punch him and drag Jane out of there. She is furious since she liked the star and didn't particularly mind being seduced.

The star certainly minded getting a black eye, and he send the dreaded Shore Patrol after the three sailors. The rest of the film is spent evading the Shore Patrol and falling deeper in love, all the while finding lots of time to sing and dance. Yay for musicals.

A particularly unusual and irrelevant scene finds Russ and Debbie in a fun/haunted house in a carnival. This allows the movie to show off Russ' acrobatic skills and Debbie's athletic dancing against a backdrop of crazy witches, devils, mirrors, trampolines, smoke, etc. Here they are running from a scary witch woman and sliding down a trick staircase.

Here is Russ doing a flip onto a trampoline in the "devil" section of the fun house.It is an entertaining scene, but even I am left wondering "What?" and "Why?"

Then Debbie Reynolds gets dressed in a tutu with a starched white collar to sing about joining the navy and coming to Loo-loo's coffee bar. Again, what? At least this scene is part of the musical she is performing in, not a random trip to the carnival.
The movie has a fantastic finale to the song "Hallelujah!" It is one of those numbers that has completely given up on "realism" (if one can use that term for a musical), or trying to convince the audience that what they are watching could really be happening. Often musicals will put their more extravagant or "impossible" songs and dances in the context of a musical within the musical. Those movies, backstage musicals, follow actors and actresses as they put on a show, thus giving the film an excuse to show performances. Although most of Hit the Deck goes for a version of realism, the end of the movie doesn't even try. The cast is put on a battleship, the women are in matching but different gold lame dresses, and everyone performs a huge song and dance for no one except the movie audience. They sing straight to the camera, and dance right at us. I love it.

Here come the three sailors. Suddenly, the entire Navy knows how to dance.

Excellent salute, and nice dresses, girls.

Most of the cast just sings together and does some marching, but Ann Miller gets to tap away against a background of sailors. She also gets the best dress--a halter with a pleated skirt and fabulous sparkly turquoise petticoat. Plus gold tap shoes and an embellished cap. Jane Powell's dress is a slim fitting one shoulder number, and Debbie Reynolds' dress has a funny little collar and bow tie. I don't know why all her outfits in this movie have collars. It is weird.

Go Ann, go!

No one works a skirt like Ann Miller. It is incredible.

This movie isn't one that "makes you think," but it is enjoyable and colorful and exciting with a great cast and catchy songs. And a happy ending! Everyone together, grinning in their dress whites and gold lame. Hallelujah, indeed.

Munich

On Sunday afternoon I arrived in Munich for a short vacation. There is a giant ceramics industry conference and exhibition called Ceramitec every three years in Munich, so Eva's company sends people and I got to tag along. (I didn't have to do anything with the ceramics industry.) We stayed at the town of Poing (I am not joking) which is on the outskirts of Munich on a S-bahn line. The next S-bahn stop was Grub. (Again, not joking.) The hotel restaurant was called Mango's, so naturally I had to get a picture in honor of my dog by that name.

We got to the hotel and I headed into Munich. I was immediately struck by how clean and organized and modern everything is. Oh, the Germans! The S-bahn trains (aboveground) were so nice and new and spotless and ran right on time. The streets are wide and everything looks clean and well taken care of. Part of the modern feeling of the city is probably due to the fact that it was bombed like mad in WWII so a lot of the city is fairly new...more on that later. But even the old buildings were in good repair. And it felt very alive and lived-in. In the city center and historic parts of Prague it seems like almost every building is a hotel or a souvenir shop or a "traditional Czech" restaurant, but that touristy stuff was not as overwhelming in Munich.

Here is the town hall in Marienplatz. It was very chilly and a bit grey but what a cool city! I wandered around for hours and headed back to the hotel (about 30 minutes on the train) once it got dark.

This is another view of Marienplatz.

The next day I headed into Munich again for a free walking tour by the New Europe Company. I believe I mentioned them in another blog post. The guides are mainly young people, as are the customers. It doesn't cost anything to go on the tour; you just tip at the end if you want to. They have tours in all the major European cities, and I highly recommend them. They are fun and a great way to get oriented. Here is the inside courtyard of the town hall.Some pretty creepy gargoyles in the courtyard.

And a rat thing.

Munchen, (the German word for Munich) has some relation to the German word for monk. It might mean monk or just be a derivative, I can't remember. Regardless, monk and Munich are close because the area used to be covered in monasteries. There were loads of monks. So that is why Munich is called Munich. There are lots of images of monks around the city--carved on buildings, painted on walls, etc. He is usually holding a book in one hand and giving the three-fingered Father-Son-Holy Ghost salute in the other. Some people joke that the monk is really holding a beer stein...

I got sort of excited to see a UPS truck. When you have been away from America for a long time it is comforting to see American things that aren't McDonald's. Although at this point McDonald's is looking pretty good, too.

The truck drove by the Frauenkirche, the Church of Our Blessed Lady. It is interesting because it was built in only twenty years in the 15th century which is super fast for a huge church. It went so fast because it is built of red brick, not troublesome marble or something, and it is fairly plain. Also, the devil built it. That tends to speed things up.

There is a legend that the devil built the church. He was about to destroy the church but he noticed on the plans that there were no windows. He assumed it would be dark and cold and gross inside--a perfect place for devil worship! So the devil made a deal with the architect that as long as no windows were added, he would send his little satanic minions to build the church really fast. What the devil didn't realize, though, was that there were windows planned for the church; he just couldn't see them. The architect wanted the windows to be invisible from the main aisle of the church so that it would appear that the building was lit by God. When the devil realized this, he stomped his foot in the church and disappeared. You can see the "devil's footprint" on the floor. There is an actual footprint in stone. The legend is true because the footprint is there and the two towers are different heights. One tower is 1 meter higher than the other. And the Germans don't make mistakes like that. So it must have been the devil.

