Sachsenhausen

Today I took a tour to Sachsenhausen, one of the first Nazi concentration camps, and the main administrative camps for Nazi Germany. This has been the most horrific and disturbing experience of my life.

Walking towards the front gate of the camp, our guide did an amazing job of making us relive the experiences that the new prisoners had as they were herded to the front gate. From the cleansing new prisoners (both hygienically and mentally) to the hours upon hours of standing during the morning and evening role-calls, we were introduced to the entire bit of life in a Nazi concentration camp.

There were multiple sites in the camp that had been refurbished (or rebuilt as much of the camp was destroyed by the East German Government) into mini-museums displaying various bits of clothing and other artifacts. However, when we made our way to Station Z, the area where the mass execution took place, my heart sank. We walked past a dug-out ditch which lead to an in-ground bunker. Supposedly the area was used for the mass executions in the earlier years of the camp, where prisoners where lined up in the ditch against a wall lined with logs while guards stood opposite to them and shot them. The bodies were then thrown into the bunker. It got even worse when the camp finally got a crematorium, with a small gas chamber. Though the chamber was rarely used (as Sachsenhausen was a Concentration Camp, not a e Death Camp like Austwitz), but the execution of prisoners still took place by gunfire. The crematorium is now gone and only its foundation remains, but walking around the area was horrific.

Even more disturbing was the Pathologist's building, which the original. Here we got to see the rooms and tables where autopsies took place, and a few experiments (again, the more famous and sickening ones took place at other camps). When we went downstairs, we were informed that the basement was where the guards stored the corpses after the autopsies. Walking through large and cavernous rooms knowing that I was standing where a pile of bodies to the roof laid almost made me lose my lunch.

I am pleased to have had the chance to visit such a horrific place, but at the same time this experience has been incredibly disturbing.

NOTE - I am having trouble uploading any photos to the internet (Facebook, Flickr, etc.) because the internet connection here is slow. I will get the photos up as soon as I can.