Today in all of Germany is Volkstrauertag or, roughly, the equivalent of the American 'Memorial Day'. It began as a way to remember the soldiers of WWI; later used to remember WWII; and sometimes used by others to remember 'all the dead'.
I remember reading an Ensign article from Pres. Monson where he explained how he likes to visit graveyards wherever he goes - I was like 'I do too!' Odd habit, I know, but I like it - I find peace there.
This is a graveyard by 'the big blue box' that I study at in Potsdam. Instead of waiting 15 minutes at the bus stop I like to take a little walk into the graveyard...
This is the graveyard chapel....
German graveyards are VERY well cared for (if the family doesn't pay their grave plot bill, the gravestone is removed and the burial plot made ready for somebody else - yeah, limited land = interesting ways of dealing with death...anyway...)
I spoke in my last post about Kristallnacht and the effects that it had on the Jews of Germany. Now I want to share some effects WWII had on the German people themselves, especially 'my' German refugees...
Here in the graveyard is a 'War-Time graveyard'. Several of these graves are unknown soldiers, many very young.
1) What a loss and what a waste! That is sad enough that people lose their lives, but young men in the 'prime of life'.... ?
2) This in particular I find sorrowful. This row includes a family of father-mother-and 3 children (the oldest 7 and the youngest 3)! A whole family dead and buried here amongst the war dead. (From my interviews I can only imagine several possible ways they died...)
My point in showing this and this is what I am hoping people learn from my research: war hurts everyone! In the US growing up 'Germans = Nazis' and as Germans 'all were guilty', but the more I learn of the effects of WWII on Germans, etc. I have to ask 'what is the 7-year old girl buried with her parents 'guilty' of?'
The point of points is that hopefully you will go back in my blog and look at my 'Soviet War Memorial' post - 'add' it to the 'Kristallnacht' post - and then 'add' it to this post (German civilian dead and German dead in general) and for us all to come to the same conclusion:
WAR IS STUPIDITY with WEAPONS and HATE and brings us NOTHING!!
So on this Volkstrauertag, after talking with so many German refugees about their mothers/aunts/sisters being raped and killed by Soviet soldiers; realizing that those same Soviet soldiers' families were probably killed or starved by Nazis troops; and then seeing the graves of children; hearing about the hundreds of thousands killed by bombing raids in Britain and Germany, I would like to suggest....
'WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING!' ....
WAR = EVIL
WAR = STUPIDITY
WAR = WASTE
WAR = HATE
WAR = DESTRUCTION
and something I don't want and that I want to stop!
