Afterword

On June 11, 2005, however, the authoress visited the Nazi concentration camp of Le Struthof in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, close to the German border. Here is her personal experience.

DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS TOPIC! I have a tendency to say exactly what is on my mind, and most of it does not approach the topic in a delicate way. No sugar-coating here, folks. If I get morbid or say something morbid, it was because I thought that it should be written that way.

I wrote this memoir because the experience strongly affected me. I wanted to share it with whoever is interested.

I also made some mistakes. Belphegor, you were right about the death camps. All of them were located in Poland. Our bilingual tour guide Carine had told us that they were in Germany, and I wrote it down without checking sources. My apologies.

France and Germany have fought over the region known as Alsace-Lorraine for centuries. It was one incentive for the Germans to enter into that conflict known as the Great War back in 1914.

The Germans lost WWI. The Treaty of Versailles, made by the Allied powers of that war (U.S., Great Britain, France, and Italy) severely punished the Germans for their role in the war. Some of the conditions imposed upon them were: drastic decreases in the size of the German military, demilitarization of the Rhineland (which left their western border defenseless), acceptance of all responsibility for all losses and damaged caused by the conflict and surrender of the Alsace-Lorraine region to the French.

This was one of the reasons why WWII started: WWI had given Germany such a blow that guys like Hitler, who blamed many of the problems that sprung up as a result of the Treaty on the Jews, became pretty popular. But that is another story.

Fast forward to 1940-1941. After the Germans defeated the French and set up their puppet government, the Vichy regime, Germany annexed the Alsace-Lorraine region. Le Struthof was built. At first it held German criminals; later, it held political prisoners such as French resistance fighters, as well as some Jews.

Remember that Le Struthof was not a death camp. All the "death" camps were located in Poland. But thousands of people still died in the work camps. I am not sure of the exact count, but I believe the death toll for Le Struthof is somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000.

All this, from 1941 to 1944.

We traveled for some time, from Strasbourg to a small village in the Vosges Mountains. The bus passed the village and rumbled to the base of a mountain where a long, winding road directed us upward. I read the sign as we passed:

Le Struthof Camp, 6 km

For several minutes we ascended. Our bus was slow and swung wildly on each turn as if it would fly off over the edge, tumbling down the steep, wooded slopes of the mountain. There were many people on this bus; fifty-one Americans (mostly teenagers, but with about a dozen or more adults as chaperones), our French bus driver, and our bilingual tour guide, Carine. She had been reading us accounts of the experiences of former prisoners while they were at this particular camp, but she had stopped at the base of the mountain. Most of the students, and a few of the chaperones, were dozing.

Then Carine said, "This road was built by the inmates of the camp we are visiting."

I was surprised to see a few dwellings along the road: a restaurant and maybe two or three houses. We passed a concrete building under construction and several trailers; no one was at the site, however, because it was a Saturday. Then, a large stone monument reaching into the air, sort of shaped like a flame, came into sight.

The bus turned around, giving me a clear view of little, neat rows with cross markers on them, on the hillside under the monument. The driver parked just past the monument, and, after waking up those who had been sleeping, we stepped off the bus.

The air was crisp and clean. There was a little breeze; enough to make me want to put on my jacket but not enough to make me cold. I gazed at the breathtaking view. The mountains appeared to be bluish gray, their color more the colors of a painter's brush than a work of nature. I could see two little groups of villages, sheltered by the mountains. Evergreen trees covered their sides.

The group was moving. I followed, staying close to Carine as she went down the paved road, to the entrance of the camp and the ticket booths.

My first image of the camp was those all too familiar gates that you see in every Holocaust movie. The German name of the camp, Konsentrationslager Natzwiller-Struthof, hung over the entrance. Three layers of barbed wire fence encircled the whole camp, with a guard tower every few hundred feet or so. The camp did not seem that big to me, perhaps because few buildings were still standing.

I stood on my tiptoes to try to see into the camp so I could take pictures, for Carine had just announced that cameras would not be allowed into the camp. (I was not taking pictures out of disrespect; rather it was to show my father. He's the one who got me interested in history, especially concerning the World War II era, in the first place.)

