The Tower of London

Invasion of England was accomplished by tunnel. The chief resistance we encountered was from French and English immigration staff at the Gare du Nord. For our Eurostar Standard class seats we had paid an extortionate price through the Australian agents which we wouldn’t have had to pay had we been able to deal directly with Eurostar. It reminded Megan of the Intercity to Newcastle; I have to say I prefer travelling in first class, as we did all over the continent, if only because the rude people one encounters are better dressed.

Our little eyrie at Tower Hill is a two-floor flat perched on the fourth and fifth floors of a 1920s building a short walk from the Tower of London. The lower floor is a comfortable living room and kitchen (with a washer/dryer that actually works). Up the spiral staircase (now adorned with a week’s washing) to our bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. Small, but comfortable. For our groceries we have a choice of Tesco on Eastcheap, Sainsbury’s on Fenchurch Street or Waitrose at St Katherine Docks. We prefer the latter because we can stop for a coffee at one of the zillion cafés or restaurants on the docks, which when the sun is shining reminds me of Cronulla or Sydney Harbour.

After dinner on Wednesday night we went for a walk around the manor, seeking out Crutched Friars (another Dornford Yates location), having a half at the East India Arms (a nice little pub outside Lloyds on Fenchurch Street) and looking at Tower and London Bridges from Tower Dock. I love the long twilights at these latitudes.

Thursday morning we took our lives in our hands to face the millions of tourists that have descended upon London for the Royal Wedding. Actually, they haven’t. The town has been fairly quiet for most of the week, because the predicted multitudes haven’t turned up, and many of the locals have taken Tuesday to Thursday off so they could have a ten day break from Good Friday to May Day.

We strolled over to the Tower just before 9 am and joined the brief ticket queue. Wandering quite freely through the Tower precincts we wondered where all the stories came from about queuing for hours for the Crown Jewels. We’re sure it happens, because at the front of and inside the building were cattle runs, with video displays to entertain the bored and anxious masses. But we just walked straight through.

I have to say, the Crown Jewels are impressive. Maces, trumpets, plate galore. You move past the crowns themselves on a travelator, and the reflections from the jewels change as you go. The Cullinan and Koh-i-noor diamonds are literally dazzling. The place must be the most heavily secured outside the Bank of England, but it doesn’t feel like it.



We had a close encounter with a raven, who entertained us by making some unusual vocalisations then destroying the turf in search of grubs. Smart bird. Another refused to be photographed, turning his back to me and saying ‘Nevermore.’

It is strange to see places like the Traitors’ Gate and the Scaffold Site on the Tower Green: places I’ve read so much about for so long, where so much happened, and where there should be so many ghosts, but aren’t. Many places have a weird feeling about them; at Sachsenhausen you know something unspeakable happened as soon as you walk into the place. Tears don’t leave a mark on a place as much as pain.

If you come to the Tower make a point of visiting the Museum of the Royal Fusiliers. It is one of the best-presented exhibits on the site, with displays for most of their campaigns, from the American Revolutionary War through Crimea and the twentieth century to Iraq. One room is dedicated to decorations: cases of them, including twelve Victoria Crosses in a row.

The White Tower, the big building in the middle, is old and impressive, but the exhibits are a bit tiring. Here you can see the armour of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Charles I, whose gorget looks a little battered. (No it doesn’t.) Knives, guns, projectiles, you name it, it’s here. And then there is a display on the history of the White Tower which really doesn’t make much point. The touch-and-feel exhibits were much better at Azincourt. Not enough thought, or the wrong thought, has gone into how these things are displayed. The simplicity of St John’s Chapel in one of the corners of the tower comes as a relief.



