Reporting on history and memory in Germany

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Independent radio producer Daniel Estrin gives us the backstories to three features he reported from Germany earlier this year, all of them about history and memory in one way or another. The first is a visit to the newly-opened SS quarters at the Ravensbruck concentration camp memorial. The second is a tour of Germany’s “Central Hiding Place,” a national archive of cultural documents buried in a vault under the Black Forest. And the third is a look at the practice of recycling graves in Germany. Download MP3

Here’s an excerpt:

I remember packing up my microphone and recording equipment after an interview at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial. After talking about issues of memory and the horrors of directing a memorial site of such a horrific place, I packed up my equipment and I started walking out and I walked out of the memorial and directly into a neighborhood. I just remember walking around that neighborhood and seeing all of those manicured lawns, and sprinklers going and people walking their dogs; it just struck me, my goodness, for all the attention given to the prisoner barracks and to the actual concentration camp site, just outside the walls are homes where families used to live and families still do live. Right next to that site. And  just walking down the street wondering what the families in those houses used to think, day in and day out, just meters away from the concentration camp. You know, what was life really like? And a subject that really interests me, in connection with this piece,  what was it like for the bystanders, the Germans, the German families who lived so close to those sites, and lived every day lives?

Daniel Estrin’s stories for The World