On a peaceful June night last summer, I nearly dove out of bed at the wailing of an air raid siren. (Though it was news to me, such sirens are commonly used to summon volunteer firefighters in small towns). But for a minute, I was panicked. What was that terrible noise? Were we about to be bombed? Fortunately, I learned about the German fire department’s way of doing things, but then I put my imagination to work. Was this what it would have been like to have lived here eighty years ago? To be going about the day, then hear the siren and have to scramble for shelter? Is this what people in Ukraine are going through currently?
Since I’ve been working on a fiction story set in the late 1930s, I’ve been trying to soak in all this history. From the sirens, to German folk music, to Brezeln and traditional Bavarian outfits. However, you can’t talk about Germany’s history without bringing up a dark and horrifying time period.
Sometimes, history feels very tangible… and then other times, it doesn’t feel real. I recently had an opportunity to visit Dachau, one of the largest concentration camps still standing. I thought I would feel more disturbed than I actually did—perhaps the effect of having visited places like Disneyland or Universal Studios, where rooms are simply sets. With students on field trips laughing in the background, the thought of thousands of people dying on the Dachau property was hard to picture.
(Except perhaps in the gas chambers, which did feel eerie).
However, it was much more shocking to discover that Hurlach (the quaint and friendly town I’m staying in), also had a Concentration Camp (a subcamp of Dachau). Hurlach today is beautiful and peaceful—very different than the town of eighty years ago.
I visited the site of the Hurlach camp (no physical buildings remain), and it was easy to imagine the townspeople looking the other way, not out of heartlessness… but sheer fear. Even though no country is perfect, I feel very privileged to have grown up feeling safe. And even now, I do feel very safe in Germany. (When a country learns from history, a lot can change!)
In addition to Holocaust information, I find it interesting to hear about certain German towns being older than others because of bombings by the Allies. Just the fact that you can still find shell debris or bullets in fields is hard to wrap my head around. The places I bike past on a sunny afternoon were once war zones.
Yet, perhaps that is also a hopeful thought. Even the people who are currently in war-torn places, like many of the Ukrainians I’ve gotten to know, could still see a drastically different landscape within their lifetime. God-willing.
Do you have a favorite historical period?