Earlier this evening we returned to the Tower for the Ceremony of the Keys. This is the formal locking of the gates of the Tower, and has happened every night for over seven hundred years. We were part of a group of about thirty people who were met at the main gate by the sole female Yeoman Warder (or Beefeater), who took us into the Tower and explained what was about to happen. For centuries the gates were locked at dusk, until 1826 when the Constable of the Tower, Arthur Wellesley (who invented a type of boot in Spain or something) ordered that the locking take place at 10pm, on the grounds that dusk in winter could be as early as 3pm.

We stood in silence at the Traitor’s Gate and waited for the Ceremony to begin. At seven minutes to ten we saw a brass lantern bobbing in the darkness along Water Lane; the Chief Yeoman Warder was approaching with the keys. He was met at the Bloody Tower by an armed military guard (the soldiers with bearskin hats), and together they returned up the lane to lock the gates. Their footsteps faded away; there were faint shouts as the gates were locked and arms presented. When the party returned to where we were, the sentry on duty under the Watergate advanced with pointed gun and challenged them.

Sentry: Halt, who comes there?
Chief Yeoman Warder: The keys.
Sentry: Whose keys?
Chief Yeoman Warder: Queen Elizabeth’s keys.
Sentry: Pass then, all is well.

The party walked under the Bloody Tower into the laneway by the White Tower, and we followed. Another military guard was standing with a bugler at the top of the steps. They presented arms, the Chief Yeoman Warder presented the keys to the Resident Governor and called out ‘God preserve Queen Elizabeth’. To which everyone present replied loudly, ‘Amen!’ (as previously instructed). The bugler played the Last Post, the Resident Governor returned to his residence in the Queen’s House, and the guard returned to the guardhouse. The Tower was secured for the night, and the Warder escorted us to the postern gate.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 3 – Le confiture carambolage

Thirty generations ago my ancestor Jean sailed from Normandie with Duke William to take part in the thrashing that was Hastings. Sometime later he was granted a piece of land at Cameis in Wales, and took the cognomen Cameys. Thus the family of Kemmis was off and running. So I was looking forward to today’s visit to Bayeux to see the famed tapestry and celebrate yet another family contribution to the history of bloodiness. However…

The first fifty kilometres out of Abbeville took half an hour. The next five took one hour and fifty-five minutes. The effects of a pile-up on the F3 are NOTHING compared to its French counterpart. Every main road in the region was seized up. People became bored, tempers flared, children hit each other in the back seat and grown men fled their vehicles to frolic amidst the daisies and blow dandelions (not me – the guys in the van behind us).

In between changing cds* and soothing the driver’s fevered brow, I sat in the passenger seat doing mental arithmetic. From Bayeux to the D-Day beaches and back, plus looking time; how long to Bayeux itself, how long in the museum with the tapestry, how long for lunch; and how long from Bayeux to our hotel in Rouen. The time required grew larger, and the time available grew smaller. ‘We’ll have to pass on the beaches,’ I announced.

After ten minutes we advanced another one hundred metres and the guys from the van raced into the woods for a toilet stop. ‘Honey, we have to get out of here,’ Megan announced, and at the next chance we turned onto a back road and made our way to Neufchatel-en-Bray. It was almost midday, and the whole schedule was blown. No battlefields for us today. We decided to run for Rouen. The trick was to find a road that wasn’t full of trucks and cars trying to head west. The best option was the D1 going northwest towards the coast. And what’s that town on the coast at the end of the D1?

On 19 August 1942 several thousand Canadian troops launched a raid on Dieppe, partly to cause trouble, partly for reconnaissance. It was a disaster; many died or were captured, and few made it safely back to England.

When we got to Dieppe we drove up to the headland overlooking the harbour. We had to put on our jackets because a cold wind was blowing off the Channel and it was less than ten degrees. Waves were dashing against the breakwaters, seagulls were hovering, and the horizon was obscured by mist after a few kilometres. Not having had a chance to do any research we didn’t know what evidence of the raid remained, but we could see part of an old blockhouse or gun position overlooking the harbour entrance.


