Weimar/Buchenwald

The trip to Weimar was a very interesting one. The thing that really stood out to me was the citys love and memorials to Goethe and Schiller (both did a lot of work in the city). Not only did the city have a number of statues and monuments dedicated to one or both of them, but even Cafe's and shopping areas were named after them. After many years, it is still very obvious that the city of Weimar has a lot of pride about their rich artistic history.
Although Weimar was very cool, it was a bit overshawdowed by the trip to Buchenwald, which is a concentration camp used during and after WWII. Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps to be built on German soil, housing Jews, homosexuals, prisoners of war, criminals, and other religous and political prisoners. This was personally a very sombering experience for me. It is hard to comprehend that the ground you are standing on was the place where as many as 56,000 people were treated like animals and killed. Although this number can be disputed by different historical sources, it does not change the things that happened there. The first thing that really stood out to me was the size of Buchenwald. Although most of it had been destroyed after the war, it seemed as if 25 football fields could fit in there, and it once was the site of well over 50 buildings. The next thing that really had an impact on me was the shooting slot. A prisoner would be asked to stand with his back against the wall and told that the guards were going to measure his height. Without notice, he/she would be shot in the back of the neck and killed execution style. It was a chilling reminder of how pathetically the human race can behave in some situations. Although if we don't recognize and learn from the past, we are bound to repeat it.
These are pictures of a statue of Goethe and Schiller, along with a picture of a shooting slot previously mentioned.