Hello All,
I am so sorry for taking over a week to write this post, but there are so many intricate details I wanted to make sure to share with you. I wanted to make this blog very detailed for both my future self and my readers.
I want to add a few warnings:
1) this post is long
2) this post may be messy and hard to follow
3) this post may be graphic and triggering to some
My Berlin trip started on a Friday morning when two other girls and I left for the airport. We made it to the Thessaloniki airport, through security, and on a safe flight. Most of us traveling on the weekends are flying through discount airlines, such as Ryanair, and we are landing in airports that are approximately an hour or more from the city center of towns. This was the case in Berlin, so we had to take a train/bus combination to the city center. On our way, we stopped in the Kreuzberg district. The Kreuzberg district is the heart of street art and other forms of art, it is also a district that is heavily influenced by the Turkish population.
(Cafe Isla Pictures)
In the Kreuzberg district, we stopped at the famous Cafe Isla. This cafe is getting a lot of attention from trip advisors, travel, and food bloggers because of its sustainability efforts, along with its vegan and vegetarian options. It was super cute, and the coffee and food were equally as amazing. We then decided to walk around the Kreuzberg area and stumbled upon the market. This market was full of family-style owned small restaurants, taverns, and home decor businesses. We then decided to walk around and see all of the street art. It was beautiful and full of talented artists. Also on Friday we made our way to the Alexanderplatz area where our hostel was located. Alexanderplatz is the heart of shopping, fashion, and public transportation. Our hostel was very clean and modern, with lots of optional amenities. This was my very first time staying in a hostel and I didn’t know what to expect.
(Photos from the Kreuzberg District)
Saturday, we attended a Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Tour. This tour was an experience that I will never forget and was equally as humbling to see where the country was just about 80 years ago. The Sachsenhausen Museum and Memorial are about an hour away from Berlin by train.
Some background on the timeline of the camp and area. From 1936 to 1945, it was Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and from 1945 to 1950 it was Soviet Special Camp number 7. During the transition between the two camps, there was a two-week period where they did cross over. The Soviet Special Camp was opened for Nazis, and had a total of approximately 64,000 people with a 25% death rate. After being shut down in 1960, the Sachsenhausen National Memorial was opened. This memorial focused on the triumph of anti-Fascism and not what actually occurred at the camp. The memorial was created, and some of the original buildings were torn down to refrain from people from seeing inside the camp. This memorial was open until 1990.
(First picture is part of the biggest memorial to those in concentration camps. These are placed all around Europe and they tell a story of someone in a camp. These three are the story of a family, it was outside of their house.; Next two are the map of the camp. In the third picture you can see the triangle shape.)
In 1993, the current Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum was opened. They focus on presenting the layers of history and giving accurate, in-depth presentations on what occurred and when. They rebuilt two barracks from original wood. It was decided to only rebuild two because they do not want people to get the wrong message, and they think it is important for people to understand that no one will ever really understand what happened inside the camps. They also preserved the original kitchen and laundry, along with two out of the five infirmary barracks.
The tour focused mainly on when it was the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and the details of that time. An important detail to note is that it was a concentration camp, not an extermination camp. A concentration camp is not meant for death, the prisoners died because they were not cared for. An extermination camp was meant to kill prisoners, there were only 5-7 of these, and they were located outside of Germany.
(The main tower into the camp.; The neutral zone. In this area if standing on the rocks, they would get shot. )
Sachsenhausen had a total of 200,000 people with an average of 20% death rate. Of the 200,000 prisoners, there were approximately 54 nationalities. Sachsenhausen was built in a triangle shape; only a few camps were built like this due to the difficulty of expanding. The upside of building in a triangle is there was only one main guard tower needed to see the whole camp. There were a total of 62 barracks built originally; in 1936 two Jewish barracks built on the side, making a total of 64 barracks. The Jewish barracks were only used from 1938-1942, as that was the only time Jews were at Sachsenhausen. The barracks were built to house 150 people; 75 individuals per half of the barrack. A barrack consisted of two living areas, two-day rooms, two washroom areas, and a "storage" closet. They had three-story beds in the living area, prisoners would want the top bed because when a disease passed through the people the ones on the bottom two bunks would get covered by human body excretions from the ones above them. When the camp became overpopulated, they would fit up to 800 people in a barrack, sleep 3-4 to a bed, and some would also have to sleep on straw in the day room along with in the storage room.
(1st and 2nd is the memorial to the barrack. These are where every barrack would be.; The tall aluminum circle item is where prisoners would wash their body.; The next is toilets. They are cemented in due to fear of disease.; The squares are for foot baths.; Three story bunks in the barracks.; The day room in a barrack.)
When prisoners would enter the camp, they had a strict protocol they had to follow. They would initially be marched onto the camp property and see the administration building that looked normal with lots of trees and flowers; this was an aesthetic feature so they would not try to flee or fight. Once inside the camp, they were given paperwork to fill out, which assigned them their number. Their number was put in place of their name and that’s what they went by. They were then stripped of their personal belongings, their hair was shaved, body covered in a powder that burned them, and then they showered. After their shower, they were given their uniform, which consisted of a single layer of clothing with wooden shoes that were a ½ size too small. Their uniform had their number painted on their left chest and right leg. On their left chest, was a triangle that described why they were there. These triangles also led them to create packs and work against each other. After being given their uniform, they had to complete physical sports that lasted from days to weeks. These were meant to emotionally and physically break them down.