Once away from the coast the sun came out and the temperature went up, so by Rouen it was twenty degrees. The cathedral is of course impressive, if only for its size. You can see what Monet saw in the western façade, although to get the viewpoint of his paintings you would have to knock down a few trees and possibly some buildings. I may be jaded from having seen too many cathedrals (saw a great one at Abbeville on Saturday), but I was excited by the pillars. Yes, they are massive bits of masonry, but they also play an important part in one of Dornford Yates’s thrillers (Red in the Morning, I think; my mind is fuzzy and for some strange reason I haven’t packed Yates’s complete works in my bag).


I like this part of Rouen; it is like the old town of Cologne, only there is more of it – winding, narrow streets of teetering buildings, cafés and tabacs. We looked for a street that might fit the description of one in Yates’s Shoal Water, a cul de sac home to a den of thieves named the Wet Flag. No cul de sacs, but a disreputable-looking laneway called Rue du Petit Mouton ended in a small square with a narrow exit between buildings. I could imagine the unwary meeting an evil fate there.

Rouen is the place where Jeanne d’Arc met her fate, put on trial in the cathedral and burned at the stake in the marketplace. An ugly modern church covers most of the site now, but at the back the actual location is a garden badly in need of weeding. It’s interesting how the places, unadorned and unexplained as they might be, say more than the monuments.



Tomorrow we invade England.

*We have found that Art vs Science (The Experiment) and the Brand New Heavies (compilation) are good for tollway driving, and Tame Impala (Innerspeaker) is perfect for the open countryside. These things are important.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 2 – Anzac Day 2011

3 a.m. start, with an orange half-moon in the east. Took the wrong turnoff from the tollway, and got trapped in Amiens. By trial and error we discovered the right road and joined the line of traffic to Villers-Bretonneux.

Our unscheduled excursion cost us about forty minutes, so by the time we parked the car and walked fifteen minutes back to the Australian memorial the service had started. A couple of thousand people sitting quietly in the dark, without enough light to read the programs. The sky was cloudless. It was jumper and coat and scarf weather, but not freezing. By the time the sun had come up so had the breeze, the gloves came out, and people started shivering. With the light we could see people of all ages around us, and hear Australian, English and French accents. Young French couples sat in front of and behind us. That impressed me – it wasn’t just the usual suspects.


Kevin Rudd gave a good speech, full of the motherhood statements that need to be said on occasions like this. Apparently Barry O’Farrell didn’t like it, but I can’t say I saw him haul his backside out of bed at 3 a.m. to be there.

A bugler in khaki played the Last Post from the top of the tower. The Last Post marks the end of the day; at memorial services it symbolises that the dead are no longer on duty and can stand down. As he blew Reveille the flags, Australian and French, were raised from half mast. It was the most moving part of the service.

The Ode of Remembrance was recited in English and French, and we responded to both to show off our language skills, and even had a stab at La Marseillaise. (That’s a bloodthirsty bit of poetry, isn’t it?). A cup of coffee and some croissants laid on by the community of Villers-Bretonneux, and a walk around the memorial to see a misty sunrise out of a Friedrich painting.


When we arrived back at our car we realised that we had parked in Villers-Bretonneux itself, so we walked into town to watch the wreath-laying ceremony at the French Memorial. As we went we ‘bonjoured’ the locals out of habit; you can tell we’ve been in France for a while. At the memorial we had a good position on the edge of a garden, but a group of older package-tour Australians on a pushed past and stood in the shrubbery. I made semi-loud comments about the rudeness of pushy people who trample the gardens of the country in which they are guests. They spoke loudly about the tragedy of leaving their carry-on baggage in the hotel rooms at their last stop, expecting the local slaves to pick it up and put it on the bus for them. Sadly, these days you can’t get good slaves. They blamed everyone but themselves. I didn’t tell them that the garden they were trampling had been recently manured, it would only inflict more distress. A close encounter with KRudd at the end of the ceremony helped them overcome their tragedy.

