Nuremburg - day 2

On Saturday November 28th we woke up to snow on the ground!!!  We were all really excited!

So what do you do when there is snow?!?  You have a snow ball fight of course!!!

Dad and Mom of course had to get into the fight as well!!!

We decided to head to the Nuremberg Trials Courtroom.  In here 21 Nazi war criminals stood trial before an international tribunal of judges.  After a year of trials and deliberation, 12 Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, 3 were acquitted, and the rest were sent to prison.

This is the main entrance for the ones who stood trial.  It has a medusa head in the middle.  It has Eve handing Adam a fruit from trees of knowledge which symbolizes fall from grace.  On the left is the sword which symbolizes Germanic law.

While the trials were going on, the prisoners stayed here.  You can see they didn't want the prisoners to talk to each other or have any sort of interaction so they couldn't conspire.

This is the man who started the Red Cross.

The boys listening to all the information on the Nuremburg trials.  I am glad they are at least a little bit interested in the history.

This is how they brought all of the evidence to the trials.

Here is a picture of the courthouse from 1945.  You can see the glass in the back of the room - that is where the interpreters worked.

These are two of the original benches from the trials.

Here you can see the prisoners coming into the courtroom with the military in their white helmets guarding them.

These are the three top guys that they weren't able to bring to trial.

Here you can see the doors of where the prisoners were behind.

This is one of the prison cells.  It is 9.5 meters squared and the bathroom was positioned so they could always see the prisoner's feet.

The boys playing with the old electrical system for the courtroom.

Here you can see a bird's eye view of the courtroom.  Where the boys were playing with electrical  stuff, there were benches for the VIPs  and others to sit.  This courtroom is still in use to this day.

After all that history the boys needed to blow off a little energy, so they found the little bits of snow that was left and had another snowball fight!

Next we decided to take David to the Nazi Documentation Center.  We had been there before, but thought it was so great that he needed to see it.  Look at that smile on Michael's face, so excited!!!

Michael checking out the different types of money under the floor.

AJ looking at a set up of a battle.

At this point the boys were still interested in some of the information even though they had heard it before.

This is the fire that ultimately put Hitler into power.

It truly is amazing to me how many people LOVED Hitler, they flocked to him.

David standing next to Hitler, kind of creepy, not David but Hitler right there.

This is Zeppelin Field - the picture doesn't do justice at the magnitude of how many soldiers are there.

This was to be one of Hitler's grand buildings.  The plans were never finished because the money dried up when the war started turning.

David and the boys outside in the center of the building.

This track was built in 2010 for the 175th anniversary of trains.  Because they used trains to transport Jews and prisoners, they wanted to build this as a memorial.  It is a 40 meter railway that has 60,000 cards and bears names of person, origin, date of birth and date of death and each name stands for 100 more.  It would need to be 4 km long for all the people exterminated, over 6 million murdered.

We decided to head over to Zeppelin field and the boys wanted to stop and write their names in the snow and do a little drawing.  Who am I to say no.

This is looking back on the documentation  center.

These are some of the entrances into the field.

As you can see it was starting to get dark.  It took us a little longer to get there and it gets dark so early this time of year.  But you can still see the road that the US used as a runway right after WWII.

You can barely see Michal and David up where Hitler used to stand to make his speeches.  Behind that was the big swastika that was bombed off by the US.

My boys on the steps - how I LOVE these boys!!!!  After that we headed back to the apartment for dinner and some more games.

The next morning we packed up and decided to go back to the market for one last look.  Here the boys are with an accordion playing Santa.

The boys running off some energy before we have to get back into the car.  Michael has some hops!!

AJ has some hops as well!  We had a great time and loved being just the four of us as a family.  David was excited to see both towns and one bonus in Nuremburg there was a "box." David was able to check out the crossfit gym and get a t-shirt in the process, a win-win for us all!!!