“-Yes, a pity not to have pondered, blurr'dly and inconclusively, on what connection can exist for centuries between the crudest wooden footwear and, careful and finicky, the whittled fantasies of wooden cages. -Never to have studied history in the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.”
Elizabeth Bishop, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/questions-of-travel/
*I find this passage particularly fitting for this post because the prisoners of the concentration camp were forced to wear wooden footwear, and they were locked in cages in every sense of the word.
Today, I woke up early for a tour of Sachsenhausen, a large concentration camp in Berlin. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sign up for the tour at first, but I decided it was important. Because this topic is so heavy, I don’t think I can follow it with anything else, so I will begin by talking about the other parts of my day, and then go in depth into this experience.
I visited the Pergammon, a fascinating museum that displays Roman history and Islamic history. My favorite part of the museum were the beautiful Islamic carpets pictured in one of the panorama collages. There was a cathedral outside the museum, which would have been more beautiful if not for the scaffolding. After napping and face-timing my family, I was supposed to go on a bar crawl, but I decided I would rather visit the Berlin Wall, pictured above in one of the panorama collages. As I walked along the wall, I felt like I was walking past so many layers of history, from the wall itself to the political/environment/etc art that covered it.
The gallery above shows pictures from Sachsenhausen. All the information below I learned from my tour guide, Mark.
We started our walking tour following our tour guide, Mark, off of the train and along the exact same path on which the Jews walked from the station to the concentration camp entrance. He told us how the Jews (and other prisoners) were forced to walk this path in broad daylight in order to scare the people of the town into submission. As we got closer to the camp, we began to pass beautiful little houses, which used to house the guards who worked in the concentration camp along with their families. People unrelated to the Nazis still live in these houses, which some might find strange, but our tour guide explained that these people believe in the importance of moving on—of not letting what happened rule everyone's lives forever.
Right before the entrance of the concentration camp was a large building, which used to serve as the building where all the decisions were made about the conditions and operations of all ~23,000 concentration camps in the world. It also was used to train the guards for the camp. Now this building is a police academy. The fact that this particular building is used as a police academy serves two main purposes:
It helps the police remember to work extra hard to act righteously and protect the rights of all humans by reminding them of the horrors committed by the police force under Nazi rule.
Because it is so close to the camp, the police are able to protect the camp from Neo-Nazis who have tried to destroy it on multiple occasions in order to get rid of evidence of the Holocaust.
Ironically, while the camp was being built, Germany hosted the Olympics. They managed to cover up everything they were doing, taking down street signs that persecuted Jews, and the world was in awe of their grandeur at the time, believing that Hitler was truly helping the country.
At the entrance to the camp, the words “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free) are spelled in the gate. These words served to give the prisoners false hope so that they would have motivation to work and so that there would be a lower chance of rebellion. If the prisoners thought there was no hope, that they had nothing to lose, they might as well fight. These words helped prevent that from happening.
The entrance tower is called “Tower A” and the death Tower, which the prisoners did not know existed, was titled “Tower Z.” The guards would joke with the prisoners that they enter the camp through Tower A and leave through Tower Z, knowing that the prisoners had no idea Tower Z was where they would die.
The prisoners slept in 3 story bunks, 3 people per level (and on the floor, pictured above). As you can kind of see in the picture, the ceiling is damaged because Neo-Nazis tried to burn it down in order to cover up the evidence of the holocaust. The prisoners would be woken up around 4:30 AM, have a half hour to all wash up and use the bathroom, and then get to their places for roll call. Using the wash basin in the morning was crucial because sanitation helped to prevent illness, which made you useless as a worker and thus, you would be killed. Because the camp was so over-crowded, people would often die in stampedes of men trying to use the washroom.
The prisoners would then stand for roll call outside, which often took over 3 hours. There was one roll call in the winter where nearly 150 people dropped dead from the cold because it took so long. After roll call, the prisoners had a 45 minute break before their 11-hour work day. In many accounts, survivors described their break as the worst time of the day because it gave them time to reflect on their situation. At the end of this free time was when the most suicide attempts would occur. Prisoners would typically try to commit suicide by pretending that they were attempting to escape. There was a zone lining the edge of the camp called the “neutral zone” (pictured above), and prisoners were told that if you stepped into that zone, you would be shot without warning.
The Nazis took great measures to help the guards justify torturing and killing the prisoners—especially the Jews. They told the guards that the prisoners were bacteria, and that their job, as Germans, was so cure Germany of this bacteria. In the earlier years of the camp, prisoners were put into a “shooting trench” where the guards stood above them and shot them. However, this proved to be very difficult for the guards’ mental state, as they had to face the prisoners crying and pleading for their lives. The higher ranking Nazis took pity on the guards, and created a system where the guards could either gas the prisoners or shoot them through neck-shocking. In these cases, the guards did not have to see the prisoners they were killing, and the prisoners did not know they were going to die until they were already dying, which made it less emotionally difficult for the guards.
Sachsenhausen was such a well-guarded prison that there is not one documented escape attempt that was successful. The guards also divided the prisoners by making them wear tags that showed their country and the type of prisoner they were. By dividing the prisoners, the guards made it less likely that they would ban together and rebel. Though this camp was all-male, there was a women’s camp not too far away, which was just as horrible. When the women would arrive at the camp, they were asked if they were pregnant. If they were, they were first shot in the stomach, and then killed afterwards.
It is so impossible to comprehend the reality of the concentration camp that I felt myself unable to feel very much at all. I felt as though any amount of emotion I could possibly express would never be enough--as though if I allowed myself to mentally face the horrors of the camp, I would never recover. Thus, I was stunted emotionally. I just felt numb and detached. I don’t know if this was the right way to feel, or if there is a right way to feel, but that is how I felt.
As I was preparing photos for my blog, however, I found myself getting sick to my stomach—especially when I began to brighten the photo of the shooting trench. It felt wrong to change anything at all about this photo, and I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why. I truly felt like I was going to throw up, so I’m just posting it as I took it. I even feel nauseous writing about brightening it.
Thank you for baring with my writing about this heavy but important topic. I’m looking forward to a brighter day tomorrow when I travel to Copenhagen and see my Danish friend, N!