A beautiful drive through Corbie and up to Pozieres, where in six weeks Australia had more casualties than at Gallipoli. One of those casualties was Charlie Andrews, a railway officer from Lakemba in Sydney aged 22. After joining the 1st Battalion he found a niche as the quartermaster and was very popular. On 19 August 1916 his company was advancing on the heavily-entrenched German position at Mouquet Farm, north-west of Pozieres, when a shell killed Charlie and three other soldiers. The Red Cross located soldiers who had been there and collected their reports for the comfort of the family; however they edited one, to leave out the fact that Charlie was ‘knocked to pieces by a shell’. Mouquet is still a working farm, owned by the same family. Today its fields are covered in canola instead of trenches.


At the farm Megan gathered some small white flowers to take with us to Serre. Charlie’s body was buried near the trench the night he was killed. After the war the Commonwealth Graves Commission asked his family to supply an inscription for a headstone in the proposed war cemetery. They did so, but heard no further word. For several years his father Alfred repeatedly wrote to ask if they had found Charlie’s grave. In 1928 Charlie’s body was located at Pozieres and identified by his identity disc and a ring, which were returned to his father. He was reinterred in Serre Road Cemetery No 2, about 11 kilometres north-west of Mouquet Farm.


I had heard that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission takes very good care of the cemeteries, but I was impressed with how neat they were. It took us a while to find Charlie’s grave, thanks to the idiosyncratic numbering system; but when we did, Megan placed the flowers at the foot of her great-uncle’s headstone. The inscription is there (‘Safe in his Father’s arms’), and I wished we could have told Alfred how good it looked, and how the gravesite looks northeast across the fields.

Battlefields of Northern France, Day 1

Abbeville is a town of about 15,000 people about 2 hours drive north of Paris, 2½ if you follow the sat nav. It sits on the Somme River, an innocuous little stream that has given its name to one of the grimmest impasses of human history. But more of that tomorrow. Today we go back a little further.

To 26 August 1346, in fact, in a little town called Crécy-en-Ponthieu about 20 minutes north of Abbeville. To the north of the village the authorities have built a two-story tower overlooking the fields where England, under Edward III, defeated France and Philip VI at the battle of Crécy. The tower is allegedly the site of the windmill from which Edward watched the battle. Why is Crécy worth remembering? Because it’s where the longbow first showed its supremacy as a weapon, allowing Edward’s Welsh archers to devastate the enemy with its superior range and firing rate.


Agincourt was the battle where Laurence Olivier defeated the French with his declamatory powers and won a BAFTA. Azincourt, on the other hand, is another little village, 30 minutes up the D928 from Crécy. It’s hard to miss; there are very silly painted knights and men-at-arms by the roadside every fifty metres or so as you approach it. The local authorities have made a bit more effort than those at Crécy, having built a museum and tourist centre. I had been told it was rubbish; that was wrong. They have some great displays showing the context and progress of the battle, some artefacts from the site and surrounds, and lots of things for the kiddies, for example getting your photo taken in armour.


I was quite chuffed, although perhaps I wouldn't have been had I realised I look like Harry Potter.

The story of Agincourt (25 October 1415) can be found on Wikipedia and in Henry V. What the former says that Shakespeare doesn’t is that the rearguard of Henry’s army was led by Thomas, Lord de Camoys. This fine fellow was in fact the cousin of my great-times-sixteen grandfather, so for me it wasn’t just another place where the French had the shit kicked out of them. As well as an ‘artist’s impression’ of cousin Tom his armorial bearings were on display:


So I was doubly chuffed.

The battlefield of course is now covered in clover and canola, and you wouldn’t know from looking at it that it was where the history of France and England changed.

