Nuremberg

A sobering tour today in Nuremberg, Germany.  We visited several infamous sites related to Nazi Germany with an excellent guide.  The first picture in this collage is the shell of the Congress Hall -- an enormous building that was never completed, but was meant to serve as a congress center for the Nazi Party.  It is located at the entrance of the Nazi Party rally grounds -- an immense area covering some 11 square kilometres, earmarked for rallies and parades.

I kept thinking about the Wizard of Oz and his Emerald City as I gazed at the intimidating exterior of the Congress Hall, with its stern granite facade based on the Coliseum of Rome.  That facade is just that -- a thin exterior skin of stone covering a more pedestrian brick shell.

The middle picture shows the grandstand at the Zeppelin Field, where Hitler would make appearances and speeches.  The grandstand is famous as the building that had the swastika blown from atop it in 1945, after Germany's fall in World War II.

The third image is of the exterior of the Court House in Nuremburg where the famous trials took place in Courtroom 600 after the war.  (See extra for a shot of the famous courtroom itself).  It was very sobering to be there and imagine those trials being conducted.

Although it was positively creepy to visit these places, I'm glad they are preserved, and hope that their continued existence serves as a reminder that this appalling human tragedy should never happen again.