Walk to the Palace

Walking down the colorful narrow lane toward the Royal Palace is one of the treats of visiting Stockholm. Every direction you see a picture worth taking, and I took a ton of them. Coming out of the narrow lane, one of the wings of the Palace appears to open and welcome the visitor.

More views of the Palace in the next post.

Statues of Stockholm

Much of Europe is dotted with an impressive collection of statuary, but my Nikon's-eye view of Stockholm was exceptionally interested in the statuary. Perhaps because of the varied scale and presentation of the statuary, that remains among my most powerful memories of Sweden.

As seen here, the statuary features traditional statues in parks and large statuary on churches and cathedrals, but it also highlights the smallest metal statue you will ever see in the middle of a shaded square in the Old Town. It is not a trick angle; the little figure is only about six inches high. Although no one in Stockholm could give you the size in inches and I don't know the centimeters!

A visit to the Royal Palace in the next post.

Stockholm Skyline

Following the emotional visit to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and following my heartfelt toast to Elaine back aboard ship, we enjoyed a Sea Day, cruising toward Stockholm and recharging our batteries for the six consecutive days of touring and sightseeing we had signed up for. The Swedish capital of Stockholm was a wonderful relaxing Wednesday in a beautiful city.

Some of the most stereotypical building areas were seen in Stockholm, with ornate buildings, four to five stories high and featuring decorations, balconies, and bay windows. The vista was exceptional, especially including the domes of several large Lutheran cathedrals. Quite a pleasant day.

Station Zed

Station Zed was the crematory. Our guide said that this was never a heavy-load murder station, but the bunker-like entrance to the actual ovens was as tough to see as I could imagine. Numbers are important, but even one person murdered in such a fashion is unthinkable to me. The statue is in the area, now attesting to the pain and suffering that accompanied this place and the others like it.

When I was teaching a Humanities course in my high school, I took my students on monthly field trips. One of them was to the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois, where we were fortunate enough in the 1990s to have a speaker, Elaine Welbel, who was a camp survivor. A lot of my thoughts were about hearing her accounts of 33 months in Auschwitz. Here is the poem I wrote about her and her success after our 1997 visit:

THE NAZI TRIED TO TAKE AWAY HER NAME

She existed thirty-three months in Auschwitz
With shaved head, empty stomach, emptier future,
And a number tattooed blue just below her left elbow:
The Nazi tried to take away her name,
Her life, her culture, her heritage.

Millions of souls, less lucky than she,
Lost their lives along with their names
In Auschwitz and Buchenwald and so many
Dozens of death camps across Europe.
The Nazi tried to take away their names,
Their lives, their cultures, their heritage.

Fifty years have now gone by; Auschwitz is a memorial
Rather than the death camp it was designed to be.
The Nazi took away his own name, becoming a faceless villain.
She meanwhile survived Auschwitz, emigrated to America,
Married, worked, raised her family, lived free.

This frosty morning she comes to teach our class of history,
Of the Nazi who tried to take away her name;
Of the Nazi who tried to take away the names of others.
She rises to speak; we listen as she is introduced.
Her voice quivers as she begins her tale of truth.

The nameless Nazi had tried to take away her name,
But he never realized she was stronger than he was.

I never caught her number; it might have had a four in it.
I did catch her name, and I will never ever forget it.

Her name is Elaine.
Heartfelt Thanks to Elaine Welbel 1997

We returned to the cruise ship after we left the camp. The ship offered a special Brat Fest up on the Lido deck, and after we stood in line and collected our sandwiches, we ordered some cold German beers. I thought about Sachsenhausen, and I thought about Elaine, who passed away a few years ago. And I drank to my friend, the wonderful woman I only met once, but who showed my students and me the power of a survivor. That night I wrote another poem, one that included the marching sound I had heard in my mind when we arrived at the camp. And I thought of how Elaine defeated the nameless Nazi.

L’CHAIM

As we walk across the open yard on the way to Sachsenhausen,
The former concentration camp at Oranienburg, just twenty minutes
Outside Berlin, we find ourselves striding across loose black gravel;
Our 53 tourists sound much as if we are marching, newly assigned,
Laden with our two old suitcases filled with our meager belongings.
We hush our talk as well, turning our minds inward, as if toward
Survival.
We enter a stifling hot barracks, we see the triple bunks with slats,
We fan ourselves as we can from the heat of only twenty percent
Of the number of people who scraped out some life here, who slept here,
Until times got worse and the population trebled. The barracks smell like
Ashes, like a threat of stinking death that would hang over our every effort of
Survival.
Outside, a fresh wind whispers secrets into the trees; perhaps reporting
Offenses to the Kapos, perhaps forming lies to incriminate me; it would
Not be hard here to turn paranoid, to hide in fear from every direction,
To listen for sounds from Zed’s death rooms; to lose the strength of
Survival.
Today I think of my friend, the survivor who beat Auschwitz long ago,
The woman too tough for the nameless Nazi to be able to kill or to
Take away her name. Before I leave I place a stone on a monument, look
Heavenward and think of her, and tonight I will drink a toast to Elaine:
L’Chaim, Elaine, To Life, L’Chaim.

And so I finish my 200th post. The next post will be in Stockholm.

Barracks & Soviet Memorial

We visited one of the barracks at Sachsenhausen on a hot July Monday. Our tour guide mentioned that the 50 of us filled the room and the air was stifling. Then he pointed out that as many as 250 prisoners were housed in the small area. It was quite powerful.

Leaving the barracks area we saw a Soviet monument to the liberation of the concentration camps. Sachsenhausen was in East Germany, of course, and was actually a Soviet Army camp for several years. The somber statue depicts a Russian soldier protecting the victims.

Next post is at Station Zed.

Sachsenhausen

Just 20 miles from Berlin, a full-scale concentration camp existed. Today it is one of the most powerful and moving places I have ever visited. Not the camp with the highest murder totals, it still has the power to move anyone who finds such brutality and evil repulsive. These photos truly speak for themselves.

But they are silent. For sound input, all I can say is that we visited Sachsenhausen at the end of a long day and our bus let us out in the parking lot with instructions to walk across the lot and go into the Visitors' Center. The walk to the door was covered with fine-crushed cinders and we all walked with that foot-dragging slump that gave out a distinctive sound. It was not difficult to hear the halting footsteps of another fifty inmates, walking slowly but inexorably to this place of death.

More from Sachsenhausen in the next post.

Berlin Synagogue

Seeing the spires of the Berlin Synagogue was not among the highlights most of us noted; it seemed more to be an interesting sidelight. But when we got there, when we found that as many as 3,000 persons attended services in the massive building during the 1930s, and when we saw the significant security force provided by the Berlin Police, we were glad we had seen it.

The congregation was wiped out, of course, during the Holocaust, and the Synagogue is now a memorial, not a place of worship, but certainly a worthwhile stop during a tour of Berlin.

The final stop on the tour was outside Berlin, in Oranienburg. Students of the Holocaust will no doubt recall that this was the location of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, the subject of the next post.