A place where the history of England could have changed but didn’t is La Coupole. Another 40 minutes up the D928, just south of St Omer, this is where the Germans built a base from which to shower London with V2 rockets in 1943-44. Using slave labour they constructed a complex of tunnels and galleries, and a huge concrete dome, 75 metres in diameter and 5 metres thick, in which they could assemble the rockets for launch across the Channel from the chalk quarry just outside. Fortunately in 1944, 617 squadron (the Dambusters) dropped some humungous bombs (‘tallboys’ for those who know the story) and made the launch site unusable. A good thing too, because it was nearly ready.


The dome sits on the hill above the quarry like a huge cockroach of aging concrete. Down in the chalk tunnels it is very cold, something you feel very much when you come in from 26 degree sunshine. A lift takes you up inside the dome, where it’s warmer and looks like the villain's headquarters in a James Bond movie. As well as the story of the V1s and V2s (with examples) the museum describes the German occupation of the Pas de Calais and the experiences of the slaves of the Dora-Mittelwerk camp in Germany who made the rockets. It also follows the trail of the German rocket scientists to America and their role in the space race. A fascinating place that we only knew about because Megan discovered something on the web by accident. But gee we were glad to get out into the warmth again.

Stanley Kubrick exhibition, Cinematheque Française

Back to Paris via a couple of days in Cologne, in which I caught up with an old girlfriend (Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus - usually in the Musee d’Orsay, temporarily in an exhibition at the very good Wallraf-Richartz Museum), ate half a pig, and didn’t have to put up with a leaking toilet or a smelly washing machine that didn’t work properly (our fate in Berlin). The people are friendly and the beer is lovely (Gaffer kölsche). The Cathedral is astounding, a huge rocket ship, beautiful and light-filled. But the priests are rude and cranky. They make Berlin museum attendants look charming and amiable, and more than justify the Reformation.

The forementioned washing machine meant that we had some domestic duties to take care of on our first morning in Paris. I will never forget the sight of the Palais Garnier majestic and dazzling in the morning sun as we lugged our washing down the Avenue de l’Opéra to the laundromat. A quick drying cycle and excellent timing on the Metro, and we were at the front door at opening time of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française at Bercy near the Gare de Lyon.

The Cinémathèque is a Frank Gehry-designed building that is as confused inside as it is complex outside. There are logical dissonances in the layout; that’s a polite way of saying it’s a bloody mess. It seems like they bought a ready-made interior and made it fit into the building.

The permanent collection has a few dissonances of its own. The history of French cinema is a long and glorious one; after all, they invented it. So where are the Lumiére brothers? Some objects relating to Georges Meliés, but nothing earlier. Then there’s a jump to some jewellery worn by those well-known French actresses Theda Bara and Louise Brooks; some set designs for those well-known French movies Metropolis and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari; and Ringo Starr’s Pope costume from Lisztomania by that well-known French director Ken Russell. Oh, and that thing that happened in the 50s and 60s – the ‘nouvelle vague’? Doesn’t rate a mention – not a sniff of Godard, Truffaut, Resnais or Chabrol in the air. Not so much a crap exhibition as one that completely misses the point. This is a case of buying something and making it fit; it is based on two idiosyncratic private collections, and they haven’t done much to fill out the gaps. It’s like calling a place a restaurant and not selling food.

Incidentally, the Cinémathèque has a restaurant, ‘Restaurant 51’, which doesn’t serve food.

The Kubrick exhibition, however, is brilliant. It should be, it wasn’t curated by the Cinémathèque. It spreads over two floors, with the exhibits on most of his films on floor 5 and those on the last two films, his photography and the films he planned but didn’t make (Napoleon, Aryan Papers and A.I.) on floor 7. That arrangement doesn’t quite work; it would have made more sense if the photography and unmade films had been presented chronologically with the other films, so that we could see for example the influence of Napoleon on Barry Lyndon. Again, it’s buying something and making it fit. But the content is so good it’s a minor point.

