Warning: do not read on if you're of a nervous disposition. I haven't tried to fluffy up the facts!
When we first entered the site of the camp we were taken along an external road and shown the SS casino - a place for the SS to relax, eat and socialise. We were told that some of the prisoners in the camp were 'employed' to work in the SS Casino cooking, cleaning and sometimes even babysitting (!) and there wasn't a single report of a prisoner attempting to poison or kill the members of the SS, even though they had access to knives and plenty of motive and opportunity! I find this fascinating as, as we learned later in the tour, these men were being subjected to the worst kind of cruelty and torture imaginable! This SS Casino is currently being renovated but, as with many of the SS buildings in this area, will probably be used as a tax office in the future - it figures!
Picture: the SS Casino (also called The Green Monster by the prisoners).
We were next taken past some out-buildings that were used as function rooms for when visitors would come to look round the camp (seriously!). Sachsenhausen was used as the model for all other concentration camps so many people would come to see how it was done and take this 'wisdom' on to build other camps. This meant that it was also used to test lots of different ideas which I shall come onto later.
As we entered the camp we were greeted with the "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Works Makes (you) Free) sign that until now I had only ever associated with Schindler's List and other movies relating to the Holocaust. It was quite a shock to see it! It was explained to us that Sachsenhausen was designed based on an equilateral triangular perimetre (so that less guards needed to be employed to guard the camp) with Tower A in the middle of the bottom side and the role call area in front of this set in a semi circular shape. It was explained to us that role call was done every morning and every evening to check that no-one had managed to escape. Usually prisoners were given 40 minutes to get ready in the morning, after a 4:30am wake up call, and then needed to report to role call. This would sound OK to most of us, however, there were 54,000 prisoners in a camp build for 10,000. Prisoners would sometimes get crushed in the rush to get to the washrooms and sometimes they drowned in the sinks and toilets as well. One role call lasted for 13 hours one January morning in which 170 people dropped dead from the cold. We stood there for about 5 minutes and I couldn't feel my fingers even though I had gloves on!
Picture: Arbeit macht frei sign underneath the entrance at Tower A
A typical working day would be 12 hours for the male prisoners (females were not introduced into the camp until much later to prevent reproduction) . The jobs would range from peeling potatoes to heavy manual labour. Homosexual prisoners (who had been imprisoned just for being homosexual!) were asked to try out boots for the army made by big companies (e.g. Dassler which later became Adidas!). They would walk/ run in the boots with 20kg packs on their backs for 12 hours a day. They were usually malnourished as they were only receiving 50% of the recommended daily calorie intake (20% once rations became harder to come by during the war) and they would usually only last at this task for 6 days before they died. The SS were making money from big shoe companies based on exploiting innocent people but it was OK because they were turning the homosexuals into 'proper men'! It makes me really cross!
All the way around the perimetre of the camp were electrical fences and rows of barbed wire. In the beginning, prisoners decided that the best way out would be to throw themselves on the electric fences to commit suicide - surely that would be better than years of torture and abuse. After a few months, a section of gravel was put just before the barbed wire and electric fence with a sign that stated "Neutral Zone, you'll be shot if you enter". And the prisoners wouldn't be shot clean in the head or heart; they would be shot in the leg or chest and left to bleed slowly to death. So essentially the Nazis had set up a system whereby the prisoners couldn't even decide how they were going to commit suicide - they took away the last bit of control that the prisoners had!
Picture: Barbed wire and electric fence with the gravel 'neutral zone'
The camp was built in 1936 to initially house anyone who politically opposed the Nazi regime but later on prisoners were brought here who were, in the Nazi's eyes, racially and biologically inferior. Over the years 200,000 prisoners passed through Sachsenhausen. The prisoners were placed in a hierarchy to assist the SS in maintaining control - coloured triangles were sewn onto the tops to distinguish the different groups. Communists were given red triangles, homosexuals were near the bottom with pink triangles and Jews were right at the bottom with yellow triangles.
Picture: The camp uniform with the coloured triangles in the bottom corner
Because of this hierarchy, anytime a prisoner of note was brought to the camp, for example Stalin's son, they were taken directly to the prison (within the prison?!) to prevent them from disturbing the harmony of the camp. They were interrogated, tortured and housed in terrible conditions, however, their conditions were no worse than the rest of the prisoners.
Picture: Conditions within the prison
Jews were segregated in the 'Small Camp' to the side of Sachsenhausen. Many of them had good trades before being arrested so many were put to work to restore watches that had been taken from Jews at Auschwitz or to make counterfeit British money. The plan was to drop the Sterling into UK cities but it didn't work. If it had, it would have destroyed the British economy.
In 1942 the Jews from Sachsenhausen were sent on the death march to Auschwitz as, at this time, Sachsenhausen was not a death camp. In 1943 Station Z was created (note a direct comparison to the entrance called Tower A) to "liquidate" prisoners. As I mentioned earlier, this camp was designed to be the model camp and to test ideas before releasing them to the other camps as standard. Station Z housed a gas chamber that, amoungst other things, tested how little gas needed to be used to kill the prisoners. It wasn't enough that they were taking the lives of other human beings but they were concerned about saving money as well! I can't get my head around it! Prior to the gas chamber, prisoners were killed with a shot to the neck but, to make it nicer for the SS, the didn't have to look at the prisoners as they killed them. The prisoners were tricked into believing that they were having a medical exam on entering the camp, would stand by a measuring stick on the wall, the SS would stand in the room next door and shoot through a specially designed slit in the wall. Bodies were piled up in the next room and cremated (but only after any gold teeth had been removed to be melted down and used).
Picture: the foundations of Station Z. Top right, the gas chamber. Bottom right, the waiting room for the 'medical exam'
The last place we visited on the tour was the Infirmary Barracks. In these very modern looking rooms hepatitis vaccines were tested on the prisoners and the doctors attempted to prove that Jews were physiologically different to 'Pure Aryans'. Ironic really as these same doctors were testing vaccines on Jews that would be used on Germans who, theoretically, were physiologically different! Baffling! Needless to say, the doctors didn't manage to prove that Jews and Germans were different so all of the inhumane testing was completely useless! It wasn't until later in the camp's history that Himler decided that he could get more work out of healthy prisoners so he allowed the doctors to help the sick instead of testing silly theories!
The worst part about the whole thing is that the Nazis knew that what they were doing was wrong because they tried to cover up the evidence. And yet they still did it! At one camp they built a farm where the camp had once stood and paid a Polish family to say that they'd lived there the whole of their lives!
There is one overwhelming theme of thoughts in my head right now - how could anyone do this to another human being and why would they want to? I know I couldn't, no matter how much I believed I'd been wronged by someone!
R.I.P everyone who was murdered in Nazi camps
Picture: The memorial statue that was erected at Station Z
Picture: The memorial at Station Z continued
Good work recording all of this Jen. Did you visit the holocaust memorial in Berlin, near to the Reichstag?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gareth! Yes, we did a tour the following day of Berlin and saw the memorial. I didn't really know what to think about it to be honest. I know it's there for an exceptionally good reason but I didn't get it (obviously I'm not cultured enough!). What did you think when you saw it?
ReplyDeleteWow Jen, thanks for sharing all of that. Absolutely fascinating and at the same time haunting to read. I have been to camps at Dachau and Auschwitz. It is incredible the cruelty that one human being can show to another and it is so important to remember and have records that this did happen. I lost family in the Holocaust in concentration camps and I have always been aware that had I been born at a different time then I would have more than likely perished in such a hell hole.
ReplyDeleteLeon