![]() We were approximately 30 25 or so teenagers, two parent chaperones, the teacher and myself. ![]() ![]() I am invited to join their moderated tour of the camp. I learn from their teacher that they are making a curriculum-obligated pilgrimage to this hallowed site, the only remaining structural evidence and memorial to Nazi imprisonment in Belgium. To my luck, a busload of Flemish middleschoolers burst noisily into the foyer. I buy an audio guide and prepare to tour the grounds. I walk through a gravel parking lot into a nearly-empty visitor center. Then, on a landscape cut by wooden fencing, I catch sight of Breendonk Concentration Camp, which sits like a blotch of spilled black paint in the middle of a green field. I gain a small ridge, walk past the Breendonk bed-and-breakfast. It is flat grasslands, mostly cow pasture muddy and cold. I walk half-mile out of town on a paved road that leads to the highway. The town's steeple can be seen over the roofs of the 40 or so rowhouses that make up the 'city center.' It isn't a particularly remarkable place there is a small grocer, a butcher and a residential restaurant. ![]() ![]() It is an overcast Monday afternoon in the quiet village of Breendonk, 20 minutes outside of the port city of Antwerp. ![]()
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