Swastika Rehabilitation Day?

Crematorium in operation at Dachau, the first concentration camp established in 1933 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I was just over at Delightfully Ludicrous, (link), reading that

today is Swastika Rehabilitation Day. It's a funny/bizarre  

story and it's worth reading what she has to say about it.

Anyway.

I was on a bike tour of Bavaria in 1988 and was

overwhelmed by the beauty of the German countryside

and the intense spirituality of the people.  We often found

little grottos deep in the woods with a small statue of

The Virgin and a burning candle set in front of her. 

Religious paintings and statues were everywhere.

 

But Bavaria has a dark history.

Dachau is twenty minutes outside of Munich by city bus.

It is the place where the Nazis conducted their torture

experiments on prisoners. 

 

When we entered what was the SS headquarters for the camp,

there were huge banners hanging from the ceiling that showed

the faces of some of their victims.  

The Nazis documented everything so well.

 

I just don't have the words to describe what it was like.

How can you describe looking into eyes that show anguish

beyond all comprehension.

 

And there was not a sound. 

So many people were there that day and we were all numb. The

silent tears just ran down our faces and nobody bothered to try to

hide them or wipe them away.

The crematorium had a bad smell. 

Fifty years after it was first used it still stank.

But that being said, my dear fellow bloggers, it is my personal

opinion that the swastika can be rehabilitated -

 

when humankind learns to stop hating.

 

Until that time it must remain verboten.

We Done Good

Image via Wikipedia

In the summer of 1988 I went on a biking holiday in rural Bavaria. It was a particularly lovely part of the world, full of forests and rivers, farms and alpine meadows. Most of the population was Catholic. Many homes had a religious mural covering one outside wall and it was not at all uncommon, although somewhat discombobulating to our North American eyes, to be pedalling past a farm that had a life size crucifixion sculpture of Jesus and the two thieves looming over a cultivated field.


When the people greeted us, they didn't say the German equivalent of hello, they said, "Gross Gott," (God is great).

It made it hard to believe what had happened there fifty years earlier.

The bike trip ended in Munich and If I remember correctly the bus trip to Dachau took about twenty minutes.

Dachau was the concentration camp where, along with the usual atrocities and gassings, the Nazis carried out their medical experiments . Only one of the barracks that housed the prisoners is still there but everything else from the S.S. camp headquarters to the crematoria, is maintained as a memorial.

I don't know what I can say about a place where more than 30,000 people were tortured and murdered except that I had a sick feeling that I was standing over Hell and was relieved to leave.

In the 1930s the writing was on the wall long before the first concentration camps opened and many Jewish people tried to get out of Europe.

Just before war broke out a ship named the S.S. St. Louis set sail for North America carrying 937 Jews. To our eternal shame it was refused entry by Canada. The ship was forced to return to Europe where one third of the men, women and children died in the holocaust.



Another boatload of frightened refugees arrived on our west coast last week.

Ignore, the moaning and groaning and grousing that you are reading and hearing about it if you can.

This time we did the right thing.