A special travel journal ...

 As a life long educator, I love the habit of making notes of things that I might want to research or remember.  I always come back from trips with notes I want to add to. 

I have for at least a decade, kept travel journals of my many trips across Europe & Africa. It means you can easily find place names for photos or info you wanted to keep. 

I travel with a small pencil case & some paper clips to keep maps, tickets etc secure until I return home to complete the journal. It joins the others on my desk upstairs where only I am privy to the thoughts I jotted down.                   

I also have various pens including one with the 4 colours that you select, it is very useful en route. Sometimes I do little illustrations so I have a pencil too. The compact pink pencil case was a gift from the eldest daughter - made from reused sari's in India - a project that supports rural women. 

In 2022, I had 3 trips fairly close together (Transylvania, Holocaust, Africa)  so I decided to  use this red travel journal for the Holocaust trip. The trip was the Anne Frank & Oskar Schindler tour so I bought this postcard at Bergen Belsen as it is a permanent reminder of the trip.             

This past week I have been editing the blog posts & today I brought my travel journal down from my desk upstairs & opened it.  Memories came flooding back of the trip & the experiences we had at the many camps we visited. It is the first time I have re read parts of it since the trip & I am so glad that I put in maps, leaflets, entrance cards, details along the way. 

It is never a neat work because it is often written on the way, on a coach or at a hotel desk at night - snatched moments but they are capture the thoughts at that moment, how the experience touches you along the way. This is true too for trips to other places like Transylvania - it is capturing a moment to return to. 

 I took photos of some of the inserts from my travel journal which were important to some of the places we visited on the tour ... 

These were the maps & documents from the Sachsenhausen camp. It is a reminder how vast that camp was & how it is still being added to as a remembrance facility as they recover artefacts from the site. 

The notes from Bergen Belsen's excellent museum are very informative. I found this camp quite emotional - the sort that comes over you suddenly in the bleak forests knowing that each of the mounds is a mass burial ground, 

Krakow Ghetto & the influence of Oskar Schindler's factory on saving thousands by listing them on his books. The sites across beautiful Krakow remind one that they suffered such indignities & horror that we can not even imagine across a whole city. 

Terezin, previously known as Theresienstadt, was over several sites so it was useful to have the maps & names of the various sites to correct my blog entry. The pretty town was held up as a model town but the truth was just under the surface ... 

Wannsee - the conference where the Final Solution was signed off & where it became policy. The  importance of this conference  followed us across our tour …

This past week, with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz- Birkenau, I thought I really should blog my trip it so it is noted for the future. I spent several hours just working from the travel itinerary, keen to get it done. Time passed quickly & it ended up being in 7 parts. 

I hope they have been of interest to some of you

# 1 Following Anne Frank's Holocaust journey ... 

#2 Berlin's Holocaust journey ... 

#3 Krakow & Oskar Schindler's Holocaust journey ... 

#4 Operation Anthropoid & Reinhard Heydrich 

#5 Theresienstadt model town in the Holocaust 

#6 Auschwitz Birkenau & the Frank family 

#7 Nuremburg & some justice for the Holocaust 

I hope you are inspired to keep a log, a journal, a record however brief, of your trips too. 

Dee 

Visiting the British Ironwork centre

I love visiting new places & expanding my understanding of my county of Shropshire which borders Wales.  

I have passed the British Ironwork Centre dozens of times over the years as it is on our route to Wales from Shropshire. However, I have never pulled in because I have always been on the way elsewhere. 

Last night I saw that they were holding some free entry days this week & with dry weather forecast, that is where we went for an interesting morning. 

The sculptures / ironwork is original & imposing from small to huge ones.

  

The animals displayed as 'extinct' are interesting & recognisable as true likeness.   

      

The large displays are really huge & can be seen in their elevated spaces. 

     

They reuse metal & waste metal which is good for the environment. 

    
 

    

A map of the generous site with its many groups of ironwork figures & creatures.  

The Knife Angel had toured around several towns since it was made. 

I saw it in our town centre a few years ago. 

It was returned to this space earlier this week & it now stands proudly again.

It was made from 100 000 knives that were seized or handed in & made safe in this sculpture. 

The size is impressive & if you look carefully you can see the knife handles & blades, the wings a juxtaposition against the blades. 

It is encouraging that so many metal parts are reused in original ways & it is an interesting visit across this generous space. 

    

  This was the ladies loo, complete with a Jurassic Park type visitor ...

Thank you for stopping by, do you have a favourite sculpture? 

