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My trip to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp had, by far, the greatest impact on me of any of the sites I have seen thus far. I was planning on spending about two hours, but ended up there for four and a half and realized that I had to leave since the sun was setting. Touring the site I kept switching from being angry, to sad, to wanting to vomit. I have discussed with those who have also toured concentration camps and they agree that it is seemingly impossible to relate the experience in its entirety to those who have not gone. Therefore, I will take a different tact with this blog and try to create more of a feeling, rather than a description. I will try my best to recreate this feeling, but I strongly suggest that you need to see one for yourself.

What the Sachsenhausen memorial did so well was to humanize the sprawling compound. When touring through the site, instead of just buildings, you were faced with the stories of those imprisoned. You could view their possessions, as well as listen to audio recordings from those that survived. I felt that this was such fitting memorial for a location that viewed its inmates as numbers simply being put through a mechanized system.

Instead of a simple entrance to the compound, I could see prisoners being lined up and herded like cattle through the gate that tauntingly read “Freedom through Labor.”

Instead of the roll-call area, I envisioned the men who stood out in the frigid weather and followed orders to do jumping jacks, pushups, and roll in the wet snow.

Instead of seeing a cramped lavatory, I saw a favorite spot for deadly beatings and drownings of prisoners by the guards or even other prisoners.

Instead of a broom closet, I was faced with cramped men seeking desperately for a way out, only to suffocate from a lack of oxygen.

Instead of posts in the prison yard, I witnessed men being strung up with chains as punishment for their behavior.

Instead of two holes in the ground, I watched as men were hung in the gallows for crimes as minimal as being rumored to be plotting an escape.

Instead of an infirmary, I was disgusted to find men succumbing to hideous medical tests that resulted in their death.

All of this was nothing compared to what I faced in the crematorium, where music was being blasted on a phonograph to hide the noise of execution. Where prisoners were brought into a room, made to stand with their back to a wooden post in the wall, and unknown to them their executioner fired through a hidden hole. Where prisoners succumbed to the gas chamber and were ultimately disposed of by their peers that manned the roaring fire, turning them to ash. Where these ashes were then disposed of in a massive unmarked grave only to be found many years later.

This human connection is what made the experience so memorable and makes me hope that as a society we will never let something of this nature happen again.

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