It’s all there for all of them – photos, scripts, production documents, designs, cameras, posters and publicity materials, tickets and other ephemera, props, costumes, clips from the films and the inevitable interview with Martin Scorsese. My favourites:

• the script for Paths of Glory
• HAL’s ‘face’ from 2001
• the set model for the War Room in Dr Strangelove (‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!’)
• the friendly and funny letter Nabokov sent Kubrick concerning the script for Lolita (with a great line that I can’t remember but is very Nabokov)
• the droog suit and turntable from A Clockwork Orange• the axes from The Shining

Makes me want to watch them all again. Is it really twelve years since he died?

Bonhoeffer-Haus

The Heerstraße estate in western Charlottenburg was established in the 1920s and 1930s as a suburb for professional people, and since then it hasn’t really changed. It is very leafy with lots of birds, which sing very loudly. Other than that it is very quiet, which is surprising considering what surrounds it. In the 1930s the government built the Olympia Studium to the north-west, and the Avus autobahn/grand prix racetrack to the south-east. The Bonhoeffer family moved to the house at Marienburger Allee 43 in 1935, when Karl Bonhoeffer retired from practice and teaching as a psychiatrist. It became the focus for the large Bonhoeffer family, and Dietrich always lived there whenever he was in Berlin. The house is now a ‘Memorial and Place of Encounter’ where people can visit to learn about Bonhoeffer and research his theology and his involvement in the resistance against Hitler.

We had arranged to visit the Bonhoeffer-Haus simply by emailing Dr Knut Hämmerling, the house coordinator. Knut is very laid back while preserving all the formalities. He met us at the door and showed us the best bit of carpet to dry our shoes on so we wouldn’t track moisture through the house. The hallway was full of shoes; part of the house is used as accommodation for pastoral students, so I felt right at home.

Knut took us through to what was once the dining room and is now the office, with an enormous collection of works and other material by and about Bonhoeffer, in a number of languages. Swapping my theologian brain for the uni administrator one, I realised that as a research centre with a very limited budget it must be a tough job keeping on top of all the Bonhoeffer research and publications, but they do their best.

The living room is unfussy and full of light, not filled with the overstuffed décor and furniture I had expected but simple, stylish and warm, with copies of family portraits on the wall and a view into the back garden.

When you know the story of a family, to stand in their house is like being invited into their lives, a privilege, not like standing in a museum or even the Buddenbrooks House. You are where their joys and sadnesses occurred. When Karl Bonhoeffer retired he still saw private patients, and when not in professional use his consulting rooms on the left side of the house were the place of many family celebrations. One famous one was the celebration of Professor Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth birthday in 1943. While the extended family ate and drank and played Bach for their father, the brothers Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and their brothers-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher and Hans von Dohnanyi were sweating it out waiting to hear the outcome of a plan to assassinate Hitler. To stand in that room knowing that, and what happened later...

These rooms have now been converted into a large seminar room with an exhibition about Bonhoeffer’s life and work. Nine large panels line the sides of the room with photos and documents but no explanatory labels. This allows the guide to adjust the level of commentary and explanation to the knowledge and understanding of the visitors. Since we already knew a lot about Bonhoeffer, Knut let us ask questions about the things that interested us.

Upstairs in the attic is the study where Bonhoeffer wrote part of his Ethics and the essay ‘After Ten Years’ (on the need to take action against Hitler), and where he was arrested by the Gestapo on 5 April 1943. It’s a room I could quite happily work in. Some of his own furniture is still here: a simple desk, with a stylish lamp and chair; his harmonium (he was an accomplished musician), still playable but in need of tuning; and the original bookshelves, lined with copies of the works he owned (the originals are in the Stadtbibliothek with Bonhoeffer’s papers). The window overlooks number 42 next door, where his sister and her husband lived with their children. Dietrich would watch the children playing in the yard and throw sweets to them. A single bed has been placed in the same position as Bonhoeffer’s to show how the bachelor theologian lived.

