A little bit of France

We crossed the border into France and visited Straussburg, where we got a bit lost, then saw a beautiful classic gothic cathedral, a neat astronomical clock in the cathedral, and ate a delicious sandwich and a chocolate eclair, yum! (This cathedral is the world’s sixth tallest church.)

Next we headed a little ways out of town up on a beautiful hill to see the natzweiler-struhof concentration camp. We wanted to see a concentration camp while in Germany, while this is not one of the bigger ones there is still a lot left there. This particular camp was where they sent the “criminals”. Because these people were considered criminals (though many of there offenses were very small) they were medically experimented on. Some of the signs described the various experiments, it was very difficult to read. Throughout the camp they had large photos of very old men and women standing where the photos were placed, these photos were of survivors of this camp when they came back to see it. Very moving.

The front gate and guard tower

A memorial, see the person on it?

Original bunkhouses, a few left.

Where they burned the bodies.

A “surgical table” for experiments.

There was also a little museum you could go through, it was down in this huge cave that they had built at the time of the camp, to this day no one knows what the cave/bunker was for, very strange. Only a mile or two from the camp there was a resort, it’s a beautiful area. Can you believe that people were vactioning right there next to it? Do you think they knew? The whole thing is just so unreal, and it really wasn’t that long ago.

After a very sobering visit we stopped in Molsheim for dinner. We tried to find a French restaurant but all they had was Italian and Chinese. When I asked a local about it he said “this is not really France”. This particular piece of France used to get traded back and forth between France and Germany a lot, so I guess they’ve lost their identity!