June 28, 2025 visited the Veste Oberhaus, a castle fortress built in 1219. Spectacular views of…read morethe city of Passau in Bavaria overlooking the Danube river. I hiked the 300 stairs carved into the stone. Steep climb, with hand railings, but little cover in the 90 degree weather. Curved castle towers and turrets with archery slit openings, and battlements and notches along the top of the walls for archers to shoot down on attackers. Top of the hill had a restaurant, small museum, courtyard and observation tower, along with a parking lot for visitors, leading to a road going behind the castle back into town. I was almost alone in hiking up to the top by stairs, as everyone else took the public bus on the road behind the castle. Had to cross the bridge over the Danube to reach our Viking river cruise boat docked.

Beautiful historical castle with an excellent very comprehensive museum of Passau spanning from the…read morebeginning to present. Interestingly, however, the history that deals with Passau's WWII history is off in a separate room. Being ignorant of Passau's history during this time, I found it first amusing that it appeared to blame America's stock market crash as being the trigger that sent Germany into the arms of Hitler. Way to blame big bad America for causing them to cross that line! Even more curious however was how there was zero mention of Passau's role in the Holocaust. This wouldn't have been such a glaring omission if the museum hadn't been so beautifully detailed in every other part of ots glorious history so I was curious to find out more. And boy did I learn more! Not only were hundreds of its own residents sent to Dachau and other camps I discovered there was even an award winning book and movie written based on this rampant denialism. (Author, Anna Rosmus: "Out of Passau: Leaving a City Hitler Called Home" and Academy Award nominated "The Nasty Girl".) In her book Rosmus describes how she came face to face with evidence that common "middle-class" Catholic Passauers had committed many violent anti-Semitic crimes and faced a stubborn bureaucracy that blocked her every attempt to access archives, files, and photographs to document the atrocities. I've always been impressed by how well many other German cities and public institutions have diligently tried to come to terms with its awful past but Passau unfortunately isn't one of them.