October 2017 Berlin and Dresden

The first weekend in October, we headed to Berlin with the Canfields !  A city filled with history.  We stayed in a hotel one block from the East Berlin Wall!  We walked down the street where "check point Charlie", the US Army checkpoint to enter East Berlin.  A little history I looked up on the internet about checkpoint charlie and the Berlin Wall:
East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Societ Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration and defection westward throught the Societ boarder system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin.  Checkpoint Charlie became a symblol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West.  Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

Tony and Steve goofing around at Check Point Charlie....

This picture below is what it actually looked like during the cold war.

The City of Berlin is very grey

This statue below is a statue erected in 1840 of Frederick II, the King of Prussia ...During WWII the statue was incased in concrete for protection.  It is to honor the King.  The figures at the bottom depict the great men of that time period.

The picture below is the Brandenburg Gate and is probably the most famous building

 in Berlin.  It was built at the end of the 18th Century under the order of the Prussian King, Friedrick Wilhelm II.  It marks the border between East and West Berlin over 25 years ago and became the symbol for the Reunification after the  fall of the Iron Curtain.

This is what it looked like in the 1930's

This picture below is the Berlin Cathedral (Dom).  A Protestant church.  There are 270 steps inside to the top of the dome - which Tony climbed!  The three of us stayed behind.  The inside was pretty ornate.

Inside the Dom


Look at that massive organ


Tony, Steve and Anita (Canfield)

This is the "Gate of Melitus" as reference in Acts 20 where the Apostle Paul ..."sent to Ephesus, and called for the elders of the church..." He then taught them and expressed his love to them and testified to them of Christ and of his love for preaching the gospel and how he has dedicated his life to this one thing....."I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.  And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake that they should see his face no more.  And they accompanied him unto the ship."  This is the actual gate that has been moved from Melitus and rebuilt with the same bricks here in Berlin for all to see.  The bricks were numbered so they could re-construct it once it got to Berlin.  Fascinating !  

This picture gives you and idea of how large this wall is (and this is only a portion of it)

We walked around with head sets to listen to the history of the wall.....see the description below this next picture for the history of how and when it was found and rebuilt.

 

These next photo is a picture of the actual entrance to the market place in Jerusalem at the time that Lehi would have left Jerusalem before its destruction 587BC.  When we looked closely, we could see where new pieces had been used to reconstruct this fabulous structure.  It is amazing to me how much was preserved after the destruction of Jerusalem in.

Tony and Anita reading and listening from Acts about the Apostle Paul

We sat outside and had a small snack while we waited to get into the museum to see the Miletus wall ..... and the birds ate from our hands!

We visited the Neues Museum in Berlin to get a look at the ancient sculpture of Nefertiti.

Neferiti is the Royal wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten.  She is considered to be one of the most famous woman of the ancient world and an icon of feminine beauty.  A German Archeological team discovered the bust in 1912 in the sculptor "Thutmose's" workshop in Amarna Egypt.  It is believed that he crafted it in 1345 BC.  This picture below, I took off the internet because, as you can see in the next picture....we had to stand quite far away to take photos of her and they didn't come out clear.  It amazed me that I was looking at a piece of art that was sculptured in 1345 BC!

My photo of Nefertiti from a distance.

The architecture in Germany is incredible and so well preserved

Tony loves a fancy car!  This was a car museum of some sort that we just happened to go in out of curiosity.  I think they were actually a dealership and these cars were for sale.

The Berlin Wall

Another picture of the Wall from a different perspective.  I am standing in East Berlin, there is the wall and West Berlin on the other side.  These people are looking at a historical display of Hitlers Atrocities ......

This picture below is one I took from the above display showing homeless Germans around 1843

Tony at the Wall

Fall is here and I could not resist taking this....this is Ivy that has turned red.....so pretty

This is the wall to a beautiful village called Dresden

We stopped on our way to Freiburg in  a town called Dresden and had lunch at an Italian Cafe where Anita could speak Italian to the waiter.

In Germany, there are many churches, this one is in the square in Dresden.  Dresden was once part of the East side of Germany and ruled by Russia.  Dresden had been badly destroyed in the bombing raids in 1945 but has undergone massive reconstruction.  This picture below is the Dresden Frauenkirche which was finished being reconstructed in   2005 for the 800th anniversary, mostly from privately raised funds.  There is a gold cross at the top of the church that was mostly funded by the British and the House of Windsor.

Inside this beautiful cathedral.  This is an Evangelist church.

Anita and Steve Canfield

We have become good friends quickly with the Canfield's and have had so many fun times with them already......  We will go home in January 2019 and they leave in February 2019.  They are from San Clemente and we plan on visiting them when we return to the States.

And.....as it so often does here....it rained!

But, with the rain and our crazy schedules .... we are having a ball and loving Europe and our time we get to serve here.

October 2017 Weimar town and Buchenwald concentration camp ***Warning..graphic photos

WARNING.....SOME PICTURES DIFFICULT TO LOOK AT......