(Uniforms and a break-down of the triangles)
After entry, they would soon slip into the daily routine of a prisoner. A prisoner's morning would start at 4:45 in the summer, or 5:45 in the winter, when they would be awoken for breakfast and their wash routine. They had 30 minutes to do this routine. They would then head to roll call where each prisoner was called by number. They would do this by barracks, and if a person did not respond, they would start over. Roll call would take 2-14 hours. One of the prisoner's jobs was to load all the dead bodies in the barrack and drag them to roll call to be accounted for. During roll call guards would pour cold water on prisoners in the winter, pick fights with them and knock them down, or anything to get the prisoners in trouble. After roll call, the punishment would begin with others watching. The most common punishment came when a prisoner would be caught smoking, they would be strapped to a table and whipped with a leather belt on the bare buttocks by another prisoner. This happened often and would cause kidneys and spleens to rupture, killing them on the table. After the punishments were completed in the morning there was then work detail for 12 hours. Factories were built around the camp, allowing for slave work. Work detail would describe their chance of survival. Good work detail would lead to high survival and release opportunities, while a bad work detail was intended to kill the workers. On Sundays, everyone but Jewish prisoners got a half-day off work. After work detail, roll call would begin again. The prisoners would receive three meals a day, but in total it would average a total of 1,500 calories, which is the starvation level.
(Table where inmates where whipped; cart for removing dead bodies from barracks; table in the infirmary.)
Prisoners got different work details depending on why they were in the camp. The types of prisoners in Sachsenhausen were criminals, political prisoners (most common), Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, unemployed, female homosexuals, male homosexuals, Jews, and those who made jokes or references to Hitler. Jews were only in the camp from 1938 to 1942 before they were transferred to other camps. Male homosexuals were targeted heavily and had a 40-50% death rate. Jehovah's Witnesses were some of the guards' favorites, yet most hated. Jehovah's Witnesses are very dedicated to their faith and were actually placed in camps because they swore to God, not Hitler. Guards hated them because they would not build guns, tanks, and other machinery, but they would work in the casino. The guards liked that they would work there because they knew if they passed out that the Jehovah's Witnesses would not take advantage of them. An example of a poor work detail was the shooting range. Prisoners would have to build dirt mounds to slow the pace of bullets, for when guards were practicing their shooting. Guards would typically practice while prisoners were working. Therefore many were shot dead.
The guards were mean and cruel to prisoners. They became this way from training and influence at a young age. When the camp was recruiting for guards, they targeted 17-19-year-old men. They would put them through 6 weeks of strict training. During this training, they would humiliate them in front of their friends if they did anything wrong. If they passed the training, they would then be placed with an active guard so they could see how to correctly treat the prisoners. The old building where they trained guards was turned into the police station and training area for the town police. The town of Oranienburge, where the camp is located, is extremely poor and they found this to be a cheap alternative and also very humbling to keep officers from gaining too much power.
(The building where the guards were trained.; A picture of a guard's house. This can be determined because the bottom of the roof turns upward.)
In the camp there was a jail where they put prisoners that committed crimes in central camp, or mentally ill individuals, and people who they needed information from. In jail it was dark, cold, and isolated from everyone else. Guards would come here to torture inmates when they were bored. This included pouring water on them while they slept in the winter to freeze them to the cement floor, hang them by their arms with their wrists tied together and arms behind their back, and mentally abuse them.
(Station Z and the cremation area; a picture of a jail cell)
The camp also built a building called Station Z. This was originally built for an experiment to test the amount of gas needed to be lethal. After the experiment ended it was close to the time when the camp was overtaken and shut down. They then turned Station Z into a mass murder conveyer belt. They transformed Station Z to look like a medical office where they would bring in prisoners pretending as if it was a normal physical assessment. They would then take them through steps where they ended up being murdered. They killed about 400 people per day. As they did this they added a cremation site where they were able to burn 16 bodies at a time. The cremation company that built the site added a special feature where the body fat would drip off of the prisoners to run the cremators however this did not work as the prisoners were so skinny due to starvation and had very little body fat. Once cremated they did three things with the ashes. They either buried them, dumped them in a canal, or asked families to send them money, and then they would send them a mix of ashes to help with the grieving of losing a loved one.
In January 1945, the camp was at its highest capacity of 54,000 people. Many of these people died of disease and starvation. In April of 1945 there were over 33,000 individuals, but they were moved West as the Soviet and Polish Troops moved closer. By April 22, 1945, when the Soviet and Polish Troops shut down Sachsenhausen, they only found 3,000 prisoners, all of them sick and dying.
(Brandenburg Gate; Reichstag Building with and without the pretzel; Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; Checkpoint Charlie; Signs entering and leaving the American Sector; The Berlin Wall)
On Saturday, after we got back from the tour, we decided that we needed a little brain break and some rest at a nice coffee shop. After our break we decided to continue sightseeing in Berlin. We went to see the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag Building, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Topography of Terrors. All of these places had breathtaking views and tons of history to go along with it. The Topography of Terrors was my favorite place, after the concentration camp tour. I will never forget the concentration camp tour. At the Topography of Terrors was part of the remaining Berlin Wall, along with a free museum that talked about the history. I personally am not a huge history person, but I spent close to two hours reading and reflecting on history. It was interesting, saddening, and humbling to what those in our past encountered. To see pictures of happiness and sadness, to feel the emotion of those around me when they began to understand what all happened. I felt that the Topography of Terrors completely summed up the trip and really brought it all together with everything that we had visited and learned about.
(Quotes from the Topography of Terror; Currywurst from the German restaurant)
After all that information on Saturday, we headed to a traditional German Restaurant where I got a delicious currywurst. After a good meal and lots of conversation reflecting on the day, we called it a day and went back to our hostel to rest. Sunday morning, we got up early to make our flight back to Thessaloniki!
- With Love, Cambrie
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