During my time in high school and college I have had to read a fair amount of Holocaust literature. So in the first part of the museum there it was a timeline that I already knew fairly well. The rest of the museum was filled with personal stories of families and the destruction that the Holocaust caused. This part affected me quite a bit. Suddenly I could put myself in the shoes of a person who was unlikely to see the rest of their family ever again and likely lose their own life. The amount of suffering recorded was terrible.
At the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp I was confronted with a place that caused incomprehensible suffering. While there I walked up the the main gate tower that an officer would have stood to look out over the camp. It made me realize that the people who caused the suffering were real people. It also made me wonder how somebody could come to the state of mind where they believed it was right to cause so much suffering. Places like Sachsenhausen and the Holocaust museum are so important because they prevent something like the Holocaust from ever happening again. Despite being depressing experience, I would say that journeying to these places is something important for everyone to do.