Berlin Day ? : Concentration Camp

Dear all, today was not the day I had planned out. Not at all. Yesterday I thought that since it would be Sunday and not much would be open, I would just sit in a cafe near by, drink some yummy coffee and eat some pastries while working on my thesis for the better part of the day. While this was a lovely plan, with great intentions, I just woke up feeling different. So I did a bit of research about the holocaust monument, museums etc. in the area and learned that there are lots of museums etc. in the area but there was actually a camp, called Saschenhausen (don't ask me how to pronounce that), just north of the city in a small town called Oranienburg, which is about 1hr from where I'm staying by train. It's open every day, and it's free entrance. So I forked out the 7euros to take the train, got up at a decent hour and out the door. As I was on my way to the train station I learned that the race was continuing from yesterday (more about that later) and so it's probably a good thing I was heading out of the city today.

I hopped on the train, and it was really empty and I think I was one of the only people who went all the way to the last stop. When I got off, it wasn't much different. The ride went through a bunch of really little suburban type areas and this was pretty much the same, and quiet - like Canada quiet - with very few people even walking around and most of the stores closed. I saw 2 or 3 groups of tourists as I got closer to the camp but much much less than I had anticipated. I got there and paid the whopping 50cents for a map because I thought, well, I don't really know what to expect and I don't want to pay for a tour, so this can at least tell me what I'm looking at incase nothing is in english (as many of the signs here aren't). I went back to the "museums" as the sign directed me and was stunned. It was not at all what I expected. It was a huge, vast, open space and I was expecting to see row upon row of barracks but it was mostly a big empty field. I felt a bit disappointed but carried on anyway to the first building that remained. It turned out to be the infirmary barracks, 2 of the 5 have been restored and now contain tons and tons of information. I must have spent an hour in their just reading, listening to audio, watching video, looking at artifacts, etc. There is just SO much information and you can't possibly stay and read or see it all because you could be in those 2 buildings for days alone. It was incredible, and the stories of course terrible and heartbreaking. Connecting the 2 barracks, there is an underground tunnel that you can walk through which is where bodies were stacked after people had died (or more likely been killed) in the infermaries. They have documented as much as they could and it seems like the memorial buildings have moved around on the site a lot, as different authorities kind of took control and decided what to do and how to do it with the site, so the inside of these buildings are more or less just museums but original floors, wall tiles and things like that still exist in some rooms.

Just so you have an idea of the difference, this is what the camp looked like originally, and below is what it looks like today. I'll put up my own photos when I get back.

After that you could go see the underground cave I guess, I don't even know what to call it, where bodies were stored, low ceilings but just huge amounts of space and I can't imagine these being so full that they began to pile them elsewhere. Of course everything is cleaned up, but it's still not a nice place to be.

Then I walked along the wall, past all the guard towers, and ended up in the "Special Section" where the mass murders took place by gassing, hanging, cremating etc. There is a really nice monument here and some of the old industrial buildings still exist behind. There are of course mass grave sites where victims ashes were buried - just one of many. Every spare corner seemed to be used as a mass grave site.

I carried along and saw inside brick bunkers, wooden bunkers and didn't even have time to go into the laundry building or kitchen building. There was simply just too much and 4 hours had already passed. I think I saw 10% of the material that was there. I truly think this is one of the best museums I have ever been to and I can't believe no one recommended this as one of the things to do while I was in Berlin. One really strange thing that I always wonder about though, is how people could live right next to that and claim they didn't know what was going on? And who would want to live in a house now, where their backyard faces onto that? I don't know if you could pay me to live within 20 miles of there. Apparently, they used this camp as one of the "tour camps" to show the media etc. but it was all very false and selective in what they showed of course, but even still - could visitors really not realize what was going on when they got there? Insane. Just insane.

So that was today.

Yesterday! I walked. and I walked and walked and walked. I must have walked 20km. Berlin is really  not a small city. I originally though I would head over to tiergarten where I thought I could see part of the original wall, but turns out just the Brandenburg gate is there and actually all the way along that street they were setting up for some kind of giant rollerskating marathon so it didn't look all that special at the time, but the park was beautiful and it was a nice Fall day so I enjoyed walking through. I walked through lots of neighbourhoods and saw some churches, markets, shopping areas, the edge of the zoo, lots of other smaller parks and eventually tried to find my way home until at some point I got frustrated and just hopped on the metro. It was a nice, but exhausting day!


And now, well I'm going to go heat up a can of soup and then try to work on my thesis a bit! More tomorrow :)