I could see that the hillside appeared to be cut into terraces, long platforms made of earth on which to put buildings. The highest terrace held two long, low barracks, painted a sort of gray-blue color. Carine told us that each barrack held about 250 people, giving each terrace about 500 people.

I saw two other buildings at the bottom of the hill, on the last terrace. They were of the same gray-blue color. I thought they were barracks as well. The other terraces had no buildings; just empty rows.

A hush fell over our group. I looked over the hill, where there was a Lanterne des Morts (literally "lantern of deaths"). I could not see if it was lit.

Carine then told us that she had been mistaken; we could take pictures inside the camp. Then the gates opened for us to go inside.

The two barracks at the top of the hill were closed to visitors. On the second terrace, however, there was a gallows, high enough to be seen from any part of the camp.

We went down the hill, past the remains of gardens prisoners tended for the SS and the other terraces, heading towards the two buildings at the bottom of the hill. We were almost at the bottom when I realized that one of the buildings has a long, black pipe sticking out of the roof. This was not a barrack, as I had assumed. Carine informed us that that building was the crematorium and, strangely enough, held the offices of the SS officers. The one next to it was the "punishment center."

She said a few more things about the camp, and then let us explore the camp on our own.

The majority of people headed to the crematorium. I stayed back and looked up the hill at an Orthodox cross erected nearby. I was surprised; I could see so many crosses everywhere. Every grave at the top of the hill had a cross on it. At the very bottom of the hill there was a simple cross in the ground, with words of honor for those who gave their lives for liberty. Carine had talked a lot about Jewish prisoners, but I got the impression that most of the prisoners here had been resistance fighters rather than Jewish.

A sign near the cross said that ashes from the crematorium were tossed down the hill on the spot where the cross now lay.

I wiped some wetness from my eyes. I am sort of a strange person: I try to play macho at times because I consider myself crying as a sign of weakness. Other people can cry, and I would think nothing less of them. But I think it is unacceptable in me. I have even gone through funerals without shedding a tear, because I am so uncomfortable with showing my emotions in front of people.

A few moments later my eyes were clear. I headed into the second building with Valerie, avoiding the large group in the crematorium.

This particular structure had once been a punishment center. There was not much to see: just a hallway with doors leading into small, bland rooms with smaller barred windows. In between each room was a miniature compartment with an iron door dotted with air holes. The compartments were not big enough to stand up straight, but not wide enough to sit in either. The Nazis used to made people squat for days in these compartments.

After seeing all these empty rooms, some with collapsed ceilings, some with working electricity, we headed back towards the entrance. One room by the entrance contained a small wooden table. The sign nearby told us that the Nazis used to strap people to this table and beat them.

The thought chilled me. And then I noticed a thin object lay on the table: a single red rose, shriveled and dried up.

Valerie and I left the punishment center and headed towards the crematorium, where we met our French teacher, Madame G (Madame for short). She told us that she was getting chills from this place. Valerie left Madame and I, so we continued on to the back entrance to the crematorium without her.

I remember talking to Madame of all the books I had read and the movies I had seen about the Holocaust, and how they did not compare to the real thing. She agreed with me as we approached the entrance, which was still rather crowded with half a dozen people trying to get in.

We stepped through the door, and immediately saw a large oven, blackened from soot, with a stretcher on which bodies had once been placed to send them through the furnace. On the stretcher were beautiful red, blue, yellow flowers, not yet wilted.

I burst into tears. I tried to wipe them away, I tried to gather myself and take in this experience, because no one else in the room was even shedding a tear, but I literally started sobbing. It was the thought of this place, of the SS lifting bodies from the basement to the burning oven, bodies that probably looked like skeletons from starvation and horrible living conditions, which made me cry out for the victims.

We were almost on the other side of the oven by the time Madame realized that I was crying. She grabbed my arm. "Okay, let's go," she said, trying to pull me towards the entrance.

