Rainy, somber and sobering Nuremberg

by Jim Bellomo | Dec 9, 2023 | Photography

Our room was as bad as I described in the previous post. It turns out that on our floor, they had all the hallway lights turned off, so it felt like you were marching down a corridor to your cell. There are still some really tiny rooms and even smaller bathrooms. Steve and Jamie had warned us to be careful because the floor was slippery when getting out of the shower. They were worried we might fall on the floor. When they said that I was amazed because I hadn’t seen a floor in the bathroom…it was that small. And the place has only ONE elevator for guests. Talk about lines.

We did get a decent night’s rest, found out the breakfast buffet isn’t equal to the Marriott in Prague and then I even got to go out (before it started raining) and shoot a few photos. They are below in the first gallery.

We were all (as was everyone else going on our longship) signed up for the included walking tour of old town Nuremberg. So off we went with our guide in some pretty bitterly cold temps. It was a tour with a short amount of walking (you can probably see every street in the Old Town in less than two miles of walking) and a lot of just standing in the wind and the cold and eventually the rain listening to our guide…who BTW, was very good. About halfway through the tour, the cold got to Kathleen’s sore knees, so I walked her back to the hotel and used the Find My app to find my brother, and I rejoined the tour.

The tour finished at the downtown Christmas Market. Now, this was a Christmas Market. Comparatively speaking, this one made the ones we saw in Lisboa and Prague look small. And lots of things to buy as opposed to the majority of stalls just being food. I took some photos while we did this tour, which are below. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Steve and Jamie decided to hang out at the Christmas Market and get lunch at a nearby restaurant, so I walked back to the hotel and got Kathleen, and we had lunch on our own. We found a little place in Old Town that looked good…and it was. We both loved what we ordered. Kathleen got the schnitzel, and I got the Sauerbraten. Both were out of this world. Add in two really great German beers, and it was a lunch fit for a king and queen. Having lunch on our own is a big deal for us on December 8th. We call it Magic Day. It’s the day, way back in 1997, when we first met in person (after corresponding for three weeks online). We say it was “magic.”

After lunch came the somber and sobering part of our day. I had signed up for a Nuremberg’s Place in WWII tour. Some of you may not know this, but my college degree is in History and Political Science. So, I am an avid history person. Or at least I used to be. In my sophomore year in college, I had a professor named Dr. Reccow. I still consider him the best instructor I had during my college experience. He taught History, and his favorite was European History of the 20th Century. He was in his late 60s when I took his classes (I took every class he taught), and he was a survivor of the Holocaust. He was also an amazing lecturer. He taught his classes with such drama, describing the horrors, tragedies, and triumphs as well. We watched numerous documentaries about Hitler’s rise to power, the horrible things he and the Nazis did, as well as many of them getting their final justice here in Nuremberg.

To be honest, I was expecting this four-hour tour to be mostly about the post-war trials because I did not realize how much of a part Nuremberg played in Hitler’s rise to power. Our first stop was at Zeppelin Field. As soon as the bus pulled up, I knew where we were. In the countless documentaries I have seen of Hitler speaking, he was standing on the podium of this gigantic field. He held his largest rallies here. It could hold almost 200,000 people. More like 200,000 sheep listening to him spew his hatred. This was the start of his power, and he directed his master architect, Albert Speer, to build these gigantic edifices to honor him and his horrible ideas. It was truly sobering to be at the place where what I consider to be the worst evil the world has ever known all started.

We also toured an unfinished indoor Colosseum that Hitler had started constructing, but it was never finished. It was built to house winter rallies when the weather was like what we were experiencing by then—heavy rain and bitter cold.

Inside a very small part of this half-built edifice (you will be able to see the size of this space in my photos below) is an exhibit that tells the story of Hitler’s rise to power as it relates to Nuremberg. The exhibit was divided into four parts, encompassing the years between the end of World War I and the end of the Nuremberg War Crimes trial in 1946.

I almost forgot to mention that we had one of the best guides I have ever had toured with, leading us through these dark and horrible places. Werner was a guide from a non-profit organization called History For All. Their goal is to educate all people about the evil that grew, existed and was finally brought to justice here in this city. He did an amazing job of doing that, and I found myself hanging on to his every word. He knew his history, and like Dr. Reccow, he did an amazing job telling it to us and making it come alive.

After we had toured the exhibits, we were back on the “luxury motor coach” to cross Nuremberg to see the courtroom where all this hatred and horror finally got justice. On every bus ride we took, Werner would fill us in either with more history or with his thoughts on his city. It was so clear what a passion he had for his work of educating people about the Nazis. One of the reasons he said that his organization was founded is that following the war, most Germans just didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Many expressed total disbelief that the Holocaust had even happened. So they started this organization (History For All) to make sure that people knew and, more importantly, remembered what had happened. And as Werner said, today we. have the rise of the neo-Nazis who believe that maybe (in some ways) Hitler was right. Let me just state right here that Hitler was NEVER right. Not in any way. And no one should want history to repeat itself.

Another thing I fully realized (of course, I knew this prior to our visit) is how much the rhetoric, ideas and tactics of Donald Trump and his ilk around the world are very much like those Hitler employed. Only Hitler used radio, newspapers and public speeches, and today’s leaders use the internet.

Something I learned that I had never thought of before was that not only did the trials at Nuremburg seek to provide justice and punishment to the Nazis but they also established four areas of crimes that had not been considered in the same way before. The Nazis tried at Nuremberg were tried for “(1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war), and (4) “a common plan or conspiracy to commit” the criminal acts listed in the first three counts.” (My source for these four crimes is here.)

Before the trials, none of these were considered punishable crimes. There were no “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity.” Now there are. And now, African dictators and leaders like Putin can be put on trial for these offenses. Hopefully, that will happen to our “friend” from Russia someday as well as many other dictatorial rulers from around the world.

Getting down off my soapbox, here are the photos I took inside the famous Courtroom 600, where the trials were held, as well as stuff I took earlier in the day. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After we visited the courthouse, we went back to the hotel to try and find someplace for dinner. IMPORTANT ADVICE: If you ever come to Nuremberg at Christmas, make sure to pre-book reservations for dinner. We could not find a single restaurant with an opening in the Old City. That meant another lousy meal (especially the service) in the hotel bar. The hotel restaurant was even totally booked.

After dinner, I went back to take photos of the lights in the Christmas Market but was sadly disappointed that almost all their lights were exactly the same color…gold. So far, the lighting award goes to Lisboa. Here the pics I took that night. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.  —Adolf Hitler