Reflecting on Sachsenhausen

The visit to Sachsenhausen was an experience that I will never forget. It is one thing to hear of tragedy and to be saddened or distraught because of it, but visiting the concentration camp and seeing firsthand evidence of the Holocaust affected me in a much greater way.After leaving Sachsenhausen’s visitor center, there is a long walk along the exterior wall that we had to take in order to enter through the camp’s front gate. This seemed like it would be innocuous upon first glance, but as I walked the path and stared at the wall I felt a building sense of foreboding with each step. It only in creased as we walked through the main gate which displayed the awful words “Arbeit macht frei”, meaning “Work liberates”, within its iron bars.

A majority of the grounds were empty, but as we walked through we could see large stone plots indicating the foundations of many of the old inmates quarters, able to hold several thousands of inmates. Oddly, the absence of physical buildings allowed me to see better the magnitude of the horror that was once held there, because you could see every single foundation over the several acres of land that Sachsenhausen covered.

Within the remaining buildings we were able to read and hear of the stories of victims that once resided in Sachsenhausen. We saw the incredibly poor conditions of where they slept, ate (if at all), and washed, each one impossibly cramped. We saw their the tools that were used to punish and humiliate them and the walls against which they were shot. The worst things I had seen were the autopsy tables at the pathology ward. A plaque next to them told of how there were so many deaths that those performing the autopsies simply cut open the bodies, sewed them back together, and moved on to the next.

I think that anybody who has a chance to visit Sachsenhousen or another concentration camp should, despite what horrible images may reside there. The memories of the murdered Jews, Soviets, Roma, Sinti, and other “social deviants” deserved to be acknowledged, and the preservation of the camps allow that to be possible. The whole experience was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in my life, but I’m glad that I went through it. It showed me that great evils aren’t beneath the ability of men to commit. I only wish I didn’t need Sachsenhausen to truly realize this.