I was convinced that everyone knew where I was going. I felt it the moment I left the apartment. I saw it in the eyes of the two brush-cut men facing me on the train, in the way the train conductor checked my ticket, in how the French tourists glanced my way as they got off the train to see the castle at Marburg. I was going another two hours to Olsztynek, to the ruins of the Tannenberg Monument – called Mauzoleum Hindenburga on Google Maps – where the Nazis held their massive rallies in the 1930’s.

There were no signs at the Olsztynek train station, nothing past the cemetery nor through the park, just an empty trail, the trees thick overhead. I glanced behind and on either side, expecting an ambush.

I came out onto a small highway, past a family in dirty clothes, filling old jars with blueberries. I offered a weak nod and thought about buying a jar and turned at a muddy road and then another before arriving at the sign.

The text was sun-bleached, almost impossible to read: During the nazi times, Tannenberg-Denkmal gained the highest rank of a nationwide monument and became a place of pilgrimage. After the war, it was completely dismantled. Only some fundments and bodies of 20 unknown German soldiers remain until today.

There was another sign up the path, in better condition, the site behind it.

The nettles were waist high, a vague beaten-down path where someone had traipsed leading in. The ground was uneven, the bugs getting in my eyes and mouth. I stopped to spit and see if I might glimpse anything, the edge of a stone, the semblance of a clearing, and went further, thinking I should turn back, the nettles tearing at my pants and shirt. A small copse of trees appeared to the left and the orange of brick. I bushwhacked straight for that, pushed back the nettles and kicked at the dirt, digging out a few heaps of smashed-up brick, a colony of red ants spilling out at their base.

The Google reviews had made it clear; there really was nothing to see. And so why? Why go to a disgraced place and dig around? Was there a message of some kind? A feeling? I considered the surrounding trees and thought about how peaceful it might have been without the bugs and nettles, the uneven ground and the nerve-rattling Feng Shui.

My map offered a brief observation: “Busier than usual”. I didn’t know what to make of that. Was one person really busier than usual? Do we just want to forget all of this, not dwell on how the Nazis tore societies apart with their violence and anger? I suppose that might be a fair sentiment just as long as someone a hundred years from now doesn’t have to go looking for similar ruins at Mar-a-Lago.