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Phil Mercer |
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Wednesday, March 04, 2009Bergen Belsen
It was a beautiful day, sunny but a little cold. I opted to walk the last 4km from the bus at Bergen to the memorial the otherside of Belsen. Deep in the woods of the Luneburg Heath it is very hard to get a real idea of what evil things were happening at this military camp. As you approach it along the road from Belsen you pass a large British military base with the uncanny noise of explosions echoing from the NATO ranges all around. In one way, this is a very real reminder that all was not well here in the past. Although whether the British (and other nations) should still be here 60 years on, that is another debate. The final kilometre follows the original length of the camp. Now eerily quiet with the sun causing a dappled effect through the forest, there is no real clue as to the roads history, aside from one piece of art that follows a painted line along the pavement with occasional messages reminding you of the horrors once occuring. The memorial has recently (2007) opened a new documentation centre that is well hidden (considering its size) amongst the trees. It is made of large walls of grey concrete the hide themselves amongst the trees. On entering the Documentation building I immediately learnt something new. I had heard about the concentration camp, but didn't know that tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war were kept there in horrific conditions. They were greeted with at first an empty field. Without shelter they soon began to suffer with the harsh winter so they dug themselves small shelters, which didn't really do the job. In fact sometimes these places of protection ended up killing their occupants when the soft soil gave way and collapsed on top of them. The photos show something akin to a pig farm. Disgusting. There are the personal stories including filmed interviews of some of the survivors, which together with the film shot by the British on there arrival. It all has a stomach tightening impact. I managed about half of the exhibition before needing to come up for air. The building itself helps at this point by showing you a wonderful view of outside world. A woodland scene that a nature reserve would be proud of. Of course what these huge windows are actually inviting you to look out on is something that could never really be properly shown. Thankfully. I made my way outside to a long straight path that begins inside a concrete corridor and then slowly leads on towards the centre of the grounds. At first there is no real hint of what has been. Then the heaped rectangular mounds start coming in to focus. Reminiscent of the ancient Tumulus found around the English countryside, each one is marked with a basic stone engraved with the number of dead burried there. Normally 1000 some of them cover the remains of up to 2500 bodies. In a slow walk around a small portion of the grounds, stopping off at various memorials and points of interest I still found it impossible to grasp what had happened. If I had been growing up in 40's Germany then I might have ended up under one of those mounds. I didn't see any reference to the Nazi solution to homosexuality in the document centre, but I hadn't been through more than half. I would like to think that there is some mention somewhere. That is something for me to research! Ultimately it is a small comfort that Hitler and his cronies would have had a hard time wiping my kind from the earth as more would be born to replace us. Although, a scary thought, the discovery of one little gene might put pay to that! Comments:
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