Hansestadt Gardelegen

In 1945 as the Nazis were retreating, they brought with them the inhabitants of concentration camps on death marches. One such death march ended up in Gardelegen, a small town in between Hamburg and Berlin.

As the concentration camp prisoners were slowing down the Nazi's retreat, they decided to eliminate them, before moving on. They stuck them in a barn on the outskirts of Gardelegen on the Isenschnibbe manor. They burned the barn and shot anyone trying to escape. Afterward they hastily buried the bodies and retreated.

My grandfather was a US soldier during World War Two, and came across this scene. This was the first instance of the allies finding out what was really going on in Europe, and what the Nazis were doing other than just harassing Europeans. I say first instance, but I mean it for the soldiers, not the governments, who I'm sure knew about the atrocities going on. The event was traumatic for my grandfather, as it would be for any sane man, and it was the last place he was stationed until the war ended.

The US soldiers gathered the inhabitants of Gardelegen and ordered them to dig up the bodies and give them proper funerals.

Tomorrow (or rather, in 9 hours) I'll be leaving for Gardelegen (a six and a half hour train ride), to visit this site. My grandfather was a pretty big deal to me, and I'm glad to be able to visit the same place he did 64 years ago.

Tschüss

P.S. You can read more about it here.