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Vacation 2010 September 21, Germany Former Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen

Here, we visited one of the darkest moments of German history. During Nazi-rule, Germany was dotted with Concentration Camps. Volker's grandparents used to live very close to one of the camps - Sachsenhausen. Between 1936 and 1945, over 30,000 people died here; amongst them 13,000 Russian prisoners of war. Other victims were Jews, communists, Polish, Czech, French and Dutch resistance fighters, gypsies, Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals, alcoholics and other "unworthies."

After the war, during Soviet occupation, the Russians too used a part of the camp as prison, adding another 12,000 victims to the death toll. Today, the camp is a museum, honoring all victims of tyranny. We will keep our comments on this site to a minimum and let the pictures speak for themselves. You can read more about the camp at wikipedia.

Above are parts of the "Leather Testing Lane" Here, inmates had to march for hours to test new shoe material for the German military. When the camp was liberated, most of the original barracks hat to be burned to prevent the spread of epidemics. The locations are marked by granite pedestals.

Location of the gallows. Executions were carried out in front of all inmates.

Two barracks were kept intact to illustrate the inmate's life (above). Also kept was the solitary confinement bunker (below).

The two most shocking locations were the execution trench (above) and the crematory (below). Here, over 10,000 prisoners of war and resistance fighters from all European countries were shot and then burned.

There are two monuments honoring the victims. One is located in the center of the compound (above) the other at the crematory (below). The copper trangles at the large column symbolize the 18 different nationalities of inmates from all over Europe. There is also a plaque and a cross at the location of a mass grave of the time of Soviet occupation. That site wasn't discovered until the 1990s (center).

The museum bears testimony to the victims and the perpetrators. It also shows artwork done by inmates (below left) and displays the typical German accuracy, in which the mass-murder was documented (below right).

Of all the exhibits in the museum, this "message in a bottle" was the most touching. It was hidden under a brick wall and wasn't discovered until 2003 during construction work. It contains messages of two inmates, one German and one Polish, written in 1941.

Somber and contemplative, we left the walls of the camp behind us. Click the left turn sign to get back to the previous page. Or click the right turn signal to move on to the village of Volker's Grand Parents.

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