Our little town of Murnau the Blue Rider ("Blaue Reiter") artists live and worked, such as Franz Marc, Gabrielle Münter and Wassily Kandinsky. As artists and well- educated and traveled people, they were mostly apolitical but also anti-establishment: Here in this very idyllic environment of southern rural Germany they developed modern abstract painting out of a mixture of new poster art, lithography and far eastmpainting styles. It was called degenerated art ("Entartete Kunst" ) by the Nazi 10-20 yrs later. However, between WWI and WWII Murnau was a European hot spot for the art scene.
At the same time Bavaria had gone through its own communist revolution and suffered anarchy, death squads and famine between 1917 and 1925. Only known by few people Hitler in those days was first a communist agitator, part of small armed groups, soldier committees ("Soldatenräte) trying to bring about the downfall of the young democratic republic in Bavaria and Germany. He switched sides to the powerful right-wing counterrevolution being backed by royalist generals and starch conservative industry barons. One of those power brokers lived in Murnau and had major influence in making Murnau one of the early cradles of the NSDAP: the party started one of its first demonstrations in Murnau, Jews were early on threatened and deported to be killed. Hitler used Murnau as a sort of practice ground for future policy. Also in our little town, the hungarian-germanophil Ödon von Horvath predicted what finally manifested itself and wrote the world wide acclaimed book "Youth without God". Hitler chased him out of Germany. Murnau is close to the town of Oberammergau, where Hitler developed the Me- 262, this world's first mass-produced jet plane.
Visiting Dachau, the model camp opened in 1933, and specifically designed to be dehumanizing and stripping dignity away from the prisoners. When our boys have asked, "What did the Jewish people do bad to be imprisoned?", tears welled up in my eyes as I answered.
Visiting the stones upon which Hitler stood in Nürnberg, we saw where 100,000s of people gathered listening to Hitler. The Nürnberg document museum has many of the well documented horrors of the war. The place of the Nürnberg process, where the Nazis where tried and convicted as war criminals for all their crimes against humanity.
Jewish museum in Berlin which shows the history of the Jews in Germany and Europe for centuries preceding WWII, the atrocities during the war and the aftermath.
Holocaust war memorial where Eisenberg designed a maze of dark stone coffin-like structures to show how WWII introduced the idea of mass graves.
We also visited the NATO school, thanks to Commander Mark Baines. Fortunately, but not soon enough, our family saw the museum of when the allies brought down the Nazi regime. NATO still has a strong presence in Europe. It was powerful to be in the place high ranking officers from different countries gather to learn to combat modern day threats and share best practices in the hopes of collectively keeping the world a safer place.
I was pleasantly surprised to feel relatively safe in southern Germany as a Jew. We did live down the street from the neo-Nazi (NSU) office. However, they are considered a terrorist organization by Germany and the police keep a close eye on the happenings at his office. One night they barricaded it shut. I was comforted that most Germans, especially our friends, are appalled and scared by the neo-nazis. I see the NSU as the "crazies"and all societies have their crazy faction. Because the neo-nazis were down the street, I kept our religion on the QT, but I overall felt quite safe.
I hope the kids will forever remember what is was like to live in a town and country thickly ladened with history. Germany has a strong history some of which makes it proud and other parts which are shameful. Germany teaches its people the lessons from history in many different ways and clearly states that this gruesome past of WWII should never be repeated.
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