Buchenwald

On the afternoons in which I have nothing to do and find myself with little motivation to sit down and work through a german grammar exercise, watching a movie is always a good alternative. It's a great way to learn new vocabulary while at the same time passing time and engaging oneself into a story of something other. If it's a film that I know well, it's always interesting to see how things are translated and amusing to hear the voice over voices of famous actors. No one can match the style of Whoopi Goldberg... it just sounds funny in German. Films provide slang language... something which a grammar workbook does not.

My first choice is always to see a German made film, eliminating the annoyance of watching the lips move differently than the spoken word. It also gives insight into one genre of the German art scene, revealing through a plot of video images what occupies the minds of German screenwriters. What realities of life do they seek to portray? The films that I have seen have almost always been tragic stories, retelling some one's story, or what could have been some one's story as it happened during the II World War. Or a story of life as it was, or of a hopeful escape, from Soviet occupied East Germany. There are also those films which tell a story of post-war or post-wall Germany and of how individuals and a nation seek to make sense of life and how to move forward in light of the dramatic changes have taken place around them. German made films certainly aren't the most cheerful, but they tell important stories. And in reconstructed, post-war, post-wall, Germany- these events remain a real and present part of the history here.

Yesterday, I traveled with a friend to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. This camp housed 250,000 people during the time it was open, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer for a time. It is also the camp in which Elie Wiesel was liberated from.

Visiting at the onset of Winter gave perspective as to the conditions that the prisoners had to deal with on a daily basis. It was ridiculously cold and we were bundled from head to toe with warm tea in our bags that we were saving for the bus ride back. Imagining the prisoners having to deal with these conditions wearing only a thin layer of clothing and receiving a cup of watery soup and a fifth of a piece of bread made the fact the anyone survived the living in the camp amazing.

Here the gate reads, "Jedem das Seine" literally meaning to each their own and figuratively meaning to each what they deserve. Here these words are written on the inside of the gate as opposed to other camps in which the phase "Arbeit macht Frei" (work makes you free) was seen as the prisoners entered.

Today there is really nothing spectacular about the camp as a few buildings and the outlines of the foundations of the barracks remain, leaving a very empty feeling with plenty of room for reflection and thought.

A view of the barbed-wired fence bordering the camp