Thursday, June 18, 2026
It's really hot here today. Our car says it's 95. So we're heading for the mountains to try to escape the heat. The 45 minute drive will take us back 95 years, to WWII when the French and Germans were both entrenched in these mountains. The Vosges saw particularly fierce fighting in WWII. Our first stop is Schirmeck.
Warning: I cannot help but insert some political opinions in this day's blog post. What I saw and read today has many similarities to what's happening in the United States right now. Please read at your own risk. But I hope you will find this worth reading.
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| The beauty of the Vosges Mountains belies the blistering heat. |
Alsace was the only part of France annexed and so their challenges were not the same as the rest of France that was occupied, but not annexed. Hitler's totalitarian regime was especially cruel to the Alsatians. The Germans had a particular desire to keep Alsace, given the fact that Alsace became French after WWI. They were willing to expend soldiers and equipment to keep Alsace which they controlled with fear and physical force. We've seen cemeteries and plaques on buildings, and memorials in each town we visit. We know that WWII history is a community remembrance. To discover more, we headed first to Schirmeck, where there is a Memorial Alsace-Moselle museum.
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| Entrance to the Memorial Alsace-Moselle in Schirmeck. The history of this region is not just taught in school, it is inescapably lived in each town through its memorials and plaques. We frequently see school groups like these middle-schoolers at museums that keep memories alive , |
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| Looking out over Schirmeck at the entrance to the Memorial Alsace-Moselle. |
The Memorial Alsace-Moselle in Schirmeck presents the history of this region from the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 to the end of WWII in 1945.I was not prepared for what I saw here. The museum puts you into WWII, literally. Today we joined the war.
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| Photos of war victims hang above lighted displays of words, photos, and documents that bring alive the life in each of the years from 1870 to 1945. |
The introductory room’s haunting images of war victims, and panels outlining the history of this time period with words, photos, and documents, were experienced in a darkened room. Even though we know the history of the war (I am after all a French teacher), we Americans don’t know the people of this war. Here we were led through the war as experienced by the Alsatians, people like us. Alsace was the only part of France annexed and so their challenges were not the same as the rest of France that was occupied, but not annexed.
After the Franco-Prussian war, won by Germany, more than
100,000 French emigrated, many to French Algeria, rather than give up their
French citizenship. Post-WWI, the French government sent the military to quash
an Alsatian independence movement, then passed laws that ignored those of
German heritage. Recognizing the blended French-German culture of Alsace was a
blind spot for both the French and the Germans, making this border territory a
prime battle location when the Nazi government came to power. Alsace, once
more, became German.
Again, early in Germany’s annexation in 1940, families sent their
children, wives, and other family members out of the country, where they would
be safe (or at least safer). Young men of military age either joined the German
army, or tried to escape to a country like Switzerland or Tunisia. Videos of
mothers torn apart from their children were heart wrenching to see. As we
walked along the platform of a train station whose empty cars awaited bodies, I
couldn’t help but think of those brave families. Would I have made the same
choices? Would I have stayed? Resisted? Joined the Nazi party? Or left, seeking
shelter away from my home and homeland.
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| On the train platform |
We passed through the railway platform and suddenly, we were walking in the tunnels of the Maginot line. I finally understand this better. Built in the 1930s along most of France’s eastern border, the defensive system was designed to deter the Germans from attacking France. Fortified with artillery most heavily along the German and Italian borders, it left the borders of Switzerland and Belgium (the Ardennes) unprotected. The line was not just bunkers as we think of them, but underground cities made of cement, impervious to air or ground attack and protected by artillery. These tunnels had all that was needed to conduct war – weapons that could rise, shoot, then retract back into the ground, a narrow-gauge railway, telephone communications, food and beds for the soldiers. But the Maginot line was not where the Germans attacked France. The came through the poorly protected Ardennes quite easily.
