Sachsenhausen concentration camp

It feels a bit strange, and perhaps even a little bit wrong to post these pictures or have even taken these pictures, but considering World War II was such a huge part of my grandparent's lives, the overall reason why my mother and her parents and sister moved to Australia and that I am tied to such an atrocity through blood, it also feels right. So here is my experience of visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Sarah and I went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, a small town just outside of Berlin. It's a dead town with very few people. Personally, I could not imagine ever living in a place that once had a concentration camp. I just don't understand. There are houses directly across from the camp and you can see into it from their upstairs windows.

Above image: The words in the above image means, "Work brings freedom" or "work shall set you free" and was found on almost all the gates to Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

Above this gate is a tower that had a gun pointing out of it – this gun was never fired during the period that Sachscenhausen was occupied. However, it was more the idea that there was a guard in the tower watching the prisoners that was important in its use. This form of panopticism exhibited incredible power over the minds of the prisoners.

Above: If you stepped onto this rubble, you were shot. In order to escape the camp you had to somehow miss being hit by bullets, get over the barbed wire electric fencing, passed vicious dogs and then more guards with snipers. Then if you managed to escape you would then need to find a house where hopefully the person who opened the door was not a Nazi sympathiser and want to risk their own life to hide you.

Above: Where some barracks used to be. These three here were where Jewish artists manufactured fake Deutsche Mark and what the movie The Counterfeiters is based on.

Above: What the barracks looked like.

Above: Inside.

Above: This image kills me. This man was forced to walk down the street while wearing a humiliating sign, while people hurled abuse at him, spat at him and threw objects at him. Look at his face and look at the faces of the people around him. I just can’t even imagine.

Above: Where they hung people accused of homosexuality. You don't want to know how these people died. I can't remember all the details, but I almost passed out.

Above: One of the cells that was used for prisoners that were being punished. In some cells no light could penetrate the room at all and so the prisoner would be without any form of light, sometimes up to four months straight. This is very bad for your psyche and after a while the prisoners would begin to hallucinate and lose their minds. Once freed and due to the sudden flood of light to their eyes, prisoners would be temporarily blinded and thus mocked and physically bullied by the guards.

 

Above: Prisoners worked in the kitchen and this is some of the original artwork that was left behind by real prisoners.

 

 

Above: This was done by a man who was hired to create Nazi propaganda cartoons for newspapers. So while doctors and accountants who helped Nazis during this period were set free, this person was imprisoned for his crime. The following cartoons were drawn by him.

Above: Where prisoners were taken to be shot. There are a number of mass graves nearby this site that I didn't want to take a picture of. They are marked by stones or cement pillars, also with stones covering them.

 

Station Z. This was a building that was created to exterminate prisoners. Basically what happened was the prisoner would go to this building, their hair was cut off by one person in the first room, then in the next room someone else would look to see if they had any gold in their teeth, then in the next room a guard would paint a cross on their head, then in the next room a doctor would say they want to measure their height. They were placed against the wall where there was a slit with a curtain, behind the curtain was a guard with a pistol who would see the red cross and shoot. Then other prisoners were brought in to collect the body and burry it; the Nazis never had to do any of the dirty work themselves. By breaking up the process, the guards were less at risk of becoming too involved with the killing, as this had been a problem with guards in other camps identifying the prisoner as a real person and later suffering symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks, depression and other symptoms of what we now recognise as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Organising the executions in this way the guards were removed from ever having any emotional involvment. Instead it was seen as just for example, cutting someone's hair, looking into a mouth with teeth or seeing a red cross. Apparently this way of conducting the killings came from Freud's theories on trauma and anxiety disorders.

After the war, the Soviets then thought this specific area would be the perfect place to build a shooting range of all things, which is why it is in ruins. After much uproar from the public, plans were abandoned but it was too late; the building was completely destroyed and now just remains as a marking place of what once occurred.

I just felt that by visiting this camp and talking about it, especially after coming from a German family that doesn't talk about it, it made this terrible atrocity a little more comprehendible.