August 6: More Nazis, Some Stasi

“Abort” was a German word used during WWII for toilet because all German words at the time were words derived from Ally languages. Am I amidst Nazi German ghosts? It’s eerie in here with the dull walls and lackluster lighting, suspicious entrances and exits; this place has a history, which would give it wondering spirits. Maybe. If this place is haunted, they’re ghosts whose pasts I don’t agree with—so this is something I’d definitely dub worth my while.

“There are horror stories of women being raped 40 times in a row,” our guide tells us. His name is Robin Williams. I don’t want to forget that. That’s the thing, though. The poor people stuck in here were probably scared and miserable. Though I think they were wrong in their war stance, they were still people with lives and feelings who could (and probably did) suffer. I usually find it easy to practice compassion but it’s shocking how artificially it comes to me with regard to World War II Nazi Germany.

We examined a board game, which showed what to do in an air raid. 1940’s German was filled with propaganda/pop-culture Nazi messages. It’s becoming clearer to me what leverage the movement had over its people. It’s so easy to understand how they got people on the bandwagon. Starting kids at suck an early age—is this brain washing? And if it is, then what exactly makes it any different from what we learn as children in our American upbringing, what we see on TV, and the types of messages in our music? From that, what exactly defines culture? It’s a very compelling complex.

The Stasi Museum simply smells like the 70’s. It is set in the old bureaucratic building used by the Stasi in the 1920’s-1980’s, which is pretty clever. I’m enjoying the whole on-site museum thing in Germany. One thing I think is note-worthy is that everyone talks about the wall, communism, the Stasi…all these things that have changed so drastically since 1989 or so like the change was so necessary and so called for (which it was) but 1989 was only 20 years ago and these events are discussed like they’re “of course”-type change. It’s almost synonymous to the way slavery is discussed in the US.

Are we so aching for history? Would this be considered ‘instant’ history? It’s just so entirely recent, you’d think there wouldn’t be an audience. But alas, there is…