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| Hitler's Former Retreat, Eagle's Nest Berchtesgaden, Germany |
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| Sun and snow Berchtesgaden, Germany |
Eagle’s Nest is an interesting place to visit, but it hardly retains any of the vestiges of Nazism. This house on top of a mountain was a 50th birthday present from the Nazi party to Hitler. Like the German cars of the time, the house was built by slave labor. When the war ended, there was talk of blowing it up, but the mayor of a nearby town convinced people it should be saved. The building was spared from total destruction, but it was ransacked and stripped of anything valuable. Joe’s dad visited it 20 years ago and said all the windows were gone and it was open to the elements—like a true eagle’s nest. Since that time a restaurant has bought and repaired the building; they’re open from mid-May to October, depending on the weather.
Eagle’s Nest is in the Alps and at the top of the mountain the weather is vastly different from the valley below. When we visited, the weather below was mid-70s, but there was still snow on top of the mountain! The views were stunning and we were in the cloud line; they were changing by the second, revealing and concealing panoramic vistas. I do think that the ticket was a little expensive; to reach the summit you could either walk/bike up, or you could ride the bus for a mere 17 euros per person. It was like 1 euro/minute!
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| No man's land, Dachau Concentration Camp Dachau, Germany |
Some aspects of the camp remained as they were in the 40s: the ovens and the geography. Around the perimeter of the camp was a tall, electrified fence with barbed wire on top; it’s still there, but no longer electrified. Immediately inside the fence is a 4 foot wide strip of land called no-man’s-land. If a prisoner entered no man’s land, they were shot and killed. To even make it to no man’s land they would have to cross the deep ditch filled with the rushing water from the Amper River. Inside the ditch was finally the area of the camp where prisoners could walk. The camp seemed large until I realized how many people were crammed into the space. The beds were triple bunk beds and they put at least 3 people in each bunk. This sounds like an impossible feat until you remember the prisoners were emaciated to point of resembling skeletons.
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| Some of the ovens at Dachau Concentration Camp Dachau, Germany |
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| Former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, now it's an occasional racetrack Nuremberg, Germany |
Dachau and the Holocaust museum serve as memorials to the victims and details the horrors they experienced in the camps. The Docu-Center is about the Nazis themselves, providing a different view of the situation. In no way does it glorify the Nazis, but it does provide the history of the party and eventually the war. It provides historical information, but its focus is not the Holocaust. The museum has a 5 euro admission and comes with a free audio guide that translates all the signs from German. The exhibits are chronological and detail the party’s rise to power. They also provide background information on some of the support systems, such as the secret police and the propaganda team. There is a wealth of information here including pictures, videos, sound clips, and, as the name suggests, documents. When you find yourself at a Holocaust memorial, baffled by the number of victims, and you’re asking, “how could this happen”, the Docu-center is the place to go for some answers.
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