A Day in oranienburg

Today we visited the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, but the most meaningful experience that I gained was while visiting the Sachsenhousen Concentration Camp. I had already researched a little bit about the camp, but I learned a whole lot from the tour guide. My preconceptions about the camp were that it was a trianglar shaped encased in barbed wire a little bit like the small POW camp from Hogan's heros, but to my astonishment, I learned that this camp was only a small section of the vast area belonging to the Sachsenousen Concentration Camp. Unfortunetly most of the SS training grounds and the labor areas have totally disappeared and in their place are fields with trees. Like our tour guide said, without the prescence of these other buildings, it requires abstract thought to be able to imagine what the entire camp was like. Sachsenhousen was the first concentration labor camp and was built in 1936 by political prisoners. It was meant to set the bar in comfort for officers and efficency of organization for the future camps. As a result of this the conditions for the SS officers were made to be as comfortable as possible. I was surprised that there really was a SS casino. Before the guardhouse and gate to the inmate camp, was a grassy area. According to our tourguide, this area was always green and had been the location were the important officers were housed. Back during the time when camp was in opperation, propaganda postcards with the caption "when will we see our green concentration camp again?" were even made. Inside the concentration camp however, was a totally different picture of life. The barracks and role call area were laid out in a fasion that intimidated the prisioners because they felt that the machine gun in the tower could reach any point in the camp. The living conditions of the prisioners were bleak with about seven toilets for 100 prisoners in 1938 and in 1945 about seven toilets to 400 prisioners. It is astonishing to learning that the camp was built with the capacity for 10000 prisioners but ended up with 60000 prisoners. Inside one of the barracks there were triple bunks crowded close together, and this was representitive of all the buncks. Because this camp was a work camp and not an extermination camp there were no mass killing facilities in the begining, but by 1942, station z, the neck shootings and crematory had been built. There is record of 8 tons of ash being dumped into the river, and an aditional 8 tons were found later, so at least 20000 people died. I have always been fascinated by the holocaust and WWII, and visiting this camp made me realize how evil humans can get. By visiting this camp I could see how the germans made killing commonplace. I had always thought that it was a lowly job to work in a concentration camp, but according to the tour guide, SS officers came to Sachsenhousen to build their careers. The thing that disturbed me the most was that the SS sought to make the SS officers job as pleasent as possible. How can killing ever be pleasent? I left the concentration camp with a new view of the way concentration camps were run and the way that officers were treated. Knowing about the horrors that happented and hearing about the survivors gives me an appreciation for my sheltered life. I think that keeping this camp open as a whitness and memorial to the potentiol of humans for good or bad is the duty of Germany.