Normandie: Additional Information

The other information I found at the Memorial de Caen didn't have items like clothing, hats, or dog tags that went with the story being told. Instead, it was plaques explaining certain pictures or specific events without visual evidence to support it. It's boring to just see a picture of a picture or of a paragraph of writing, so I'll summarize what these textual pictures say.

If any of you haven't heard of "Les Sonderkommandos," you aren't the only one. I had never heard of it, and I'm honestly surprised you don't hear more about it. Jewish people from the extermination camps were singled out for "special duties," and were put in charge of post-mortem practices. These unfortunate jobs included removing and burning the dead bodies from gassing chambers. Even worse, after performing their duties, they were killed so that nobody would be able to say what they witnessed. Any of the sonderkommando who resisted their assigned duty were killed, leaving a mere 90 survivors of the original a thousand.

Scary fact: 53 out of the 4,918 Belgian children sent to Auschwitz survived. Only about one hundred children out of 15,000 sent to Terezin concentration camp survived. A measly 200 teenagers of the 11,400 who were deported from France returned home. By the time the Nazi's reign was over, 1,250,000 children had been murdered and at the most, 120,000 were alive throughout Europe.

The estimated number of victims from the Auschwitz concentration camp alone is one million.

During World War II, Ukraine organized mass executions and "round ups" of their Jewish populations. Three years later, Hungarian forces sent 450,000 of their Jewish population to Auschwitz in a matter of 56 days.

However, the most disturbing was by far T4. T4 was an elimination program where Nazi Germany executed the physically and mentally disabled by euthanasia. The program was meant to achieve "social hygiene" and resulted in the death of 90,000 persons.

Le Mont Saint Michel

I had forgotten how amazing the Mont Saint Michel is. It's and abbey which was built in the 9th century by the bishop of Avranches. It's in Normandy (next to Bretagne), and is the most-visited monument in France after the Eiffel Tower. You'll see from the pictures that it took quite a climb to get to the abbey on top of the mountain, but it was worth it. The view and construction of everything was unexpected, and I was surprised to see eighty-year-old couples trekking up the mountain. It was a place of worship, where monks would only eat one or two times a day, and devoted the rest of their day to praying. Masses are still held there to this day.

The only problem with Mont Saint Michel is that there is one way in, and one way out. So when the day to visit Mont Saint Michel falls on the same day as the Mont Saint Michel Marathon (http://www.montsaintmichel-marathon.com/index-en.php), it's an understatement to say that traffic is awful! There were 5,000 runners who took place in the marathon, and we were lucky enough to see the end of it. It delayed us by a good 30 or so minutes, but as a former cross-country runner, I thought it was awesome to see a marathon in both a different country and at a historical monument.

Normandie: Pointe du Hoc

The last stop of the Normandy trips was to Pointe du Hoc. Pointe du Hoc is an incredibly steep cliff; while it's only four miles away from Omaha Beach (where the previous post's pictures are from), but the terrain is vastly different. This is where invading American troops shot their ropes up the cliff face and ascended. The British troops provided support from their Naval ships by firing at the top of the cliff, which kept the German army from attacking the American troops cresting the cliff. Along the clifftop, there are still remnants of the bunkers and trenches the Germans used during the Normandy Invasion.

Normandie: American Cemetery

The American Cemetery at Normandy Beach really got to me. The location itself is beautiful, since it overlooks the beaches and English Channel, but it's shocking to see how many graves there are. The gravestones list the names, infantry unit, home state, and date of death of all soldiers who died during the D-Day landing or battles shortly after. Unidentified soldiers have the inscription, "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God" on their graves. In total, there are 9,387 graves.