Leaving the Maginot defenses, we were suddenly in a trench with the sounds and lights of bombs brightening the forest above us. We continued to walk through scenes representing what Alsatians experienced during the war as French, German, American, and British soldiers fought around them.
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| In a foxhole in the forests of the Vosges |
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| ...we pass damage from bombs. |
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| Inside a bomb damaged house |
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| Destruction of Kintzheim |
Finally, we reached 1945 and peace. The last rooms presented the beginnings of Europe when countries came together to create a united Europe, one where there would be no more wars between countries. The museum ends on a hopeful note that Europe would no longer have wars, eventually founding NATO for mutual defense. And finally, there is a reconciliation between France and Germany that allowed Alsatians to finally live in peace whatever their heritage.
As powerful as the peace message is from the Mémorial Alsace-Moselle, our next stop shows why peace and acceptance is the only answer. In nearby Struthof we visited the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp memorial.
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| The monument erected at the top of the site |
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| graves of some prisoners who could be identified |
This outdoor memorial is the site of what remains of the concentration camp and shows the atrocities that grow out of unfettered hate of "the other" Hitler had succeeded in convincing Germans that the Jews were the cause of all their economic problems and things would be better when they were all gone. (Sound familiar?) We all know the story of concentration camps. I even visited one in Germany. But here, in visiting the only concentration camp the Germans built in France, it becomes clear that by 1941 when Struthof was built, the Nazis weren't just imprisoning Jews. They were killing people they didn't like - dissidents, families of dissidents, political opposition, those stripped of German citizenship, homosexuals, criminals, and of course, Jews. By now, Hitler was purifying the population of Germany by deporting anyone unable to prove they were of German ancestry, even if born in Germany. (sound familiar?)
The concentration camp was located at Struthof so that the Nazis could use forced labor of prisoners to extract pink granite from a nearby site. But first, the camp had to be built using the prisoners as the labor force. Escape was impossible.
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| the camp entrance |
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| The camp is surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire and guardhouses |
The memorial defines a concentration camp thus: "It is a large-scale internment camp that was designed to repress all people considered to be enemies of the Nazi regime and make them work in inhumane conditions, often to the point of death."
50,000 people of 30 nationalities were deported to this concentration camp between 1941 and 1945. 17,000 died, a 40% mortality rate. Besides those who died of starvation, lack of medical treatment, exhausting work or from forced medical experiments, deportees were shot, whipped, or hung for offenses like being late to roll call, or stealing food.
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| The gallows sat in the middle of the concentration camp. |
Barracks were erected on terraces cut out of the hillside by the prisoners. Prisoners slept 3 to a bed, helpful in the Alsatian winter since prisoners wore only striped pants and a jacket whatever the weather.
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| The barracks all looked like the one at the bottom. Each of the 6 terraces had 2 barracks. |
The bottom-most building was used for admissions, and also had a gas chamber (for killing Jews) and crematorium. When prisoners died, they were tossed into a common grave. Others were incinerated, their ashes dumped below the camp, or used as fertilizer.
Like all things Nazi, repression, fear, and cruelty were used to keep people in line. Those who resisted, were different, or tried to escape were fodder for concentration camps. It was not just Jews who were persecuted in the Holocaust, it was ordinary people like you and me.
One thing that strikes me is that Europe, including France and Germany, keeps the memory of those horrible years alive in their villages and in places like Natzweiler. They face the horrors they inflicted on each other unflinchingly. The message of peace comes through these memorials. In the US, we don't have any evidence (except Pearl Harbor) of US involvement in modern warfare. Yes, we have soldiers who died, but who even knows their names. In today's world, we are quick to cast blame, openly spread racism, deport those we don't like, and quick to divide "them" from "us".
What I saw and learned today is a reminder of the fragility of humanity. That one man could change the minds of an entire country is a powerful warning. "A republic if you can keep it" said Benjamin Franklin after the signing of the Constitution in 1787. Can we keep our republic?
