PalenQ

One of the Nazi's most infamous concentration camps sits about 20 miles north of Berlin in Oranienburg - the Sachenhausen camp, where more than half the 200,000 folks imprisoned here were estimated to have perished.

Though i kind of consider visiting a concentration camp as a rather ghoulish experience these visits are also inevitably sobering - it's hard to imagine in today's Germany that this happened not all that long ago. But i always go...Auschwitz, Birkenau (sp?), Dachau, etc. and feel the visit was extremely rewarding to appreciating how even the most civilized countries - like pre-war Germany, can perpetrate such abominal acts.

I took the train to Oranienburg on a sunny day this January and walked to the camp, about 1.5 miles from the train station.

I entered the Welcome Center/ticket office and then headed to the camp entrance, where the words ubiquitously 'welcoming' inmates into the camp with the words Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free) were insiduosly set in a metal sign over the main entry.

There is not much left of this camp as the Soviets used it after the war and demolished much of it. The DDR finally did decide to make it a monument to fascism or something and finally preserved what was left.

Unfortunately neo-Nazis burned down the one fairly intact dormitory not long ago. So unlike Auschwitz where many buildings are intact, at Sachenhausen you must use your imagination to appreciate the horrors perpetrated here.

Groups of schoolkids were touring the place and the spector of one of them eating a banana in the camp for some reason i found disgusting.

TBC

billbarr

Thank you PalenQ. It doesn't take much imagination to appreciate the horrors.

I have visited twice. The first time was almost a 'personal' thing. For many years we had a kind elderly Jewish gentleman as a neighbour and when I told him I was visiting Berlin he asked a favour.

One of his family had perished at Sachenhausen and he had a small personal item he wanted me to take and leave there. I won't go into details of what it was but it is now in the grounds of the camp and will remain there for as long as the remains of Sachenhausen exist.

I visited a second time a few years ago in mid-December. This time I went for 'me' as the first time was completely for my late neighbour. It was bitterly cold with some slight snow falling and my goodness the place looked desolate, evil and in a way intimidating.

Your trip report brought back the powerful memories of both those visits.

Again, thank you

Bill

PalenQ

Wow - Bill thank you!

What a poignant thing to do - it brings the emotional aspect of these camps into focus for surviving friends and family.

Again, thanks for relaying this!

PalenQ

Two things still remaining inside grabbed my attention - right inside the entrance are the remains of the test walking track - where inmates were forced to test military footwear by walking for hours on an incredibly rough surface to see how the boots held up.

And the underground execution chambers are still mainly intact.

Other than that there is an exhibition room with many photos documenting the dismal conditions and many a heart-breaking story.

billbarr

PalenQ

There are a number of things that remain in my head.

When you walk down the stairs to where they shot prisoners you will no doubt remember the wall they built with what looked like soft wood/straw like material to absorb the bullets. To the right of it was a measuring post. It was here, out of site of others waiting to turn the little corner that many prisoners had a knife put into the back of their heads from behind the measuring post.

The mortuary at teh 'hospital' and the little rail track and small buggy on it that led down to it. Did you go down and inside? Very powerful feelings, difficult to describe.

One of the old men in the little bookshop was part of the initial force that liberated the camp from the east. He proudly wore his regiment badge, told me its name and I am ashamed to say I cannot recall it.

He explained that every day all prisoners had to stand in lines in front of the gallows (you may remember those were in the centre of the large semi-circular spread of the huts that would have been there then). He said that on every one of those days two prisoners were chosen at random and hung in front of their fellow prisoners. This happened every day of the year except for Christmas week when the gallows were removed and a Christmas tree was put up. How ironic and cruel is that?

Sadly, when the tree was taken down after 7 days, they doubled the number of prisoners hanged the following week.

Man's inhumanity to man, eh?

bill

noe847

Thanks, PalenQ and billbarr. Your contributions help bring the experience alive for those of us reading.

We had planned to visit Sachenhausen on the last day of our trip to Berlin last month, but my daughter developed some difficulties with her foot as the week progressed. We spent the last day sticking very close to public transportation and sitting a lot. I have booked a return trip to Berlin in September with my husband and Sachsenhausen will be very high on our list.

FauxSteMarie

I spent several hours at Sachenhausen when I did my home exchange in Berlin several years ago.

billbar, did your friend ask you to leave a stone? I know I left quite a few on the markers for where the barracks were. It is an old Jewish tradition to leave a stone on a grave marker when you visit a cemetery. It shows that someone has been there.

My home exchangers arranged for one of their neighbors to take me to the camp (The did not have a car, but had an unending series of friends and neighbors who took me everywhere and I had the added benefit of never getting lost). They were Christian. When we got to the camp, they let me go at my own pace and left me to my own thoughts.

I hope these concentration camps will remain. For people like me, who lost almost all their European relatives in the Holocaust, concentration camps are the cemeteries for those for whom there are no graves.

I have not yet been to Auchwitz--where most of my extended familiy probably perished. Some day I will go and it will be akin to a pilgrimage.

A concentration camp is not where I would choose to eat anything. There is one thing that we often forget: Stalin killed many more Russians than Hitler killed Jews and others tagged as "undesirables". Stalin was our ally during World War II. I should add that Russian loses from the War far out numbered that of any other country.

Politics--and wars--sometimes make strange bedfellows.

PalenQ

<The mortuary at the 'hospital' and the little rail track and small buggy on it that led down to it. Did you go down and inside? Very powerful feelings, difficult to describe>

no didn't see this and i think this could have been one of the buildings that was closed for repair.

again thanks for your deeply sobering and moving recount.

i know there's debate amongst honorable Germans about what to do with these places and i understand that we should not collectively saddle today's German society with such horrors done by the German State in the past but as FauxSteMarie so poignantly states it's not only important for extended families of those who perished or suffered here, and to be sure including many ethnicities, gays, etc. as well as Jewish, but for the whole world to see what happened.

billbarr

FauxSteMarie

My old neighbour passed on a few years ago. A kindly and caring man who treated me like a son, and I thought of him as a substitute father, having lost mine when I was relatively young. His advice to me about many things over a number of years was invaluable.

