Friday Sept. 3: Dachau, Wieskirche, Reutte

The day started out well enough:  Our bus driver, Paul, told me the Rothenburg breakfast would be the best of the tour, and in fact would be picture-worthy.  He was right.

After breakfast we left Rothenburg and headed for Dachau.   En route Daniela discussed with us what it was like to grow up in post-WWII Germany, and to live with the national guilt brought about by WWII.

She said this day of the tour was always tough for her.

At Dachau I started to take the tour with the group, but early on I realized I was going to make a fool of myself so I bailed.  I’m not too proud of my lack of backbone, but there it is. 

I sat on the lawn and took pictures of flowers (I guess some would call them weeds) in the grass, and then clicked back through the previous days of happy touring pictures.  Wimp.

After Tom was finished looking through the building with the pictures and narratives that I was hiding from, we finished walking the grounds together.

At the top of the gate are the words “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (WORK BRINGS FREEDOM). There was a very old German man who handed Tom his camera and asked him, through gestures, to take his picture in front of the gate.   I wondered what his story might have been.

When we were getting back on the bus, I suggested to Daniela that she read the autobiography written by Frederick Douglass to gain some perspective on the ability of another so-called civilized country to turn a blind eye to horrific cruelty.  Reflecting further on my own, I remembered reading that American soldiers during WWII found the German people and their way of life to be most like home.  I also remembered the feeling of comfort I had with Dutch society when we were there at the beginning of our tour.  Some member of that society during WWII apparently considered it their patriotic duty to tell the “authorities” about the Frank family and their hiding place.  Did they consider the Franks to be a danger to homeland security?  Did unquestioning patriotism demand they be turned in?  Just wondering.

Next stop:  Wieskirche, the Church of the Scourged Savior, located in a pasture southwest of Dachau and Munich. 

The Scourged Savior

In the mid-18^th century, a small statue of Christ in chains was kicked out of the local Good Friday procession because people thought it was too pitiful (i.e. too realistically miserable-looking.) 

The statue was hidden away in a monastery attic for a few years and then moved to a farmer’s house.  There, the farmer and his wife witnessed tears in the statue’s eyes, and thus began the prayers, pilgrimages, etc. 

 Then this amazing Baroque church was built for it.  And here the church and the Scourged Savior sit today—still in the pasture.  And the pilgrimages continue.



Wieskirche



 

We ended our day at the Hotel Ernberg in Reutte, Austria, a really nice Tirolean town.  Before our group dinner at the hotel, Tom and I took a stroll through a beautiful cemetery at the nearby Catholic Church.  Each grave had its own well-tended little garden, and some even had burning candles.

Later we watched the sun set while standing in the schoolyard behind our hotel.  And all the church bells in town were ringing.  What an amazing and really peaceful way to end the day.