Ohrdruf, Germany

This was a really special trip taken with Lacey and her parents. I will write more about this when I'm convinced I'm not going to screw this up via the website web tools.. :)

I wrote the above sentiment.. that I would write more.. nearly 3 years ago. Crazy how the time flies. Well, I can’t do a worse job of this than I did 3 years ago so let’s give it a shot…

Claudia is my mother-in-law. Her father, Howard Dietz, served in Patton’s Army and liberated the concentration camp located in Ohrdruf, Germany when he was serving in WWII. He somehow made it home to the US with his photos intact, developed on small, thick film that resembles a mini-Poloraid. They’re disturbing photos, which I had scanned and enlarged and will post below (after a warning about their graphic nature). He passed away in 2014 or 2015 (my memory is shite for details like this).

This trip was special for a number of reasons, but mainly because we were retracing some of Howard’s steps, from the crossing of the Rhein River all the way to his stop in Eisenach. We were also doing this around his birthday, which he shares with Lacey. Our goal was to go see Ohrdruf. What we didn’t know initially is that is it currently an active German military base, and civilians (much less foreign civilians) are not allowed to visit… with a couple of very specific exceptions. Exceptions we qualified for.