Trip To Belsen

As promised here are the pictures from my trip to Berlsen Concentration camp, and the surrounding area. Hopefully this will demonstrate to you just how evil mankind really can be. 30,000 Jews were murdered here, along with 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Besides these, countless homosexuals, disbaled children, and political prisoners perished too at the hands of the nazi regime. What I learnt truely shocked me.





The first pic marks the entrance to the site, the second was taken inside the small museum on site, it's some actual clothing worn by a Jewish prisoner.





Seen above is the monolith memorial and an inscription from the huge wall that surrounds it.





Wooden cross originally erected in 1946 by survivors and families along with a shot of the interior of the hall of silence. Note Star of David marked out on the floor. This building was very thought-provoking. It was constructed of stainless-steel and had a glass roof, but inside it was deathly silent.







The previous pictures show Anne Frank's Burial, the main Jewish Grave marker and the stones which mark individual family plots.











The original buildings were all but destroyed by the British forces who liberated the camp, for one reason they were riddled with Typhoid, but also because the troops were so sickened by the atrocities they saw, they didn't want to leave any reminders. All that remains now are these Heather covered mass-grave sites which bear the number of dead that lie inside them.

A short walk away form the main camp is the Soviet Prison of War Grave which marks the site of the former prisoner of war camp. If it were possible, these poor souls were treated even worse, often being left throughout the winter months with no protection from the elements. Many thousands died of exposure and hypothermia.











The previous pics are from the soviet grave-site. The fourth one is the grave of a Georgian or Ukranian Woman who became a Guerilla fighter and fought during the Warsaw Uprising, before being captured and interred at Belsen, where she perished.

The final set of pictures I will post are from the military rail station literally 2 mins walk from my brother's house. This station is now used by the NATO forces to load/unload armoured vehicles, and so it is not used for public transport. During the war this is the point where almost all of the prisoners were brought in by train and dropped off before having to walk about 3-4 miles to get to the camp. Anyone who felt out on the way was shot. At the station the original ramp has been preserved and an original box-car used to transport people is displayed. These usually contained 40-60 people, and as you will see (with me as a scale) this must have been horiffic.

The Fatherland

So here I am guys, in lovely Germany. I must say (even though I have been here before, all be-it a fair few years back, 1989 to be precise) it is a beautiful place I am staying in, but I can't help feeling slightly caught up in history. My brother is based in Bergen-Belsen, and the NATO camp is in factt the remenants of a Training camp from WWII, most of the buildings having just been updated. The block next door to my bro's flat still has the outline of the massive eagle which used to hang above the door, and there is a huge marble swastika in the randhouse which has to be kept covered at all times.
More dramatic however is what lies just 5 mins down the road. Anyone who knows about the war may recognise the place name as somewhere where truely horrific acts took place, for Belsen concentration camp is literally within walking distance, just through the forrest. I will go there this week to look around, not sure how i'll feel about it all really. In Bergen which is the main town I saw a commemorative tree planted to remember Anne Frank who perished in Belsen, along with thousands of other Jews and POW's so the whole area is pretty spooky.

Will try and upload some pics from my phone this week too, not to be maccabre you must understand, but just to share my travels.

Mort, in a slightly retrospective mood, signing off.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Some of you may know, others might not, but tomorrow evening I fly out to Germany to spend two weeks in football heaven. Due to this fact I won't be about too much to share my witty writing talent with you all. Also, I can't be arsed to write a decent entry because i'm using my parents computer which only has dial-up connection (come back broadband, all is forgiven!!!) so each page takes three and a half days to load.

Adios Amigos.




Oh yeah, almost forgot......COME ON ENGLAND!!!

Just ask yourself one question. What would Magnum P.I do?

Well firstly apologies for not leaving a suitable post. I noticed that lots of the regulars visited and refrained from leaving a comment.....(don't worry I won't shout at any of you)...but than it wasn't really a commentable topic.

Right, lets get down to busines then shall we? Sitting comfortably? Good......

