Nuremberg

This has been a most emotional day.  Standing before the enormous high platform where Hitler made his most famous speeches you could feel the heat of the parading soldiers and workers and perfect young men and women with hearts pounding with pride and love for their rise to power...their right to control...their destiny.  The Nazi party rally grounds was our first stop this morning.  To stand in those footsteps brought tears to my eyes.

We had a view across a beautiful man make lake with gentle swan boats floating on it to "the remains of the buildings on the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds with their immense proportions are a vivid testimony to the megalomania of the National Socialist regime. This area of eleven square kilometres was intended as an impressive backdrop for the Nazi party rallies staged here to demonstrate their power."  This massive building dwarfs the Coliseum after which it is modeled.  It was a symbol to Hitler's pre war Germany that Hitler could build an empire which would rival the Roman Empire.

Housed here is the Documentation Centre which is the museum of the Nazi domination of Germany.  There was not much new here since we have studied the newspaper accounts and seen the newsreels many times over.  But the mueseum is very well done with English audiotours available.

Our next stop was very moving.  We actually were in Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg High Court Building.  Here is where the most famous of the Nuremberg Trials were held by a joint committee of Allied forces.  The site was chosen because this courtroom was the largest of this courthouse  and in the American Zone.  Justice, it was decided, was more likely to be served based on an American trial system than on the Russian one.

The courtroom had a door that led directly to the prison thereby not having any public access when the prisoners were in transit.  After all was said and done the executions of the convicted were done within 16 days.  Also not publically and the ashes were scattered over the river so that there would be no ability to establish a pilgrimage site. 

However when Rudolf Hess died in 1986 by hanging himself in the Spandau Prison while serving a life imprisonment sentance he was buried and had an elaborate tomb.  Because, by that time, there was a rise of Neo-Nazis who gathered at the grave Hess was dug up, cremated, scattered to the river, and the tomb razed.  The prison was also torn down.  It had been still there because he was sentanced specifically to it and it was no longer being used as a new prison had been built. He was the only occupant. The new Germany wanted no lingering memorials to a period of time that the older ones did not even want to talk about.  The Nazi period was not even taught in schools until the late 60's early 70's.

We did finish the tour on a less somber note at the Beautiful Fountain in the main square.

\