I am sure he would not mind me telling you (I hope!) that the item wasn't a stone but a tiny ring. A child's ring. It had belonged to his brother who had died at Sachenhausen. It was very beautiful and the design looked symbolic but he wouldn't tell me more when I asked him. He simply put his fingers to his lips and shook his head. I am not Jewish and do not know if the ring had a special religious meaning. I know not how my neighbour had it but he wanted it returned to his late brother. He told me exactly where it was to go in the camp and how to do it!

One other memory came back to me about Sachenhausen when I visited for the second time. I saw a beautiful enormous wreath of lillies and kneeled down to read the card. Amazingly, it was there on behalf of the British Ministry of Defence in memory of the annual anniversary of 15 or so British sailors from the same ship who had been captured and who persished at that camp.

I actually felt very proud that our government, every year, made sure that those sailors were not forgotten.

Bill

FauxSteMarie

I do agree that today's Germans should not be viewed as responsible for what their ancestors did during the Hitler era.

Every time I go to Germany, I always hear sufferings of GERMAN suffering during World War II. It is wise to remember that not everyone was a Nazi, but, in order to survive, many people just did what they were told living under conditions where free expression of dissenting views meant death for themselves and their families.

Many German soldiers were captured by the Russians and returned years after World War II broken by their suffering. I have heard story after story about these broken men who returned. They returned to wives and families who did not know them anymore.

While Jews were singled out for mass extermination, Hitler's greatest victims were the Germans. And, I say this as an American Jew.

I have found many Germans to be totally honest about what their parents or grandparents did without mincing words. One of the people who took me to Sachenhausen said that her parents were Nazis. I don't know if that meant card carrying Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. I didn't want to offend those nice people by delving into the subject.

Again, the concentration camps should remain as memorials to the dead for the reasons previously stated.

PalenQ

Again Faux: well put.

I would hope that faced with the pressures in Germany at that time that i would have joined the resistance but like most Germans at the time who were downright decent folk i believe, they were a victim of the times and did probably what we all would have done in those circumstances.

Let us not forget the horrors of Fascism and Nazism but casting a blanket common guilt at this stage is pointless - to imagine you were taken to the camp by folks with Nazi parents is rather hopeful i think.

trvlbliss

We have been to Dachau and more recently to Auschwitz. Our guide there was excellent , extremely knowledgeable and articulate. Everyone there is very respectful of the museum as a memorial to the millions of victims . It was truly one of the most moving experiences of my life. At the end of the tour we were at the far end of the camp where the crematoriums were and where the rail road tracks end. Suddenly the skies opened up and a torrential rain descended on us...just a few minutes before the weather was warm and sunny. It was a appropriate finale to an emotional day.
But how sad that these atrocities are still going on, as the world watches idly and impassionately , in places like Dafur. When will we say "Enough, No more?"

FauxSteMarie

PalenQ, I do agree that the fact that I was taken to Sachenhausen by people who admitted to having Nazis as parents was a good sign of real transformation in Germany. Actually, I was sort of taken aback when they told me that their parents were Nazis. I don't know whether that meant Nazi part members or just people who "went along".

For those of us who are fortunate not to have every lived under a tolatarian regime, we have no idea how we would cope. Can you imagine a regime that encourages children to inform on parents? Parents in Communist and Fascist countries could not even speak their real views in the privacy of their own homes if their children were present because the children could turn into informers. Then the government would extoll the children as good citizens--and make them orphans by killing their parents and/or sentencing them to camps.

PalenQ

Faux - again words for thought!

ORANIENBURG THE TOWN
The camp is about a mile or so east of town. And though there's little to see in the town itself, there is a vibrant main shopping street. The tourist office is on this street (exiting station turn right and walk few blocks to the main drag, turn left and tourist office is on right)

If walking to camp, like i did, best get a map here as i found signs confusing and ended up walking in circles for a while - finally headed for big smokestack that i luckily thought may be in the memorial.

billbarr

PalenQ

Intrestingly, the very first time I visited there were no direction signs for the camp. Not one.

I remember the guidebook (Lonely Planet) that I read in preparation for the trip warned that there was no signposting. They gave very good directions and I found the camp easily.

They also warned not to ask at the station for a rail ticket to Sachenhausen. The book indicated that occasionally folks in the ticket office 'mistakenly' would sell you a ticket to some town many, many miles away from the camp.

The second time I visited there were new signs along the route including the crossroads where you turn left along a street of very nice old houses up towards the camp. It was here that I got the first of the weird feelings, wondering what the folks in those houses must have thought in war-time knowing what was at the end of their road.

Bill

PalenQ

Getting to Sachenhausen:

Though S-Bahn trains terminate and leave from here frequently and go thru the heart of Berlin, they take much longer than the RE or regional trains that run here from OstBahnhof - so hop the S-Bahn in Berlin to OstBahnhof then transfer to a regional train for much quicker times.

Sachenhausen is probably 20 miles or so from Ostbahnhof and actually it becomes a rather scenic ride after escaping the rotting industrial detritus along the tracks in Berlin itself - then going thur a rather sylvain setting of forests and lakes. And by miles and miles of garden plots extant from DDR days when such plots were about the only way of getting fresh veggies. They are still maintained with their little garden houses making them an oasis of green in the urban landscape.

Look into the day passes for travel in greater Berlin area if doing other S-Bahn, tram or bus travel the same day.