Berlin Pt 3- Concentration Camp

Sorry, one more depressing post. But it's also very insightful, so maybe that will make it ok.

We did another tour on our 2nd day in Berlin to a concentration camp called Sachsenhausen, about 30 minutes north of Berlin, that took up most of the day.

This camp was not originally intended as an extermination camp but ended up transforming into one towards the end of the war. In the beginning, the camp served as a prison for political opponents who were placed into "protective custody" for their own safety. In order to maintain the claim that it was a legitimate prison, they often brought in actual criminals who, upon being "rehabilitated" were released. Funny though, that people who actually did something wrong were sent home, but no political opponents or Jews were ever released. That doesn't make one bit of sense to me.

The camp was set up in a triangle as seen below, so that one person in a guard tower at the base of the triangle could monitor the whole camp with a really big machine gun. Notice how the buildings are arranged in a semi-circle so that the guard could see in between each building and would easily be able to spot an escapee. The darker rectangles resemble the buildings that are still there today. (Many had to be burned down because of diseases that were present).

After a while though, they ended up building more watch towers to add even more security.

The main entrance was referred to as Station A, meaning the beginning. (I'll get to Station Z later but you can only imagine what that means).

This sign says "work makes free" which made the prisoners think that if they worked hard enough they would be sent home, when really, that was never going to be a possibility for most.

Bordering the stone fence that surrounded the camp was a lethal electric fence and the gravel represents the 'death strip' where prisoners would be shot without warning if caught inside.

There was a big open area in front of the barracks where they had roll call each morning and night. If the numbers didn't match, the guards searched the grounds until they found the missing person(s) while the other prisoner's stood waiting, no matter the weather conditions. This means, that if someone died in their sleep of hypothermia, starvation or any other condition, the inmates had to drag the body out to be counted for roll call.

Not many of the structures that are still standing today are original. This is one of the few that is. It's the dining hall where starving prisoners where forced to serve the guards.

A lot of the original foundations are still there though and a few things have been re-constructed to show what it was like.

Even though this camp didn't specialize in mass extermination, there were still some brutal forms of punishment, including: being thrown into a pit deep in the ground with no food or water for days, testing military footwear by being forced to walk for 24 miles a day in shoes that may or may not fit properly (again regardless of weather conditions. On average these indiviuals were only able to do this for about two weeks before they died of exhaustion), and public hangings; both the normal, fatal kind and another one that was just pure torture involving these poles. They would tie a prisoner's hands behind their back and hang them from their wrists to the top of the pole where the weight of their body would slowly pull their arms out of socket.

This concentration camp was also a place for illegal medical experiments with the human body. I won't go into details about the horrible things they did but many died as a result. This is a re-creation of a dissection table that they would have used.

In the basement of the building where the experiments were performed, they had a mortuary and would wheel the bodies in wheelbarrows up this ramp. Kind of creepy and just plain wrong.

When the camp began converting into more of a place of mass extermination, they created this trench and would march in about 100 people at a time and the guards opened fire until all where dead.

Then they stored the bodies in here...

A few years into the war, they built a small gas chamber, only big enough for about 30 people. They designed it to look like a shower, and each inmate was given a bar of soap to cover up the fact that this "shower" would end their life. This is the original foundation of the building where the gas chamber was located. The room on the bottom left with the drain in the middle was the actual gas chamber itself.

This is also the building that was called "Section Z" since it was the place where so many people's lives ended.

Since the camp wasn't originally built for mass extermination, they had no way of getting rid of all the bodies and had to create a crematorium, which was also located in the same building as the gas chamber. These are the original ovens used.

Again, it's hard to imagine how people could be so cruel and it was very depressing to actually be in a place where such horrible things happened. I learned a lot though and I'm thankful for the greater understanding I now have about what these poor people went through.

Next stop: London. We will be in London this weekend. It's Easter weekend, so I'm guessing it's going to be really really busy, but I'm super excited anyway!