While standing in the study I recalled how his parents wrote to him in prison to ask which books he wanted taken down to the cellar to be protected from the air raids, and I can imagine the trouble it took to move the harpsichord down the winding stairs. I’m not surprised he wrote to them saying ‘Don’t go to too much trouble.’

Back downstairs we signed the guest book, and Knut very kindly showed us where Kevin Rudd signed when he visited a couple of years ago. Bonhoeffer would be embarrassed by some of the attention he gets, but he would be grateful that people like KRudd (and me) are taking his ideas seriously and trying to put them into practice.

*7/8/2011: Actually the attempt happened during preparations for the party some time earlier - you get confused when you're writing on the run. But my point still stands.

Sachsenhausen

KZ Sachsenhausen lies at the end of a twenty minute trudge from Oranienburg station, which is a forty minute train ride from Berlin. Small groups of people are all walking in the same direction through the cold, wind and rain and the streets torn up for roadworks. There are lots of tour groups, mostly young people, English, German and Swedish. All the local youths have a number two cut, which is ridiculous for today’s weather.

After the information centre you walk down a road for a couple of hundred metres, with a high concrete wall on one side and old buildings, some in ruins, some in great shape, on the right or southern side. If you look at your map you will see that these were the SS troop quarters. Then you turn left into the camp proper. The first section is a perimeter zone, which has been planted with tress and memorials. On the right is the museum, which today is shut ‘for technical reasons’.



Straight ahead is the camp entrance, Tower A, a guardhouse with a gate bearing the notorious ‘Arbeit macht frei’. There is an odd feeling. I know what that sign means, literally and figuratively, yet I feel a barrier go up between me and its real significance. In places like this, with the perpetrators and victims long gone and only relics to testify to their experience, we are removed from the reality. Our imaginations and hearts can bridge the distance only so far, and our minds give us other levels of protection too. I can only wonder what the locals felt when the Allies forced them to tour the concentration camps by the busload, and whether this same distance was possible with the smell still in the air.

We are thankful for our coats and scarves and umbrellas as we walk through the gate, because the weather is bitter. The Soviets reconstructed some of the barracks from original materials in the late 1950s as a memorial against fascism (!), and in spite of arson attacks by right-wingers they are still in good condition. Barracks 38 and 39 lie in the ‘small camp’ to the south east of the triangle of the main camp. These two barracks were the home of many Jewish prisoners in the late pre-war period, and contain displays on the treatment of Jewish prisoners. They are the only buildings here now, but there were many others, each now marked by a concrete block with a number on it. It was here in the small camp that the Nazis placed special prisoners who had skills the Reich needed, such as counterfeiting and forgery. The German film ‘The Counterfeiters’ tells the story of some of these prisoners. I was glad that we had seen it a few months ago on tv, as it gave us some hooks to hang our ideas on.





Just north of these barracks is the prison, where the Nazis held people for special treatment, political enemies like Hans von Dohnanyi. One of the leaders of the military conspiracy against Hitler, he was held, tortured and eventually executed here, on the same day as his brother-in-law Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The prison is one of the few original buildings left, and the huge stretch of empty ground looks ominous. When it was full of barracks it would have looked less forbidding, in spite of the brutality. You can see what’s left of the ‘Shoe-testing Track’, where prisoners were forced to jog for hours ‘testing shoes’. Whoever thought of that was truly evil.

We walk across the rainswept ground to the other side of the triangle, to Station Z, where prisoners were forced to run down into a trench and were then shot. Next to that is what is left of the crematorium, including three or four ovens. To the west is a large gravelled area marking the pit where the ashes were disposed of (‘buried’ seems too deliberate and careful an act).





Even though we haven’t seen the Pathology Building and the Soviet camp, an hour and a half in the cold and wet is enough. We trudge back through the mud to find somewhere in Oranienburg that sells hot chocolate. It’s only when we are sitting in the warmth of the café waiting for our order that I realise I am utterly weary, not just from fighting the cold but from keeping the emotion in check underneath the analytical eye and the questioning mind.