Teacher blog

On 18 January 1871. King Wilhelm I of Prussia was declared Kaiser after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in this room. This was the sting that lead Clemenceau to insist that the treaty ending the Great War be signed in this room on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This, and in particular Article 231, courtesy of John Foster Dulles, will provide the fuel to fire the German desire for revenge and vindication.

I fancy that I have a fairly good vocabulary. That said, The Hare with the Amber Eyes had me looking up more words than I have in a long time. And it was a splendid book! Not just challenging but well written and engaging. So much so that I made sure that Susan and I made a point of finding the Ephrussi house, just north-west of the Arc de Triomphe. An interesting expeience. Tomorrow we go to where three wars ended/started - Versailles and Compeigne - and Sunday to the Nazi/Vichy transit camp at Drancy.

It is a challenge to get to KL Natzweiler-Struthof, but the Nazis deliberately chose remote locations for their operations. Additionally, this location was chosen to be able to mine pink granite for the Reich's building program. It was initially populated by prisoners transferred from Sachenhausen and was primarily a political prisoners' camp, but others were brought here as well. A collection of Jewish skeletons was started by the doctors.  Cadavers were provided from its operational gas chamber upon requests from German medical schools.

The house was built in 1915 as a villa for Ernst Marlier, a factory owner. It was sold in 1921 to Friedrich Minoux, an industrialiast, and again in 1940 to the SS Nordhav foundation for use as a guest house for the Sicherheitdienst - the SD - the security service of the SS.

It is a stange feeling indeed to eat lunch in the middle of a ghetto. But it's not entirely unreasonable. The fortress, built between 1780 and 1790, was where Gavrillo Princip, the assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, the trigger for the First World War, was impriosned there and died there of tuberculosis. Czechs lived nearby and even in the fortress, as it was quite large and designed essentially as a military town. But the defensive walls worked as well to keep people in as out.

We found that our guide to Terezin and Lidice was the executive director of The Power of Good - but got shafted economically by the drector, and is a childhood friend of Vera Gissing. Wonderful discussions with her, and she told us that the hotel on Wenceslaus Square where Winton used to meet the parents was now called Hotel Europa. That settled where we would have dinner that night. When we got there, we asked which table he had always used - while the Gestapo sat at the other tables.

We spent the day in the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, at 30 Tiergartenstrasse. We listened to several presentations, and no mention of what lay down the road at number 4. Now it is the Berlin Philharmonic, and the original building long since gone in the bombings and Soviet assault on Berlin. But what was once there was the origins of the Holocaust. Action T4 involved scientists explaining why some humans were unworthy of life and how, scientifically, economically, and politically, euthenizing them, giving them a "good death," was not only acceptable but desireable.

While wandering around the back streets (one of our favorite hobbies) behind Tyn Church in Prague, we stumbled upon a fascinating little store filled with huge amounts of interesting things, appropriately named Bric a Brac (Tynska 7, Praha 1), owned and operated by Milos Gavrilovic. As we looked around and chatted with him, we discovered that not only did he know his inventory, he loved it. In particular, he loved the history and the stories behind the physical artifacts, the provenance.

On 24 June 1942, the small town of Lezaky was attacked by German security forces and Czech collaborators for having hidden a resistance radio transmitter and commandos whom had aided in the assasination of Heydrich. 47 men, women, and children were taken. 18 women and 15 men were shot on the spot. Others were sent to concentration and death camps like Chelmno. They buildings of this stone-working town were then destroyed and razed by German labor front forces. After the war, two small girls and their grandfather survived to return.

On 4 June 1942, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, the Blond Beast, died of an infection related to the wounds received in a commando assasination, code named Operation Anthropoid. The commandos were betrayed and committed suicide in St. Cyril's crypt in Prague. In reprisal for Heydrich's death, thousands were murdered by the Nazis. Based on spurious evidence, they decided that the commandos were connected to the town of Lidice. Accordingly, on 10 June members of the OrPo and the SD surrounded the town. 173 men were executed on the spot.