Trinity Students January 31, 2009

Wow, each day brings more interesting and exciting things. As we left the hotel in Spremberg this morning, we met a man who had been 11 years old at the time of the march. He vividly remembered the POWs coming in that cold winter and he helped to feed them soup. He met us at the railroad station (the one for loading baggage) and showed us where our fathers got in the boxcars. He was as excited as we were to talk about it. He had a friend who had been a German prisoner who was held in Arkansas. He brought a carving of an eagle that his friend had made while he was a prisoner and also a pocket watch his friend had bought. He wanted us to have them. We will try to find a museum that could use some things about the German POWs.

Then we went to Dresden. What a beautiful city. In one of the main parts of the city is a statue of Martin Luther. Dresden was very heavily bombed in February, 1945 and one of the casualties was a huge Lutheran Church. For many years they left it in rubble as a reminder of the war, but then decided to rebuild. They used computers and archeologists to figure out where some of the stones they still had should go. Now the church is rebuilt. You can tell which stones are originals, because they are black, because they were burned in firestorms.

It was a long bus ride to Nurmberg but I am very excited about being here. Our hotel is in a 500 year old building inside the walls of the "old city". The streets look just like the town in the flannelgraph we use to tell the story of Martin Luther in school. Tomorrow we will try to go to church at one of the Lutheran Churches here. We have a big job, though. No one is sure where Stalag 13D was located. Of all the people on the trip, only 2 fathers were held here, so we have our work cut out for us.

I hope the academic team did their best today. I was thinking of them!

More tomorrow--God's Blessings!
Mrs. Maurer
To see pictures of Flat Stanley's adventures, click here