Sachsenhousen

This morning Brittney, Emery, and I traveled about 40 minutes outside of Berlin to visit Sachsenhausen, the German concentration camp. I have obviously learned about the Holocaust over the years. I have visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC and the British War Museum in London, among other sites. I have read novels and books and had many lessons in school about World War II. Knowing the atrocities that took place helped me understand what I was going to see by visiting Sachsenhausen, but none of those experiences compare to actually standing on the ground where prisoners lined up for roll call - where they were forced to endure freezing temperatures, humiliation, and pain, often for 24 hours straight.
I walked where innocent people were forced to march every day with cold wind going through their thin clothing, not understanding why they were there or what was to become of them.
I looked through the peep holes in the cell doors where prisoners were kept in solitary confinement for weeks and months at a time.
I stood inside Barrack 38
and looked in on the infamous bunks, the washrooms where prisoners were given a trickle of water to bathe in, and the bathrooms where prisoners were so desperate to use the facilities that they trampled each other to get in.
I walked through rooms where SS guards tortured and killed prisoners. I saw prisoner uniforms, torture devices, and mass graves now marked by cement slabs.

At station Z I looked down on the trenches built to simplify mass shootings,
then the ovens used for cremation.

I passed the guard towers that were once manned by SS guards with machine guns, listened to eye witness accounts of the cruel beatings inflicted on prisoners by SS officers.
I read the ironic words on the iron gate at Tower A: "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (Work makes you free).


I read about the death march that occured as officers tried to clear the camps of prisoners - witnesses - before liberation by the Allies. I was inspired by stories of Red Cross workers who risked their lives to try to help those who fell before they were shot for not keeping up with the evacuation. My heart broke for the Jews, the Russian soldiers, the political opponents, the Poles, the "social outcasts", the religious leaders, and the resistance fighters who were all sent to Sachsenhausen by order of the Fuhrer and murdered by hangings, shootings, beatings, exposure, illness, torture, starvation, medical experiments, exhaustion, gas chambers...

At the camp today I was reminded once again how vital it is to love all of God's children. One quote I heard today that stood out to me was one from a former prisoner who survived his time in Sachsenhausen. When he was asked if his imprisonment was really that bad he replied, "It was a thousand times worse."

It is unbelievable that the atrocities that took place there actually happened, that people could actually treat other people as they did. It is hard to believe and impossible for me to understand. It was important for me to go to Sachsenhausen today. The world must not forget what happened. We must not ever let it happen again.