Dee 

#7 Nuremburg & some justice for the Holocaust ...

After the realities of our 12 days in the footsteps of Anne Frank & Oskar Schindler, it was only fitting that our tour should end in the German town of Nuremburg - synonymous with justice. 

This is my travel journal I used on the trip - a postcard of Anne & Margot Franks memorial at Bergen Belsen on the cover, a black ribbon to tie it all together. 

I always collect info along the way because it is  too much to take in & you can always return to it again ... 

Driving in to the town was lovely & I wondered to myself why this town was chosen to bring justice to those who wrought such brutality upon those effected by the Holocaust. we chatted amongst ourselves, expressing our hopes for this final stop on our tour; would it give us clarity & closure about the horrific camps we had visited & the monsters who ran them with unbridled brutality? 

However, we first stopped at the spot in Nuremburg where those enormous rally's were held . 

We climbed up the iconic steep concrete blocks to look out over the space where hundreds of thousands gathered to chant & obey, it was clear that this was coming full circle.

From the great height, the speakers (I am not giving names to monsters) would have been tiny figures with loud amplification, whipping up anti Jewish sentiment, the images & recordings online. The elaborate facades are gone but the imposing structure remains, still as intimidating as it was then. 

The scale of the rallies held here were absolutely staggering from the images on the notice board. The elaborate cladding on the podium is gone but it is a huge way to clamber up & look out on to where thousands would have gathered. Part of the field in front is now a park but it is sobering to be in a spot you know from history. 

  

 

 

The traditional town of Nuremburg in its Autumn colours against blue skies - one would scarcely know that this place was chosen to exact justice after WW2 & its name has become synonymous with justice since then. 

The etched window shows the now gone building next door that housed the monstrous prisoners during the trial & where some escaped justice by taking their own lives, 

Images of Court room 600 in the Nuremburg Palace of Justice scenes were shown  on the numerous electronic boards around the museum, the faces of those who were responsible for the unimaginable horror of the war. 

The Trials at Nuremburg were for Crimes against Humanity by Governments against their own people. 

The SS camp leaders & others were incarcerated & tried by an international court. 

The court was in session so we could unfortunately not visit the actual courtroom but spent several hours in the excellent multi-storey museum next door, the realities of the trial well set out & original recordings taking you through the complexities of the trial. 

After several hours, we made our way back out in to the pretty  tree lined streets where not a hint remains of the dark past. 

The courthouse in The Palace of Justice next door was in session so we could not visit it. 

The impressive honey coloured buildings a testament to justice being seen to be done, a purpose it still holds today. 

However, I left feeling not enough had been held to account for the monstrous deeds we had borne witness to across our tour. 

  

My abiding thought as I settled in to my comfortable coach seat for the return journey across Germany then onwards home the following day was that justice was not served to all those thousands involved in this awful period of time. 

Some of those responsible took their own life, others escaped to Spain then onto South America with passports of convenience & some just went back home again to ruined cities. I think we all want to see justice done. 

I came away with some understanding of the complexities of this time in history, I have read dozens of accounts of the war, my interest being in human behaviour & in the Holocaust.  The who, why, where, what, when of this awful time, trying to understand how people can be turned so easily against their neighbours ... 

A close DNA match to my German great grandfathers line that I was hoping would have information to add to his tree that is my brick wall, confided - 'I cannot help you, that side all perished in the camps, we know as much as you do ...' so perhaps it is a deep seated ancestral connection that connects me to this period of history. 

While at Auschwitz Birkenau, I wore two badges pinned to my dark blouse - one was the pin from the Holocaust Memorial Trust they had sent me when I requested information for my students . I backed it on to a hand felted circle 

The second was a Shoah survivors pin I had bought with the imagery of barbed wire, a leaf & a dove. I added stitching to symbolise barbed wire & attached it to red felt with a pin. One brooch for the dead, one for those who survived.  They visited the many Holocaust camps with me ... 

I wrote the last of my Holocaust diary entries on the way home to England, thankful to have the time to arrange my thoughts while it was clear in my mind, to make sense of all I had seen & experienced. 

     

Thank you for taking time to read even part of this journey,  give thanks for peace & blessings, 

Dee 

#6 Auschwitz Birkenau & the Frank family

 I have visited Auschwitz Birkenau twice, the first time as part of a general tour with my husband. He was so overcome by it that he said he could never return, which is why I returned as part of a specialist tour by Leger. This graphic showed that all train lines led to Auschwitz from all over Europe. 

