Sachsenhausen

On a suitably bleak, grey day yesterday, we paid a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, in the small town on Oranienburg, just north of Berlin. This was my first trip to such a site and it was every bit as fascinating and grim as I expected, if not more so.

Sachsenhausen was one of the very first camps of its kind and thus was used for training and experimentation. It spans a vast area, triangular in shape with the entrance gate at the narrowest corner, bearing the infamous slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’. Beyond is a huge expanse, a memorial at one end, marking the execution area and a few huts have been saved/reconstructed to preserve the original feel and intent. It was bitterly cold and the wind whipped mercilessly across the landscape. We were freezing cold wrapped up in coats and scarves, so it was unimaginable to have been out there in the thin striped uniforms of the prisoners. 

 

2 of the barrack huts were available to go inside, although they were badly burnt in the early 90s by a Neo-Nazi group. The place was simply packed full of information, more than anyone could ever read, from the unimaginably horrifying statistics to the stories of individuals who passed through the camp, often accompanied by photographs or documents listing their name.

One room contained examples of how the prisoners were tortured or killed. Sachsenhausen was not intended originally to be an extermination camp, but a work camp, however, killings did become frequent there and some sadistic methods of doing so were used. Public hangings of those who had misbehaved were also carried out, and it was another of the interred who was forced to kick the stand from beneath the victim. Ovens were installed near the extermination area to burn the bodies.

There was also a large infirmary area. Prisoners who were qualified medics treated their fellow inmates, but the place also attracted outside doctors who used the sick or dead as a means to carry out research and thus further their careers.

A cold prison block housed 2 rows of small cells, where certain people were isolated and tortured, tied up, flogged and/or killed. 

Visiting a place such as Sachsenhausen is challenging, but, I have come to believe, essential really. It’s sickening and horrifying and utterly impossible to imagine how such inhumane cruelty occurred in such recent history, by ordinary people. There is an argument for destroying what remains of these camps and obliterating what the Nazis created. But without seeing it and remembering it and learning from it, history can fade from view, especially as the last survivors pass away over the coming years. What happened there, and in the other Camps like it, is too important to forget. Its victims must be commemorated, remembered and their legacy must prevent us from ever allowing such terror again.