So this blog post isn't going to have any pictures; there just hasn't been things I felt I should take pictures of. First I will talk about my day Monday...
Monday the main event was visiting the Stasi Museum in town. For those of you who don't know what the Stasi was, it was the secret police of the GDR (the German soviet national party). Because most of the population wasn't exactly in favor of the government, they felt it was necessary to monitor people's...opinions I guess you could say. I thought it was funny the measures they went to to know what people were doing, and thinking. It was illegal to speak ill of the government. There were the Stasi, who were paid by the government to monitor people, but also unofficial informants. These people had other jobs, but would report things they heard to the Stasi. Because of this, there was a real sense of distrust among the population, because you never knew who was watching or who was listening. They read people's mail, bugged people's houses, listened in on telephone conversations, and had informants everywhere. It is unbelievable, the lack of free speech that there was. In the schools children were shown posters of propaganda in order to start forming their ideology early on. One poster we saw said: Imperialism, the enemy of the nation. There were images on this of westerners as skeletons grabbing for money. The military would work with the school's directors to find good candidates for the military. Then the Stasi would negotiate with the military to find the best candidates to work for them. The Stasi workers were also required to report all romances, and they were not allowed to marry a girl from a Christian home. We were shown a room with disguises that the Stasi would use to meet with their informants, so that the informants would not be caught with a Stasi...thereby giving away their identity as informer. There were suitcases with different disguise packages. One was for Arab, one for construction worker. It was really pretty funny. I just couldn't believe their paranoia. When they knew that the GDR was coming to an end, they started shredding files. We saw huge blocks of shredded paper, but only 1/4 of the total files were destroyed. Today Germans can go in and see if they were under surveillance, and read their files. How strange that would be! And to know that your neighbor had been reporting things about you. So anyway that was Monday....
Tuesday was a long and very interesting day. We visited Weimar, but mostly Buchenwald. Buchenwald is concentration camp. It was a work camp, not a death camp like Auschwitz. Even so there were some definite disturbing sites. That camp had about 50,000 prisoners....just unbelievable. Although this was not a death camp with gas chambers...their aim was definitely to work these people to death. Something that struck me was the amount of psychological abuse to the prisoners. For example, in the area that they were for the majority of the day they could see the gate which read "you get what you deserve". This is ironic because they didn't do anything to deserve what they were getting at all. There was also a zoo right on the other side of the gate that was very visible to them. This was for the Buchenwald directors to take their families. The reason for this was so that the prisoners could see and feel resentment and jealousy because they know they can not do this sort of thing with their families. They could also see anywhere they looked, the huge fence. If they got very close to the fence they were shot down without warning. Plus if they did escape they were so overworked they wouldn't have the energy to get very far. There were also bloodhounds that would hunt them down and tear them to pieces. Also they were divided into groups....Jew, homosexual, political criminal, etc. The workers had permission to beat the jews and homosexuals whenever they liked. The German criminals had better treatment. What is interesting is that the Buchenwald officials actually believed that the prisoners deserved what they were getting, and that they were really less than human, so that was their justification. Also, when the war was over the German population acted like they were not aware of what was going on at Buchenwald, but our tour guide said there is evidence that they did know more than they said. For example, the ovens for the crematory were provided by two German brothers who contracted with the the camps. They didn't need to make these ovens for their income, as ovens were only 2% of what they did. Also, the camps had a lot of things provided to them from the inside as well as exported...so people knew where these things were coming from and going to. So basically everyone had the ideology, or just turned their head the other way out of fear. At the end the craziest thing we saw was a basement where prisoners were led...believing they were getting a medical examination. One by one they went to the office where their mouth was checked (to see if they had any gold teeth that needed removal), then to another room where they stood against the wall and were measured. Behind them there was a hole in the wall where a man would shoot them in the neck. They did this so that the people were unsuspecting, and would not struggle. Just unbelievable how structured this machine of killing was. The living conditions were just terrible. And there was one barrack that was really bad. A priest was here and every day he would scream about how terrible the officers and the whole structure was. All the prisoners in the camp could hear him. Before long the officers would come in and beat him, but he would scream every day anyway. When he died his wife came to look at the body, and the officers said he was a great man and it was sad that he had to die of cardiac arrest. I don't understand the need for patronizing. They just knew what they were doing was wrong. There is so much I could say about this experience. Last night we had a conversation about it which lasted for about an hour. Just the injustice that man is capable of is unreal. My professor said it is a look at the true nature of man....now what a bone-chilling and humbling statement.
On a brighter note....today was a fun day. I went to the beach...which was really just a lake but it had a sandy beach. I actually saw a lot of topless ladies...so that was interesting! And really just awkward. The water was really cool though, plus you could see all the way to the bottom when standing chest-deep. Then tonight all the girls went to eat with a German woman who is a friend of ACU. Somehow we started talking about farming. She was really interested in that because her grandparents were farmers. Also we started talking about politics....now that was interesting for sure. She said Germans like Obama because he is more social (socialist). They didn't like Bush because he was all for himself (supporting businesses). She said though that their chancellor liked Bush but doesn't get along well with Obama. Strange that their chancellor doesn't like Obama but the German population really does. She had very liberal ideas, but it was interesting to listen to. She was interested in our opinions too and was very respectful. Tomorrow I leave for Marilyn and Jeremy's at 1:00. I'm so excited!! We might go to a medieval festival in France Friday...we'll see!
No comments:
Post a Comment