On my second visit, we were once again met by a specialist tour guide (in addition to our military coach guide) and we had the entire morning devoted to this space. 

To walk under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign again is humbling because you fully understand how momentous it is, how few left this space alive & how ever minute of their day was lived with angst.  

The Urn contains some ashes of the countless souls who died at Auschwitz. They will never have a final resting place, this is a powerful reminder of the loss.  I read in one of the many accounts that it was said "you can only leave Auschwitz through the chimneys" 

    

 
The images that are so familiar of the Auschwitz camp, the third we have visited on this tour with the Arbeit Macht Frei sign. The double fences which were electrified made escape impossible & we know from written accounts that many desperate inmates flung themselves at the electrified fences when they could not take it anymore. 

The double electrified (at that time) fences with no hope of escape, the watch towers, the cramped conditions, the roll calls in all weathers, the public hangings, & then of course the realities of the gas chambers & crematoria give this space a feeling that is hard to describe. 

The pretty Autumn day with sunlight & leaves turning on the trees could not lift the veil on the reality of Auschwitz, the darkness & death part of its ground & fabric. 

I was mentally prepared for the rooms of shoes, luggage, utensils, glasses, crutches as I had been previously, but it is still too much to take in.

On my first visit, the downstairs on block 11 overwhelmed me with sadness,  the first use of Zyklon B gas was used down there, as was rooms where people were crowded in, standing room only & left to die. This space in Block 11 was also used for torture. At the end of the corridor are some stehzelle / standing cell spaces where 4 people were locked in a 1 meter square space with a 5cm air hole. They were forced to stand all night then had to work all day.    The courtyard space between block 10 & 11 had an execution wall, the gun sounds echoing around the buildings. Block 10's windows on to this courtyard were block off with wooden shutters so those in Dr Mengele's  medical experiments could hear but not see out. 

Once again, a massive heaviness came over me in the downstairs of Block 11, the immense sadness part of the fabric of the building, the whole of Auschwitz is heavy but I have on both visits found this space to be overwhelming. 

The gas chambers & crematoria at this site are places where you have to steel yourself for the brutal reality of them. 

We had a lunch break then made our way to the nearby Auschwitz- Birkenau camp with its familiar gate house over the train tracks. 

Having a whole afternoon there meant that after visiting the wooden blocks with the cramped rough hewn wooden bunks & latrines down the centre, we walked along the train tracks deep in to the camp. 

An excellent book called 'The Place where you are standing' shows historic photos at various places where you are & it is so sobering to stand on the very spot where arrivals were separated with the flick of a hand - left or right, live or die, man or woman, woman or child, able to work or not ... 

 At the end of the camp railway tracks, the remains of the crematoria the camp officials tried to blow up to hide their murderous deeds as the Russians were approaching.  Passing that, our guide took us all out in to the cool forest behind the camp. The coolness & greenery belied its awful history of being the space those who were sent left were sent to - the gas chambers as they were too old, too infirm, too young etc to be worked to death. 

In the forests were more blocks with innocuous showers & crematoria to deal with those deemed unfit to work. 

A laundry room, as well as Canada block where all those carefully packed valuables & suitcases were sorted for redistribution across Germany, the valuables of gold, silver items, jewellery, money used to fund the German war effort. The clothes were sent back to families in Germany as aid. 

At a clearing in the wood, a sign & headstones asked that this area be respected as it was the spot where many arrivals were led to, forced to undress then shot in to trenches dug beside them, their bodies then burnt to dispose of them. 

The inscription read: "To the memory of the men, women and children who fell victim to the Nazi genocide. Here be their ashes. May their souls rest in peace"

This place was a mass burial & the old photos alongside it showed the realities. 

This extended tour of the site over more than 3 hours gave a comprehensive understanding of the horrors of this vast second site. 

Only some of the blocks of huts remain, the others are marked by their outlines in neat lines as far as the eye can see from the bottom of the woods. It is overwhelming & there is a heaviness that  is hard to explain.

It is where the Frank family were sent, along with the others from the Secret Annex. 

It is where Anne's mother remained when the girls were sent on to Bergen Belsen where they died. They had been transported from Amsterdam to Westerbork, then on to Auschwitz Birkenau, before transported again to Bergen Belsen where they both died. 

Anne's story is perhaps one of the best known diaries, but not the only one as some of the places point out, However, it is through her story that I first learnt of the Holocaust & if her story can in any small way bring this period of history to the attention of people, then it is worthwhile. 

Thank you so much if you have managed to read all the parts of this story, give thanks for blessings you have, 

Dee