first.

The houses on the hills were covered in mist, smoke drifting from the roofs. In modern times, there is no house in this country that does not use electric or gas heaters. But on a winter afternoon like this afternoon, burning a few logs in the fireplace is kept as a place for the past to return to, with stories about the chimney sweep, about Santa Claus, about the ghost wind… and sipping. Sipping a hot cup of coffee and a few freshly baked cookies on Advent week before Christmas is very enjoyable. It’s even more interesting when suddenly the first snowflakes of the season fly past the door frame.

Limburg is a tourist city whose satellites are other lovely and beautiful cities

The squirrel used to holding round chestnuts in the middle of the garden. The small non-migratory bird, escaping from the cold, pecked at the bag that the homeowner had very thoughtfully hung on some dry branches. The hedgehog struggled to dig through a nest of leaves at the end of the garden to find shelter. Time suddenly seemed to slow down following the uncertain fall of the first snowflakes of the season.

Suddenly I remembered that just a few months ago, I was reeling from the heat that made my whole body hot, amidst the noise and the bustling pace of life in my hometown. Returning to the present, I felt like I was living in an unusual world, because so peaceful.

The year-end sunset in this place comes early. Going down the small slope with the Lahn River flowing between the two mountain banks, carrying purple steam on the water surface and yellow river banks, cold hands want to find a place to warm. A couple of motionless shapes under an old tree.

These are guys who love fishing. If you are clever at flirting, instead of catching the fish and releasing it into the river to swim, they will give you a bucket, in which there are several fish the size of your biceps waving.

2.

The sound of the bell bounced off the rocky shore and into the riverbed, calling people to wake up from their memories. The solemn church is located on the highest rock peak in the city. In the afternoon mist, it looks like it is floating above the ground. Traveling on the highway across Europe and Asia, few people fail to notice this massive cathedral.

There may be another reason: when the DM coin was still circulating on the market, this beautiful church was on the 1,000 DM coin. That’s awesome, if you know that everywhere you go in this country, you will see castles, churches, old towns, some of them old, some seven hundred years old.

Ancient bridge spanning the one-time Silk Road – the Lahn River

The city is small but famous for its extremely majestic church and the poetic name of the Lahn River as an echo of its hometown, the Silk Road connecting two once prosperous economic centers of Europe (Frankfurt and Amsterdam). , thanks to the bridge across the river, the tax filing stop for merchant boat owners at that time.

Guarding the other end of the bridge leading into the old town is not a watchtower, but a hotel famous for having the honor of hosting Marshal Blücher – a character who gave Napoleon a good beating.

Limburg is a tourist city whose satellites are other beautiful, beautiful cities. Bad Camberg has hot springs and sanatoriums, high hills and very peaceful ancient towers. Weilburg, located in the middle of the valley, where the autumn leaves turn red on all sides, is famous for its ancient citadel and baroque architecture, so it is also called the baroque city.

Every summer, Weilburg has many white nights, not really Northern white nights, but white nights of music. Tourists coming to Limburg cannot help but go to outdoor concerts in Weilburg. And Hadamar is famous throughout Germany for its stained glass factories with the ability to refract glorious light, which today we often see on many ancient cathedral walls.

Belonging to another state but next to Limburg, the pace of life here is so closely linked to Limburg that for a time people were considering merging these two administrative units, Diez, the former hometown of the Dutch royal family today and the birthplace of the Dutch royal family. pilgrimage of many Dutch tourists.

3.

Bombs fell on this city half a century ago. Many streets were destroyed, only to be hastily rebuilt after the war. Limburg, therefore, like many European cities, has two faces, each with a shadow of history, both proud, shameful and painful.

Limburg, like many European cities, has two faces, each with a shadow of history, both proud and shameful and miserable.

Opposite the city courthouse, which was lucky enough to survive a terrible bomb attack and still have its mark in the memories of the elderly, is a small sign stating that there used to be a Jewish church here in the past. Before World War II, 15,000 Jews lived in this place, then died in the crematoriums of the Nazi regime.

