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We left Berlin to spend two days in Leipzig. We moved from one spacious, luxurious apartment to another. On the train, we seated ourselves in the first 6 seat compartment available. Others joined us. Then a blind man with a black Lab dog entered. Inappropriately, we were sitting in an area for the handicap which kind of fits us. The blind man without hesitation asked us where we came from. From that nice gesture, we conversed for the rest of the trip. He was born prematurely and had vision in only one eye. He then lost that vision about 13 years ago. He told us the history of guide dogs and how they were started after WWI because so many soldiers came back blind. He is a researcher on Nordic history. Time flew by.
Our apartment is close to the train station and has an interesting way of acquiring the key. First there is a code for the front door. Once in you go to a key lock box and enter another code and the key is released. The beautiful, large apartment is on the third floor and has a living room, bathroom, kitchen and bed room.
Leipzig is known as the city of music. The musical composers that lived and worked here: Bach, Wagner, Clara and Robert Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Hanns Eisler, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi, and Albert Lortzing . It is also the home of Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Leipzig Opera that date back to the 1600’s. It is also a city known for its history. It is here where 70,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate for freedom of speech, assembly and travel that brought down the collapse of the soviet regime and the Berlin wall.
Sight of the peaceful revolution
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum
Crowds enjoying daily brew.
St. Nicholas Church. Peaceful Demonstration
Former central place of executions for the GDR
Bright and cheery store Pylones
Shop Door
We had one last memorial to do and that was Ravensbruck Women’s Concentration Camp. Ravensbruck is located about an hour outside of Berlin in a beautiful village up in the lake country. We took the regional train and got off in Furstenberg/ Havel. We walked about 3 km to the enterance. This was the largest concentration camp for women on German soil. From 1939 to 1945 there were 132,000 women that went through their gates and 1000 young girls. They eventually added a men’s prison for labor. These women and men came from 40 different countries. There were Jews and Gypsys as well as resistance fighters from all over Europe. The prisoner’s life was marked by slave labor. There were four SS run companies where they were forced to work. They established brothels using the women as prostitutes and did medical experiments on the women. Once again the stories and pictures are very powerful. The inspirational stories ordinary women and girls willing to hide people, fight the Nazis to those that were imprisoned because of their faith or origin.
A view toward a church!
Flowers growing in the ashes of those cremated
Industrial Area
SS Officer’s housing
View from Officer’s housing
Female guards homes
Now converted into Youth Hostile
Where they came from
We all got off at this station; fortunateely, Joan and Stu got back on..