I shook my head. "No."

"Let's leave."

"No! I want to see this place, Madame. I have to see it."

She held onto my arm, refusing to believe me as I insisted that I had to take pictures for my father. My stubbornness beat hers for once; but it did not keep her from hanging at my elbow throughout the rest of this experience.

Through a window in a room next to the furnace we saw showers. "It's a gas chamber," Valerie said, who had caught up to us by this time.

"No it's not," I said, finding my voice. "The gas chamber is outside the camp. I think this is a shower for the SS officers." Then I wondered if the heat from the ovens heated the water for the officers' showers.

We went to another wing of the building. Here we passed two SS offices. The only things that remained were the sinks and the yellowing wallpaper. There was an urn room too. According to the sign, the families of the German prisoners could pay to have their loved one's ashes sent to them, but there was no guarantee that the urn they received contained their loved one's ashes.

Next to that was a barracks where the "guinea pigs" of sick experiments were kept to be tested and observed, test subjects of experiments that did not need to be performed for the good of mankind, but were carried out anyway in the name of science.

And right next to that room was the morgue.

There was one last room, right next to the oven. The room was nothing very special at firsts glance. It was completely empty, with one window, and a floor that sloped down to a drain in the center of the room.

It was here that the SS shot and killed people. They washed the blood away, down the drain, and then put the bodies through the oven.

I cannot remember if I cried at the sight of that room. Although I did not take a picture of that room, the image of it is still burned into my mind, as is my imaginings of the horrors that room has seen.

There was nothing else to see in the crematorium and apparently I looked terrible, because Madame then took my arm and led me to the open air. She began to head back up the hill, delicately saying how unbelievable it was that all this happened so recently. Valerie started to ask some questions about the Holocaust, and Madame answered as best as she could, all the while shooting glances at me, who was still sniffling every now and then.

And then I talking about the ghetto raids, zyklon B, images of bodies… one particular image is stuck in my mind, of a little baby… but it is really too horrible to describe, so I will not mention it. But I started bawling again.

We were at the top of the hill now. The entrance was 150 meters away. Madame grabbed my arm again. "Okay, let's get out of here now."

"No!" I just wanted her and Valerie to go away.

"Come on Meg, let's go," Valerie said softly.

"The exit is right there," Madame murmured, pulling me gently towards it.

"I'm all right, really," I claimed, rapidly wiping tears away, but sobbing even harder.

"We're almost there…"

"Madame, please!" I cried. She stopped and looked at me. "I just want to look at it."

She looked worried, confused, and upset. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Please, I just want to see it."

She released my arm as I walked, in a daze, down the steps between the two barracks at the top of the hill. I stepped up to a memorial and pretended to read it. I heard Valerie and Madame murmuring, before hearing footsteps on the stairs behind me.

"You ok?" Valerie asked. I turned back at the sound of her voice. Madame was heading towards the entrance.

"Yes," I whispered, still crying. I just wanted Valerie to leave me alone so I could sort out my mixed emotions.

Who can comfort you from the memories your imagination creates, of pain that you really cannot truly feel, but want to feel, almost NEED to feel to believe that it actually happened, that people can really be so heartless and cruel to each other?

Valerie started up a conversation, but I interrupted her, saying, "I can't believe I'm here."

"Yeah," she said cautiously. "Creepy, huh?"

"I mean, I am the first person in my family to visit a concentration camp. They're never going to know exactly what I saw, no matter how many pictures I take."

"Yeah," she said.

"I wrote a story once about Nazi Germany." I realized I was rambling, but it was the only way for me to distract myself from any idea that would start the tears again. "Tried to write a few poems about the Holocaust too. But then I realized that I was just trying to rewrite the story of 'Schindler's List' in free verse."

"That is a sad movie."

"And that Holocaust Game the sophomores play in Mr. Wetzel's history class every year…"

"Yeah, you helped him with that," Valerie reminded me.

