Berlin : Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Finally picking up my blog again ! Anyway, about my trip :

On April 27, we went on a concentration camp tour. The camp is called the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. If you go to Germany, it’s just what you do. To learn from our mistakes, we must face them.

I thought that as soon as I stepped foot in the camp I would be overcome by emotion and I would finally understand the scope of the Holocaust, what it meant to be a Jew (or a political enemy, or a homosexual, or a Jehova’s Witness, or a Soviet, or anyone for that matter) in a concentration camp.

I was wrong.

Yes, I was shocked at the methods of torture that the Nazis used and by the amount of killing but all of that I already knew. There wasn’t much actually at the camp any longer because, as you can imagine, it seemed best to demolish it once the war was over.

There were a few bunkers still there though. Here are the things that shocked me most :

1) The weather we had was chilly and rainy…and yet the prisoners had to stand out in weather worse than that for 6 hours a day just for role call. Some dropped dead in line. I probably walked over the spots where hundreds if not thousands of people died.

2) These posts, they’re a torture device. They’re located in an area completely walled off from the rest of the camp, for special political prisoners. The Nazis would tie their arms behind their backs and then hang them, by their arms, on the poles so that their shoulders would rip out of the sockets…and they would stay there. Some until their feet were touching the ground (those posts are probably 9 or 10 feet tall).

3) The foundations of this building, which was designed solely for killing and the disposal of bodies. Medical experiments took there. Ruthless murder took place there. Cremation took place there. When I saw the remains of the cremation ovens (where the posts are sticking out of the ground) I almost cracked…that made it real. Seeing those foundations still there, seeing the memorial to « Station Z » (z because it was the last place many people saw), seeing all of the flowers left to the victims. It was a lot to take in.

4) The photos of the Soviet prisoners of war. They were used in newspapers as propaganda, as examples of what the Germans should hate. But what I didn’t understand is why they chose such sad, innocent looking men. These men were in the concentration camp sot hey were obviously miserable, but wouldn’t you think the Nazis would choose someone who looked like a hardened criminal rather than a young boy or a suffering old man ? It just goes to show how brutal and relentless they were.

5) I was moved, in particular, by the eyes of the older man who I took a close up was. I don’t think I need to explain why.

6) Walking back to the train station, we walked exactly the same route that every single prisoner walked to get to Sachsenhausen. It was through the middle of a town. These people knew what was happening, were encouraged to pelt the victims with rocks. I simply cannot fathom that this ever happened, even after having visited the camp.

If you ever get the chance, I highly encourage you to go to a concentration camp. I hope to one day see worse ones, the real death camps, because I think it’s important and crucial to understand. That’s what our guides kept saying : in order to keep it from happening again, we must strive to understand this history no matter how horrible, how difficult to face, how practically unbelievable it is.  We cannot forget, we cannot ignore that the Holocaust happened.

Seeing Sachsenhausen finally allowed me to start understanding why Berlin is the way it is. I don’t know why, but I felt closer to the city, closer to its history, closer to the root of all of the changes it has gone through and therefore more appreciative of the city it is today.

More pictures:

Where the prisoners washed (I don't remember the exact numbers, but this room was obviously far too small for the amount of people in the barracks)

In the kitchen at the camp...I don't know who drew these or why they were allowed, but it was inspiring to find art in such a seemingly hopeless place. 

And last but not least, the killing trenches. I knew exactly what this was the second I saw it thanks to Mr. Haberman's class in 9th grade and I was horrified to see it in person. I was very uncomfortable thinking about the uncountable deaths that happened just feet in front of me.

And on a completely unrelated note, we had sushi and curry for dinner that night.