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Back home from a short break by way of a cruise to Northern Germany.
One of the excursions offered was to Bergen-Belsen.
I had seen various programmes about these places over the years and didn't expect to be that bothered by what I may find there.
Age seems to have burrowed it's way slowly into my thought processes because it affected me more than I thought it would.
When you walk through the gate there is nothing much to see.
A couple of memorials. A few headstones. Open ground mostly.
Then you wonder what the 4 foot high mounds of earth are all about.
Get closer and they're surrounded by a wall with an inscription telling you how many people are buried in each mass grave.
The museum gives you the smack in the stomach.
The photos and documents .
The artefacts .
The real killer is the film room where it shows the bodies being dragged off the wagons and dumped in the mass grave.
A grave surrounded with tons of lime which is later spread over the emaciated, diseased corpses.
Interviews with Allied troops who liberated the place. Grown men, hardened soldiers who had to stop and compose themselves.
I don't do alcohol much these days, but I did have a few when I got back to the ship.
If anything good is to be said of this, it's the fact that there were bus loads of German School kids there .
Some of those kids were quite emotional.
I know I was.
As it should be.
One of the excursions offered was to Bergen-Belsen.
I had seen various programmes about these places over the years and didn't expect to be that bothered by what I may find there.
Age seems to have burrowed it's way slowly into my thought processes because it affected me more than I thought it would.
When you walk through the gate there is nothing much to see.
A couple of memorials. A few headstones. Open ground mostly.
Then you wonder what the 4 foot high mounds of earth are all about.
Get closer and they're surrounded by a wall with an inscription telling you how many people are buried in each mass grave.
The museum gives you the smack in the stomach.
The photos and documents .
The artefacts .
The real killer is the film room where it shows the bodies being dragged off the wagons and dumped in the mass grave.
A grave surrounded with tons of lime which is later spread over the emaciated, diseased corpses.
Interviews with Allied troops who liberated the place. Grown men, hardened soldiers who had to stop and compose themselves.
I don't do alcohol much these days, but I did have a few when I got back to the ship.
If anything good is to be said of this, it's the fact that there were bus loads of German School kids there .
Some of those kids were quite emotional.
I know I was.
As it should be.