The weekend:
As most of you may have noticed, the World Cup has started. Now I am aware that not all of you are fans of football, so if I occasionally digress into a short rant about the beautiful game, then please bear with me, it might lead somewhere comedy. Then again it might not....

So I watched the England match at home on Staurday. This was probably the first time i've watched an England world-cup game at home since 1990, as usually I would go to the pub with my friends, or at least i'd be working in the bar (which is actually quite good fun, as then I can drink just as much, but also get paid for the privilage! - Note to self, never give the address for this site to my boss...). However, as I was having my usual Cameron-Day I had to stay in. At first I was a bit disappointed with this. Not because of Cameron obviously but if he decided to be a handful it would ruin the game, so my plan was to tire him out as much as possible, in the hope that he would fall asleep at 2 (Kick-off time) and sleep through most of the match. My plan backfired a little as we went into town early on Saturday and I put him in his reins for most of the trip, which he loved as he could totter about and be generally as nosey as possible, the trouble was he fell asleep as we got home (at about mid-day) and slept for 1 & 1/2 hours. Whoops! My fears, however, were not to come to fruition as he was a realy good boy and actually spent most of the match sat next to me on the sofa just chilling out.
On Saturday evening I went to work as usual. When I got there the bar was rammed full of drunken idiots blowing horns and singing football songs. O.k. i'm as big a football fan as the next man (unless of course the next man is Lama....!) but it really pisses me off when it's world cup time and the bars hammer out all the old England world-cup tunes. Most of them, at best, are truely atrocious (possibly with the exception of "Three Lions") with the rest just being an horrendous audible assault on my ear-drums.
The situation wasn't helped by the fact that my boss was shit-faced and was therefore fully in the swing, blowing his horn (ooh-err!) and dancing about like Stephen Hawking with Fire-Ants in his crotch). Still it's the world cup.....
After work I went out to the club and got thoroughly hammered, finally walking home at about 3.30am with my mate Jamie and his brother. We took a little diversion via Mucky-Mick's burger house as I was ravenous, despite the name it is a quality little burger joint tucked away next to the train station and it's open until about 6am. He only cooks to order so Jame and I had Double cheeseburgers, onion rings and hash browns which was just what I needed after a night on the lash. By the time I got home it must have been 4 in the morning, at which point, after being far too amused by poking the fat spider on the stairs with a straw, I decided to e-mail C to see how she was. Got the reply today and when i read my efforts, I instantly realised why typing whilst blind-drunk is asuch a bad thing....I kept SLIPPIng in anD OUT Of caps lettERS and sellping thnigs worng. Ho-hum....

SUNDAY:

Got woken up by a mixture of the hangover from hell, and the fiery furnace that was radiating through my unprotected bedroom window (mental note: finally purchase a blind now that it is summer..) at 10am. Got up quite quickly though as was looking forward to a day of playing footy in the sunshine. When I got down to the park, however, I discovered that there were only 5 of us playing, which was kinda disappointing, so we had to enroll some little kids into the game instead, which is always amusing. Especially when you get realy cruel and just toy with them before shooting from about 40 yards and watching the 3 foot dwarf in goal get fired back about 5 metres by the force of the shot he attempted to save (evil, I know...).
After this I went to Bridlington*


**


for a mate's birthday barbeque and got well and truely smashed again. Not bad for a weekends work I think.


* Possibly even more scummy than Scarborough, if that is possible. Just imagine Beiruit-by-the-sea with less tea-towels and more amusment arcades.

** O.k so this is actually Scraborough, but Brid is full of weirdo's like that guy. Hmmmm, nice speedos my friend!

R.I.P Big Man

Very depressing week this week. One of my all-time musical heroes passed on to the great Sound-system in the sky. The Great Desmond Dekker died of a heart-attack a week-or-so ago and the world will truely be worse off for this. Des, you were a legend. Nuff said.

In his words:
"Dem a-loot, dem a-shoot, dem a-wail, in Shanty town...."

You shall live on in my ska-filled dreams matey.