From the BBC:
“Nazi
Buchenwald camp no place for sledging, authorities warn”
Some visitors
to the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp - now a memorial - have gone for
sledge rides over mass graves and such abuses must stop, the site's managers
have warned. The site extends across a large wooded area in eastern Germany, as
Buchenwald had several sub-camps. "Cases of winter sports near mass
graves, disturbing the peace of the dead, will be reported," the memorial
warns on its website. More than 56,000 inmates died there.
The Nazis
imprisoned nearly 280,000 men, women and children at the site on Ettersberg
hill near Weimar in 1937-1945. They were mainly Jews, Sinti and Roma,
resistance activists, homosexuals and Soviet soldiers. They were beaten,
starved and tortured. Some were used for medical experiments. The site has a
huge cemetery on the south slope of Ettersberg hill, with a belltower at the
top - the area now popular for winter excursions. Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau, a
historian at Buchenwald, told the BBC that sports activities were already
banned at the site, yet "last weekend it was used heavily, many sledge
tracks were found on the graves, and the car park was full". "Now
because of the pandemic winter sports facilities are closed in Thuringia
[region], so they are using the memorial," he added.
Disturbing the
peace of the dead is an offence punishable by a fine in Germany, he said,
adding that the memorial has now stepped up its security. "Unfortunately
more and more people have been disrespecting the place, horse-riding or riding
motorbikes in the woods." In April 1945 US troops liberated Buchenwald,
where they found piles of corpses, torture cells, a crematorium and emaciated
survivors. The Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower said: "Nothing
has ever shocked me as much as that sight."
^ You wouldn't
think you would have to tell people to not play and have fun on a spot where
280,000 people were imprisoned and where
58,000 of them were murdered, but I guess you do have to say it.
I remember when
I was at the Babi Yar Massacre Site in Kyiv, Ukraine - where the Germans killed
33,771 men, women and children from September 29-30, 1941 and another 150,000
people during the rest of the war.
The Site is now
a park in the city and is the local "lover's lane" right next to two
memorials (a Menorah on the exact location where the massacres took place and a
memorial to the children murdered there.) I guess to some couples nothing says “I
Love You” like being on a mass grave. ^
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