Scattered throughout these cities, there are many places that tourists do not know, and not many residents know about them. Wandering around Diez, you can immediately see the massive castle on a peak of the city, which was a prison for criminals. You can also ask any resident of this place about the one-time domain of the Dutch royal family. There is also a small alley with worn stairs, where one night several decades ago Jewish children were led away at gunpoint.

Ten years of living in Limburg, ten days of giving birth at Hadamar Hospital, I hesitated so many times, and then on the day of leaving I still couldn’t get to a place, because of fear.

In the hospital grounds there is a memorial room for those who died in this place. 24,000 people, approximately the current number of residents of the city. Is there any hospital in the world with such a terrible death toll? 24,000 mentally ill people were brought here and thrown into the crematorium, to purify German blood according to the Nazis’ crazy racial views. Their ashes have mixed into the soil all over the fields here.

How many times have I driven on the highway through fields of sunflowers and yellow mustard flowers, and I’ve wondered if that ash is still there? I asked the people here at that time if they knew. In the afternoons sitting at the dining table, hearing the smell of smoke in the wind, do you know that it is the smoke burning the bodies of murdered people?

The old man of the house, my children’s opa, a venerable Protestant bishop who was only seven years old in those years, remained silent for a moment before replying: “We know everything. But fear…“. I think I understand this fear very well. To overcome it, sometimes one life is not enough. Just like I still couldn’t find the courage just to bow my head in front of the memorial stele placed in the middle of an empty room. New or past is also a historical challenge, requiring people to face, repent, and liberate themselves.

4. When we were in Limburg, during our weekend walks, we often stopped by the road leading to a beautiful little village. Among the vast flowers and grass, there is a small cemetery. The steles erected there do not reveal much about the person lying below: name, age, hometown unknown. They are not Germans. They were French and Russian prisoners of war during World War II who were brought to these villages as laborers, then left their bodies here.

In front of many graves there are bouquets of dead flowers from villagers or passersby. Many of them were lucky to live through the war. Every year, that small village is filled with good news and meetings. The former prisoners brought their whole families to meet their benefactor.

We have to look out at the fields once covered with crematorium smoke, we have to look at the tears rolling down their wrinkled cheeks to see the preciousness of the lives they have regained for each other, to understand each other’s love and compassion. How simple and boundless human gratitude truly is.

I lived in that city for ten years. I have lived in my hometown for thirty years. Every land is heavy with love, heavy with meaning, heavy with sadness. History does not fade if people do not intend to ignore it or intentionally forget it.

Dom – Limburg cathedral seen from below close to the river bank

After all, history is not only found in books, on the internet or in media programs. History is always carried through specific, intimate people living around us. It could be a silent memory, a habit from the miserable days of our grandparents. These may be stories and calculations that contain some nonsense from our parents. These may be the behavioral demands of previous generations, which to us are often unreasonable… History, simply life itself, is multifaceted, ambiguous, not easy to judge, creating a misty soul. the distance of the regions we pass through.

The old bishop, my child’s opa, was deeply attached to the city of Limburg but was not born in the city. During a coffee session, he showed me photos of his hometown – a city that was completely destroyed in World War II and hastily rebuilt, so it was somewhat characterless. But there was one photo that forced me to pause for a long time.

Photo of the cemetery gate, where his relatives are buried, who died along with 12,000 others in an allied aircraft bombardment of the city. Three symbols, three fake tombs made of black stone, with human figures carved on them. Like a family, father, mother, children. They lay on their backs, looking at the sky. The sky in the photo is blue and high. The eyes of the person lying there, I don’t understand whether they are calm or painful, whether they are helplessness or resentment. The dead come out of their graves, not questioning people but just quietly looking back at this whole life.

Our lives will be heavier but also more beautiful, when between this sky and earth, wherever we live and know, the sky is higher than the earth is thicker, because of simple, bitter lives. spicy, persistent, buried.

To me, it is the history of each region of memory.

Like Limburg.

Le Minh Ha Photo: Do Quang Nghia