We decided to visit the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It was set up shortly after Hitler was named Chancellor to hold political prisoners. It evolved into the concentration camp research and SS training center. After the Russians liberated it, they used it to hold their prisoners. Finally it was turned into a monument.
Rather than go into a detailed history, here is the wikipedia entry for Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.
Both Ellen and I have been seeing frightening parallels with what is happening now in the world and what was happening then. More about that in a later post.
There were many people there to visit, especially 15 year-olds. Germany requires all students to visit a concentration camp as part of their education. This is also the closest camp to Berlin.
Most walked from the train station on the same path that prisoners were marched. The local townspeople were urged to come out and throw garbage and rotten food at them as they walked by, (so much for plausible deniability).
Sachsenhausen wasn’t a “death camp” per se. They wanted to keep them out of Germany proper. Having said that, it was. By the end of the war there were gas chambers, execution chambers, and on-site crematoria. The latter were moved on-site after a car accident with a hearse in Berlin ended with 10 bodies strewn across the street.
Very little of the original camp is left. The East Germans saw no need to keep it. You can, however, see the footprints of all of the barracks that were in the original camp.
The horrors are so complete that words cannot begin to describe them. So I won’t.