I frowned at the memory. The Holocaust Game is a role-playing game based on the Vilna ghetto in Lithuania. The teacher, Mr. Wetzel, pretends to be a Nazi, who is trying to 'alleviate' the overcrowding problems in this Jewish ghetto by gradually eliminating students. One other student (this past school year it was me), pretends to be a native who is aiding the Germans in their scheme by handing out the documents the students are required to have in the ghetto. By the end of the game, usually every single student has been 'eliminated.' All I can remember is that by the end of that day, I was thrown into a depression because of the game, wondering how so many people went like sheep to the slaughter without putting up a fight.

"It was so hard trying to be mean to everyone," I said. "I had to yell at people who weren't taking it seriously."

Valerie nodded. We both stared at the gallows.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to a black, box-like thing near the gallows.

"Think it's a wheelbarrow."

"Why would they put that near…" she pointed to the gallows.

I shrugged. Turning towards the steps, I said, "I've seen enough."

I went back through the entrance to the area outside. I met my friend Megan, who pointed to the flame-like memorial that towers over the camp. "Come with me," she said. I followed her.

We stood respectfully before the memorial for a few minutes while Megan took pictures. Then we went around it, to the graves for the resistance fighters. At least, I thought it was for them, because all the graves had crosses on them.

We tried to remember names, dates, but there were too many of them. Then one grave caught Megan's eye. "Look!" she exclaimed, pointing to one cross. "It says 'Inconnu'."

"That's strange… must mean 'Unknown.' But how can they know that? I thought the bodies were burned. Why are these graves here?"

She shrugged. "There's another one, over there."

"And another," I said, pointing to one.

We continued our walk, pointing out the 'Inconnus' every once in a while, my questions still buzzing through my head. Why were there graves here? Did they actually contain the remains of the names on the crosses? I remembered the room with the slanting floor, the one with the drain, a sign on the wall of 107 people killed two days in September 1944. Did they burn those bodies? Or were they buried?

Eventually we noticed the majority of our group boarding the bus, so we headed back. But before we left, I tried to find the gas chamber. They said it was right next to the camp, and I saw a sign for it, but I think it was further away than we expected. I do not think I wanted to see it anyway.

As soon as the bus started up again, about thirty teenagers pulled on their headphones and blasted music. Some people went to sleep. Others murmured quietly amongst themselves.

I felt so emotionally drained, but I pulled out my journal. I knew that I had to get everything down, before I either forgot or lost the emotion.

Fifty minutes later I closed my journal, sat back, and closed my eyes.

I felt empty inside, as if I was one of those skeletons in the photos of concentration camps I had seen in textbooks and documentaries. Almost… guilty, for being so lucky to have a good life. There are problems and difficulties in my life, and they always seem like such a big deal to me. But then I realize how much worse other people's lives have been, and my problems seem trivial compared to them. Is that necessarily a bad thing? I do not think so. I would not be human if I did not have problems.

But compared to the horrors the victims of the Holocaust went through each and every day…

We cannot compare it, I guess. The only way to truly empathize is to go through the experience ourselves, something no one hopes will happen.

As my eyes scanned the bus, my gaze falling on dozing forms and headphones, I wondered how much my fellow travelers had actually learned. Some did not seem to care. Quite a few people, however, had seemed interested, asking Carine questions, respectfully poking into the past. But I felt like I was still stuck in the past.

It was when we were looking for a café in Colmar did I gradually come back to reality. And, surprisingly enough, I was not ashamed. Not for the crying; not for recovering from the misery of that place. I knew that I could not live forever in the nightmare of the camp. The experience was the worst single hour of my life, but also one that I will forever hold as sacred, to the memory of those who lived and died there.

Looking back on it, I would not take that experience back for the world. The worst acts humanity has committed occurred there, and yet the best humans have to offer was there for all to see. Just look at the neat little rows of graves on a mountaintop in Alsace-Lorraine. 'Inconnu' or not, there are people out there who are willing to die for a just cause.

I apologize for any moments where I am rambling. I do not want reviews for this, because it is not fanfiction. Just thinking that people might be reading this is enough for me.