Over a week ago, my program visited Sachenhausen Concentration Camp, located in Oranienburg, about thirty minutes outside of Berlin. It was an appropriate day in terms of the weather, cold, overcast, and rainy.
When we arrived, we sat through a twenty minute presentation about the history of the camp, and then received a tour around the former prisoners area. During this we saw the barracks that the Jewish prisoners were housed in, the isolation unit for special prisoners, the former kitchen, now a museum, the Soviet memorial to murdered political prisoners, the execution trench for resistance fighters, and a building where the executions and cremations of prisoners were carried out.
Sachenhausen was not an extermination camp, but mass murder did occur there, as well as death caused by disease, starvation, overwork and extreme mistreatment. The barracks and the extermination building were both extremely overwhelming to view.
I'm not quite sure what I can really say about my visit, despite having had several weeks to process it now. I'm of the belief that if one has the opportunity to visit a concentration or extermination camp, that it should happen because it does provide an entirely different perspective.
That's all I really have to say on the topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment