Upon arriving at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, we were told that Hermann G
öring had designed this early camp in a triangle because it was the ideal way to keep in political prisoners and other "undesirables". There were guard towers on each side to watch the housing units, most of which were demolished.
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| Minor Guard Tower |
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| Guard Tower A |
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| "Work will set you free" |
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| Sachsenhausen |
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| The barbed wire, electrified, gravel surrounded fences |
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| Barracks |
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| The empty grounds |
We weren't allowed to take pictures really in the little space that there was inside. That was because there were a lot of "relics" of the Nazi era recovered that were on display, such as propaganda, personal belongings, and triangle identifiers worn by prisoners. This, if put online, could have been found by some white supremacists and used as items of reverence. I took pictures of the inside of this barrack anyway though because it was severely fire damaged. That's because a few years ago some Neo-Nazis broke in and tried burning down the camp. While they failed at erasing history, the scars remained, which was a bracing reminder that just because Hitler was defeated doesn't mean that antisemitism was too.
These were the special barracks made for the people that the Nazis really didn't like. They were kept in a walled area off the side of the triangle so that it was displayed to the prisoners that there was a worse place to be than in the yard to keep them in line.
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| Woman Showing her Son the Holocause |
I have a lot of pictures of the yard because it just struck me how on that cold a day it was appropriate to visit a concentration camp. Also, I knew right away that I could never really communicate the feeling of the place - the simultaneous feelings of the place being full and empty, with sadness written on the very landscape - so I hoped that maybe seeing it would give some idea.
In Soviet fashion, when they took this region and freed the people in the camp they saw the huddled and broken men - Jews, gays, Romani, prisoners of war, the disabled, the pacifists, the communists - and promptly erected a statue honoring the communists that fell under Nazi tyranny. The three-sided obelisk has eighteen red triangles on each side (communists wore red triangles) to honor the fallen comrades, and the statue is of a communist soldier liberating two fine healthy members of the proletariat ready to reclaim their hammer and sickle who clearly were never in a concentration camp in their goddamn lives.
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| Where people were executed before they streamlined the process |
There are six of these slabs, which mark where the ashes of victims were dumped by the Nazis. People come the world over to put a rock on these slabs.
This was Station Z, the code word for where the prisoners were executed. What Sachsenhausen did before they began using poisonous gas was they would line the new prisoners earmarked for execution up in what looked like a doctors office. They would go in one at a time, and the "doctor" would take their vitals and then tell them to stand against a ruler on the wall to get their height. The Nazi officer on the other side of the wall would then shoot the man in the back of the head in what was a soundproof
room. The "doctor" would then clean up the blood, drag the body into the next room, and call in the next person. From there the dead person was loaded into a furnace, his body was incinerated - usually by other inmates - and the ashes were dumped outside. For that matter, this was also the place where a lot of experimentation was done so far as what poisonous gas would be the most effective.
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| The Furnaces |
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| Medical Center, where the rest of the experiments were done |
If I could give one recommendation on where to go, it would be to a concentration camp. It doesn't make for a fun vacation, but it certainly reminds one of how privileged one is to be in the United States, where diversity is welcomed rather than hated. For that matter, it reminded me of the privilege I have in being a white male, and by extension not having to worry about being maligned or hated except for the crimes of my fathers. Finally, it reminded me of a very basic truth that is easy to forget - it's our compassion that makes us human.
We weren't allowed to take pictures really in the little space that there was inside. That was because there were a lot of "relics" of the Nazi era recovered that were on display, such as propaganda, personal belongings, and triangle identifiers worn by prisoners. This, if put online, could have been found by some white supremacists and used as items of reverence. I took pictures of the inside of this barrack anyway though because it was severely fire damaged. That's because a few years ago some Neo-Nazis broke in and tried burning down the camp. While they failed at erasing history, the scars remained, which was a bracing reminder that just because Hitler was defeated doesn't mean that antisemitism was too. 
This was Station Z, the code word for where the prisoners were executed. What Sachsenhausen did before they began using poisonous gas was they would line the new prisoners earmarked for execution up in what looked like a doctors office. They would go in one at a time, and the "doctor" would take their vitals and then tell them to stand against a ruler on the wall to get their height. The Nazi officer on the other side of the wall would then shoot the man in the back of the head in what was a soundproof
room. The "doctor" would then clean up the blood, drag the body into the next room, and call in the next person. From there the dead person was loaded into a furnace, his body was incinerated - usually by other inmates - and the ashes were dumped outside. For that matter, this was also the place where a lot of experimentation was done so far as what poisonous gas would be the most effective.
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