Sachsenhausen concentration camp

I'm not sure if I agree with keeping these places open as a historical chapter for people to remember or not.  Anyhow, this tour was interesting and very depressing.  We started the tour by catching the train to Orianienburg (about 35km from Berlin).

The route from the train station to the concentration camp is the same route that thousands of prisoners had walked when they first arrived. You walk along Stralsunder Strasse, then turn right on to Bernauer Strasse, then left on to Strasse der Einheit and then you turn right on to Strasse der Nationnen. It will take you about 15 minutes to walk to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

At the concentration camp we all felt that eerie feeling that you get when you visit places like this.  Just remember that this was a working concentration camp, not a death camp, even though many people died here, the prisoners were sent to work not to die like other concentration camps such as Auschwitz.

Beginning its existence in the mid-1930s as a Schutzhaftlager ("Protective Custody Camp") for political opponents of the Nazi regime, it soon became a repository for anyone considered an anti-social element: gay men, Jews, Roma and Sinti ("Gypsies"), others. Soon it was a full out concentration camp, eventually including an extermination center and crematorium chillingly referred to as "Station Z" (the end of the alphabet, the end of the line). Through the gate emblazoned with "Arbeit Mach Frei" ("Work Brings Freedom"), I entered the grounds, a "rationally"planned triangle of facilities, now largely devoid of its original structures. A shiver went up my spine.

I found myself confronting, with gut-wrenching immediacy, the ghosts of that horrendous period. We circled slowly through the barracks, where hundreds of innocent men were crammed in highly unsanitary conditions; the prison, where dark tortures took place; the kitchens, where inmates used their thumbs to paint images, even light-hearted ones, on the cellar walls; the infirmary and pathology building, where "experiments" were conducted and victims "autopsied"; the Soviet "special" camp (because Sachsenhausen was not only a concentration camp for the Nazis, it was also used by the Soviets as a secret service detention camp from 1945-1950); and lastly Station Z, where so many died.

 After this tour, we headed back into town to take a look at the Jewish Museum (because we hadn't had enough sadness for one day), we circled through the permanent exhibition quite quickly as I was quite tired from our long day at Sachsenhausen. We really wanted to see their Heroes, geeks and Super-Rabbi's (The Jewish Dimension of Comic Art) exhibition but we didn't have enough time.