We visited the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on Friday, July 21 and it was just as bad as you think it would be. Walking up to the main gated entrance to the camp was one of the worst feelings you can experience. Everyone has seen pictures of the gates of concentration camps like Auschwitz, but seeing the gates is something different entirely. When you look at a picture, your brain doesn’t always interpret it as an actual place. It could be something from a movie or a drawing because you aren’t there. Only when you see it in person do you realize it’s a real place and all the horrors you heard about happened here. The feeling of standing before the entrance is the closest thing I can think of to standing before the gates of hell. Once you get in you get to see how the people there lived and how they were treated and it’s hard to believe that people did this to each other.
The impact of the war is very evident in modern day Germany. Most of the buildings were destroyed in the war so the buildings you see are the ones built after the war. They have the same design language and all look like blocks made out of concrete. It is rare to see an old building in Berlin or other major cities. There were many Cathedrals such as the Cologne Cathedral that survived.