Invitation to Flossenbuerg

How could I refuse? Such a nice invitation from Annette, archivist at Flossenbürg: ‘I would be so happy to welcome you here!’ and ‘I can organise an English tour for you.’ Surely Jews don’t usually receive such invitations from concentration camps. Or ‘Memorials’ (Gedenkstätten), as they are called today. But where is Flossenbürg? I know where Auschwitz and Dachau are. And Sachsenhausen and Terezin. And Bergen-Belsen is somewhere in northern Germany, I think. But Flossenbürg? Who knows? Is it in Germany at all? Where is my atlas? Here it is …. There, it’s a tiny village, right on the border with the Czech Republic. Far from any large town or city. Maybe that’s why they built it there. On a momentary whim, I had written to Dachau Camp – sorry, I mean Dachau Memorial – and asked if they had any record of my father’s time in the camp. And very quickly they’d replied that he had arrived from Flossenbürg (what/where is Flossenbürg, I had thought) in December 1944 and he had been liberated by the Americans in Dachau in April 1945. So I wrote to Flossenbürg Camp – sorry, I mean Memorial – and Annette had responded with the following information: Germany had invaded Hungary in March 1944 and immediately begun the deportation of the Jews. The provincial areas, including Miskolc, where my mother and her parents lived, were cleared quickly and nearly all their Jews were sent to Auschwitz. In Budapest, where my father and his family lived, the Jews were herded into the newly created ghetto, most to be taken to Auschwitz. But not my father. How did he end up in Flossenbürg? However helpful she was, Annette could not definitively explain this. Maybe they needed some fit slave workers for the mines in the area. Annette said the SS had transferred him within a few days of arrival to the nearby Hersbruck sub-camp, where prisoners were forced to dig a system of tunnels in the mountainside. In these tunnels, she explained, the BMW Company had planned to produce engines for the armaments industry, shielded from Allied air raids. However, the facility never went into operation and around half of the 8,000 inmates died as result of the appalling conditions. As the Americans approached, the camp was evacuated and its prisoners sent on a death march to Dachau. No wonder that when the war was over my father spent two years being treated for tuberculosis in German hospitals before being allowed back to Hungary in 1947. But how on earth had he managed to survive four months in Dachau after a death march? There are no answers. Annette asked if she could compile an exhibition about my father’s life before and after Flossenbürg for visitors to the Camp – sorry, I mean Memorial. No one had ever asked before for details of my father’s experiences. While he was alive, he had never spoken about it. And no one had bothered to ask. Even when my mother had responded to Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation’s invitation for survivors to have their testimonies recorded for posterity, his organisation had replied no thanks – even though she had been a slave labourer in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their publicity says they were founded to ‘gather video testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust’ and today they are still continuing to gather more. This saddened her. She never did understand why they turned her down. So her story remained untold. I gave Annette the information she had asked for. She asked for photographs – but there were so few to choose from. I told her that my father had met my mother after the war in Budapest and that they had married and fled Hungary during the 1956 Revolution. I described how hard life was for them as homeless and poor refugees in London, but they built up their lives and had three children. I told her that their younger son Leslie – my brother – died in an accident aged three, and that their daughter Linda – my sister – took her life as a young adult. I felt visitors should know that survivors’ tragedies didn’t end when the Holocaust was over. Annette thanked me. And later, when she had finished work on the exhibition, she invited me to visit Flossenbürg and the exhibition. Fly to Nuremberg, she suggested, then take the train to Weiden (where is Weiden, I thought) and then take a local bus to Flossenbürg. It was unnerving to see Flossenbürg as the destination on the front of the bus. The final stop. A long bus ride into the country. Soon I was the last passenger left on board. How beautiful the scenery is. A huge impressive entrance building, presumably once the guards’ and SS quarters, and now the offices of the Camp – sorry, I mean Memorial. Annette welcomed me and made me a cup of coffee. (I bet my father didn’t have such a reception when he arrived, I thought). A cup of coffee to pay for months of slave labour? But I must stop thinking like this. It’s a different time now. Annette is genuinely so friendly and helpful – she wasn’t even born during those events. Nor were her parents. Stop those thoughts – now! She talked about her work at the Memorial. Annette took me on a personal tour. The barracks, the laundry, the execution sites, the roll-call areas, the sick bay, the isolation blocks. Just like the other sites I’d visited but on a smaller scale and in a different order. And all so beautifully landscaped now. But where are the visitors? Just a couple there, a small group here. No coach loads of tourists, no survivor families, no Israelis and no loud school groups. Almost nobody. Presumably people do the ‘Auschwitz experience’ instead. The silence and stillness are good. But how can they build those new houses that overlook the site? Who chooses to live there? Maybe those houses are cheaper. Or do they attract buyers who wish to remember. But how can you bring up children in those houses with those views? Annette shows my father’s name in a vast book on display containing a list of all prisoners. And then the exhibition of my father’s life. Respectfully put together. So my father’s story is told after all. I thank Annette for all she’s done, for the kind invitation and for the tour. She explains that they are now working to establish a memorial for the Hersbruck sub-camp and that I should return when this is finished. I am again the only passenger in the bus. From the train I quickly take a picture of a station called Hersbruck. No indication or sign of the sub-camp. Maybe next time. I have some hours in Nuremberg before my flight home. Unlike Berlin and Munich, the town centre displays absolutely no indication of its major Nazi past. Nuremberg had always been way ahead of the game. Already in July 1933 SA stormtroopers had broken into hundreds of Jewish homes and beaten up Jews. The Great Synagogue had been destroyed months before Kristallnacht – no time lost there, then – so on the infamous night itself they could only destroy the smaller Adath Israel Synagogue. The racial laws will, of course, forever be linked with this city. And Hitler had chosen it for his Nazi rallies. So maybe it was apt that the war trials were held here. I take the tram out and see that the vast rally grounds are now empty and silent in the summer heat. Diners sit at outside tables by the lake alongside the grounds, seemingly oblivious to the past, and chat over their beers. Joggers pass by. Another tram takes me to the court building which hosted the war trials. There are no trials in Room 600 today so they allow me inside with some Japanese tourists. But the room looks so small for such a major trial. Could the 21 defendants, judges, lawyers, interpreters and world’s media really fit in there? There’s a new exhibition of the trials in the rooms upstairs. It looks impressive but I buy the guide book instead and leave. Enough Holocaust for one visit. Back home, I email Annette and ask how the survivors’ reunion went. She replies it went very well, although there were fewer survivors this time. She says she no longer works at Flossenbürg. She’s taken a job in Prague. Good, I think. She’s probably had enough Holocaust for one lifetime. Too much is not good. I wish her well. But the Holocaust doesn’t stop for me …. David Wirth