You can see one of the Frauenkirche's brick towers topped by a dome in this picture. The whirly thing in the middle of the picture spun around and made funny noises at intervals. Marienplatz is the square through the archway. Above the archway is the room where Hitler plotted Kristallnacht--now more appropriately termed Reichspogromsnacht.
Now the building is a teddy bear and toy museum. Weird, huh? But Munich is full of places like that.

There were beautiful flower stands and fruit stalls and huts selling those delicious candied nuts that I always associate with Renaissance fairs all over Munich. And they didn't feel touristy. By that I mean it seemed that actual Germans and Munich residents were shopping at these places. You can see a flower shop by the orange truck in the right hand corner of the above picture.

Here are two views of Mary's column in Marienplatz and the town hall Glockenspiel. The Glockenspiel has life-size figures that perform a little show three times a day. According to a survey mentioned by my guide, it is the second most overrated tourist attraction in Europe. The first is the Astronomical Clock in Prague.

Here is the opera house.

Next door is an Italian-looking building with lots of columns.

Some of the columns are scarred by shrapnel and bullets from the War.

Munich's approach to war memorials and remembrances seems to be focused on these "little scars" instead of huge memorials. There are small plaques around the city to commemorate various events--we saw one affixed to a building where a Jewish-owned department store used to be. In Reichspogromsnacht the store was basically destroyed and the owner and his family were sent to concentration camps. The plaque was small and only in German, so if I hadn't been on a tour I would have missed it.

My guide said that Munich and Germany know they need to remember but they also don't want to be branded forever by the Third Reich. It was twelve years--only twelve years! in a long history which includes some really cool, great stuff. I understand that--I don't want to be branded by slavery, for instance...but at the same time...I think it might be nice if the plaques were in German and Hebrew and English and Spanish and Italian and Chinese...etc.

In Berlin there is a huge WWII memorial, which my guide said is powerful, but that has become such a part of the city that you don't really notice it anymore. People picnic on it and take funny pictures. It becomes part of normal life. So I think there is a balance between branding and remembering.

Even though I did not intend to think about Hitler and the Nazis and the War all the time in Munich, you can't help it. I was talking to my dad about this--we seem to be fascinated by Hitler and the Third Reich. It is almost a fetish. Hitler is just enough crazy and more than enough evil to hold our attention and be the perfect villain. It is a sort of delicious tragedy, you know? I don't want to minimize it or trivialize it--see an upcoming post on Dachau for some serious stuff--but it is interesting to me how fascinated people are by Hitler and the Nazis. There have been other villains and other countries and people have done really horrible things, but Hitler seems to be the one we like to learn about and read about and watch movies about. I'd be interested in discussing this further, so shoot me an email if you would like.

We went to the Viktualienmarkt, which is an outdoor market where you can get honey, flowers, plants, food, beer, craft-y things, etc. There was a row of butcher shops by the market where I purchased my first bratwurst. Unfortunately the Christmas markets aren't open yet, but maybe I will go back in December.

Here is another image of the town hall. It was not destroyed in the war.

I liked this staircase.

After the tour I had about six hours to fill before I met my Munich friends for dinner. (In Venice I studied with several students from Munich, and it was awesome to see them again!) So I wandered in and out of shops (Munich is the most expensive city in Germany, so I just scouted and now I have a good idea of what is out there.) It was cold, so browsing in shops was a good way to spend the time! When I would get too cold from strolling I would head into yet another H & M or MANGO or the fabulous Ludwig Beck department store.

I ate bratwurst--yum--and a comical number of soft pretzels. They aren't just for sporting events! Wonderful soft pretzels were everywhere. It is basically all I ate the whole time I was in Munich. I even bought a little lapel pin in the shape of a pretzel to remember my trip!

It was a pleasure to wander around totally free. I didn't have anything to do and I had plenty of time. No buses to catch, no metro to ride, no children to watch. The last is the main, wonderful thing, actually. Munich is a very walkable city and people are friendly. And beautiful. Heidi Klum is not an anomaly--more of a heightened version of the norm. Beautiful city with beautiful people in beautiful boots. There were a few pairs I had my eye on, but I will wait until I have some time in Prague before making that purchase.

Also beautiful cars. There was a gorgeous Mercedes showroom on a main square across from the Residenz Palace, and next to that showroom was an Aston Martin one. The cars on the street were clean and sleek and lovely. Munich is a wealthy city! It seems to have recovered really fast, and fortunately it didn't have to deal with Communism. Go Marshall Plan!

I wandered into the Hofgarten. I saw a man balancing on a chain trying to juggle.

Pretty building in the garden.

The garden is a formal one with wide pathways and lovely grass. It was pretty empty since it was cold and getting dark.

There was a nice gazebo garden house thing in the center.

Inside the building were these cool mosaic niches.

I believe this is a theater or gallery or something. Sorry about these gaps in my knowledge. I didn't have a guide book and my only map was a free one I got in Starbucks.

I met my buddies by Mary's Column in Marienplatz (handy meeting place!) and we went to a great Italian restaurant. It was marvelous to see them and equally marvelous how we fell right back into how we were in Venice.

After dinner they put me on the S-bahn back to Poing where I fell asleep immediately. I got back about 11:00 and I had been in Munich since 9:00. Long day, but very nice.

The next day it was time to visit Dachau. But first I saw this ad for a musical about Elisabeth, (Sissi), the Empress I mentioned in another post. Told you they are obsessed with her.