Flossenburg Concentration Camp

We had a "free" day on Saturday and we wanted to see some of the sites closer to Mary Anne's house.  We decided on a day trip to Flossenburg.  On the way we stopped for lunch at one of their favorite places.  You know it's gonna be good when it's a tiny little place with a walk up window on the corner of the street.  Oh yumminess.  Döners.

I remember when Mary Anne blogged about her first visit to Flossenburg.  She titled it "A humbling day in Flossenburg."  I knew a little about what to expect but it was nothing like experiencing it in person.  Troubling, yes.  Sacred, yes.  Humbling indeed.

(And to clarify since you wouldn't be able to tell from all of the pictures, Dusty, Mary Anne, Sadie, Canon, and Emmett were all there with us.  Sadly, no one is actually IN any of the pictures  I guess it's just one of those places that you don't find yourself smiling for photos)

This building is the entrance to the concentration camp...the SS Headquarters.

We started out meandering through a building that was set up like a museum.  It gave a good history of the timeline of the war and what went on in the concentration camp.  The stories I read on those walls...I can't even find the words to describe how I felt knowing people were treated that way.  Just awful.  We watched a short film with interviews and narration by some of the survivors and then headed out to the main grounds of the camp.  I'm going the post the pictures in the reverse order that we actually went through the grounds, mainly because the signs that describe the sights kinda make a tour and it makes more sense that way but we just happened to do it backwards.

This picture was taken in the museum building.  It was the last room we went into and the first room the prisoners entered.  The Prisoners' Washroom .

This area shows the building remains of the sick-bay barracks that housed the seriously ill and dying prisoners and the detention barracks ...

From the autumn of 1944 the number of people killed increased enormously.  A tunnel with a ramp was constructed in order to transport the bodies to the crematorium below the camp.  The entrance was located near the quarantine area.  After 1945 the tunnel, ramp, and crematorium became a symbol of death on a massive scale.

This is the ramp that led down to the crematorium.  There was a hole in the wall that is now filled in that connected the tunnel in the above picture and the ramp in the picture below.

The following is the "Valley of Death" memorial.  Information is taken from the signs posted throughout the memorial.  Construction began in 1946 and it is the oldest concentration camp memorial in Bavaria.

As early as 1946, victims of National Socialist persecution living in Flossenburg, mainly from Poland, erected a memorial to the victims of the concentration camp.  The former camp gate and some parts of the camp fence were moved from their original location and used as the entrance to the memorial.

A view from the top looking down at the pillars of the camp gate.  “Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work brings freedom”, the motto that was once on the left gate post indicates the allegedly educational objectives of the concentration camp – in reality prisoners were exploited, tortured and in many cases worked to death.

The view from the camp gate looking up at a watch tower...

The prison crematorium formed the next section of the memorial.  The building, constructed in 1940, included a room for dissection and an incinerator for burning the bodies of the steadily increasing number of victims.  The camp gate and crematorium are symbols of the beginning and end of a prisoner's fate.

From the crematorium a path leads to an open area, which includes the execution area, the "Pyramid of Ashes", two memorial stones dedicated to the Jewish prisoners, and the "Square of Nations" (not pictured) which has gravestones that represent the victims of the concentration camp and indicate their various nationalities.

(The sign reads "Prisoners were shot in mass here")

A stairway leads up to the chapel "Jesus in the Dungeon" which was built with the stones of demolished watch-towers.  A watch-tower of the concentration camp serves as the church spire.

A view from the chapel looking down on the Valley of Death...

A few photos that Rob took as we were leaving the concentration camp...

It started pouring down rain so we quickly headed back to the car.  On the way back to the house, we stopped by another favorite place....this time for our first (and definitely not last) taste of gelato!  No pictures but it was just about as yummy as the döners!