Our visit to the Concentration camp Sachsenhausen was a depressing occasion with buildings that were used in all the atrocities against the Jews. While Sachsenhausen was not as large of a killing camp as Auschwitz there were still an ungodly amount of murders here. Some of the things I saw were a track used to test shoe materials for troops (the Jews and others in this camp were forced to run all day with large loads), ovens for burning deadbodies. However, that is not to say it wasn’t worth the hour trip. It was a useful trip to gain insight into the German past and the culture of Germany today. It’s one thing to hear about what happened in the 30s and 40s but its another thing to visit the place where these things happened. Germans have a word Vergangensheitsbewältigung which translates roughly to “Overcoming the Past” this is the word used when Germans talk about their Nazi past. Going to Sachsenhausen I was able to get a glimpse of how deeply emotional this history and word is to the Germans because even as an American that is not associated with these things I felt a deep sadness cling to me when I visited.
This feeling of sadness or maybe even shame about their past has led to a culture that is vastly different from ours. Germans are very rarely outspokenly “patriotic”. That is to say that Germans don’t act like Americans that are typically prideful of few things more than being an American. Germans on the other hand are not openly prideful of their country (that is not to say they aren’t they are just wary of being extremely patriotic). The one place that Germans show their national pride (something that I have seen personally while here) is in sports, especially Soccer. While Germany is not over what happened in WWII, they are learning how to have pride in their country while not ignoring their past.