The road through Weimar, just a few Kilometers away from the concentration camp called Buchenwald is beautiful but once you approach the camp, you get real feeling in your gut and in your heart that something horrible happened in this place.  The feeling here is very strong.  It has perhaps changed me forever.  In July 1937, the SS had a forest cleared on the Ettersberg near Weimar and built a new concentration camp.  The camp is intended to fight political opponents, persecute Jews, and exclude "common foreigners", among them homosexuals, homeless, Jehovah's Witnesses and pre-eminence,permanently from the German "Volkskoper". Buchenwald will soon become synonymous with the system of national socialist concentration camps.  

At the end of the was, Buchenwald is the largest concentration camp in the German Reich.  More than 56,000 people die from torture, medical experiments and exhaustion.  More than 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war are shot in a specially built killing facility.  Resistance fighters form and underground organization in the camp in order to curb the furiousness of the SS to its best advantage.  Nevertheless the "small camp" becomes the hell of Buchenwald.  Just before liberation, thousand of oppressed prisoners die.  

When American's reached Buchenwald and its outlying camps in April 1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower, ...writes: "Nothing has ever shattered me like this sight."

(Internet Historical Overview, Buchenwald de)

 This picture below is the walk to the "little camp" where mostly children as young as four years old were imprisoned here.  Dwight D. Eisenhower said of this camp as he saw the dead corpses lying on the ground..."I have never been able to portray the feelings that came to me as when I first witnessed such indisputable testimony of the inhumanity of the Nazi, and that they were unscrupulous about the most primitive commandments to humanity. "So far I had only known that there were camps of this kind, I knew nothing else about hearing, nothing ever shattered me as much as this sight." 

 This below is a photo I took of the remains of their eating bowls and shoes...the picture tells it all.

 Shoes

 Anita and Steve Canfield looking in disbelief

 As we walked thru the camp, many of the buildings that had been destroyed but we could see where the buildings once stood...............

 This building was used to house the sick 

 Barbed wire still remains to the entrance of the "little camp"

 Description below.........

 This picture below is one of the saddest I posted.....read the caption below the picture ... it explains this picture.....The villagers of Weimar were brought into the camp by the US army....they claimed they knew nothing........ The town of Weimar is literally walking distance from the camp!

 The small town of Weimar is just a short distance from this camp.....read the inscription below the picture.  I have such a difficult time thinking that people could watch such atrocities with no feeling of quilt or of helping in some way, even at the risk of their own lives.....why did people DO NOTHING!??????

This picture below I got from the Archives of the Buchenwald camps 10,000 photos.  This picture is a picture of men who were liberated from the "small camp" on April 16, 1945 by the American Troops.

I walked thru this courtyard and into the crematorium where I could only stand for about one minute total.....It saddened me so much to know that such atrocities could actually happen.  

 The Crematorium

 See below for the description for this photo below

As we depart the camp, we drove in silence down a beautifully fall lined road wondering how in the world did this happen?  Unbelievable.  We should never forget and EVERYONE should go to these camps to see what happened.

October 2017 Scripture discussion and good bye to sweet friends!

Saying good bye to friends who have been here for 18 months but we've only known them for 3 months is still difficult!  Dr. Done and Margie, the Swensons, the Hackings, and the Healy's.  This was our midweek scripture discussion that we have each week.  Standing is our zone leader, he and his is sweet wife Peggy are so wonderful.  We will be saying good bye to them also in the middle of October.  I did not realize it would be so difficult to say good bye to these great friends!

 Each couple as given a book with all our thoughts written to them.  These are the Swenson's, who are over all the YSA leaders throughout Europe Area.  They will be so missed!  Right after we arrived, Sharee took me to a mall to shop just to make me feel "at home"

 This is Elder Proctor (zone leader) handing Diane Hacking her booklet with our thoughts and well wishes.  She and her husband have served over all the mission presidents all over Europe.  They travel a lot.  She has been very involved in the refugees efforts here in Frankfurt.

 And, of course, there was one for the Proctors, this is Peggy receiving it from her husband.  They will be dearly missed!

 Thanks Elder Proctor for picking us up at the airport, for gathering all the missionaries when we first got here, to go to dinner with us and show us how to use the Ubahn.   Thanks for "movie nights in the Keller with popcorn!  He and Peggy are revered so highly, we all love them so much.  The couple directly behind Elder Proctor are the Lindsey's .... they just arrived last weekend.  They are the first of 7 new couples entering our mission.

 On the back couch are my dear friends, Jill (in the yellow) and Anita (in the blue)  ... In the purple is Dani Garrett, she and her husband have been here 6 months and in the front, with the red sweater is Pam Done and her husband who is the other mission doctor.  On the right, are the Von Hoffs, they got here around the same time we did and work in the technical offices. Such wonderful people!

Elder Rich thanking the Proctors for all they've done for all of us!  They will be so very much missed!