The Granite Riddle

Well, it's another one for the list.

Yesterday, I joined the church confirmation class on a trip to the Flossenbürg concentration camp memorial site. It's quite an impressive place, especially if you take the guided tour.

And by impressive, I mean horrifying. Depressing. Or, if you're like me, infuriating. About half-way through the tour, my jaw was hurting from my teeth being gritted so hard. I have a feeling that I may have been unconsciously growling. Flossenbürg was a work camp - prisoners there were quickly hanged if they needed to go quickly, slowly worked to death in the granite mines if they didn't. Thin, ragged, filthy clothes, rotten food - not just nasty, but made from rotting vegetables - no healthcare, no hygiene, all in the Bavarian mountains, where it gets freezing cold, very quickly.

Flossenbürg shows exactly what was wrong with the Third Reich, and why it is completely intolerable that similar crimes are being committed in North Korea as I write. I've phoned up the Chinese embassies in London and Berlin, and written letters to the White House, Number Ten and the German Chancellery, and if you could do the same, I think the world might be a better place - at least morally. A letter might not make much change, but Celestiadammit, it's better than sitting by and doing nothing.

Poem by 4ScarfAce4. No profits claimed.