[Rick Lee]

Some other cool trips. I went swimming the Dnieper near Kiev (just downstream from Chernobyl) and there were still German tank turrets sticking out of the water.

I went to a super exhibit in Halle (E. Germany) called "Crimes of the Wehrmacht", which had some very moving photos and official documents, ordering all kinds of bad things.

Warsaw Ghetto Museum moved me more than Auschwitz did. I stayed at some old lady's house nearby and she was obviously old enough to have lived through it all, but spoke not a word of German or English. The last day I was there she had some other old lady friends over and one of them was from Danzig and spoke perfect German. She translated as the hostess told us about watching the Germans "clean things up" after the ghetto uprising.

I've been to Buchenwald near Weimar too. It wasn't an extermination camp, but held mostly POW's. Still, they killed most of the Soviet POW's there. After the war it became a political prisoner camp for East German undesirables (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). I was there before and after the unification. Afterwards, there was a guest book there for former German political prisoners to get in touch with one another.