SACHSENHAUSEN - 'Arbeit Macht Frei'

WARNING: LONG POST-but worth while if you’re interested in History/Human Kind.

History of Sachsenhausen: The Concentration camp was built in 1936 meant as a model for the network of death and concentration camps to follow this one. Whilst the world’s focus was on Berlin for the 1936 Olympics, Few thousand slave labourers were 40km north of Berlin building this camp, or digging their own graves. This was not an extermination camp, unlike Auschwitz which was a ‘Death Camp’. This was a slave labour camp, meaning that every prisoner is made to do slave work during their imprisonment. The camp was freed by the Soviets in 1945 after the fall of the Nazis. Knowing that they were to be discovered, the SS officers ordered for the thousands of prisoners to make a march towards the West, then up North, known as the ‘Death March’. This campsite was then desolate for the few years under the Soviet’s occupation of East Germany. In 1961, the soviets opened this place as a memorial, but used it as a place of propaganda. They remembered only the communist soldiers who died ‘for the country’ and not the rest of the people. It was only in 1992 that they restored the place and the world can visit this site of extreme horrific memories, and remember every single group of people who died under the Nazis.

We followed the entire route that would have been walked by the prisoners on their way to Sachsenhausen. The camp is a triangle shaped area, with the tip at ‘Tower A’, which enables SS officers(Schutzstaffel-meaning protective squad) to keep an eye on every part of the camp. Prisoners would enter into the ‘Registrationplatz’ where registration, and dehumanisation will begin. Officers first go around the groups and pick out the strong-willed ones, those who seem like the leaders. They would beat them up in front of everything. The idea here is to scare everyone into obedience. If they think that they can follow their leader, then they are wrong because this is what will happen to them. They are then stripped of all their clothing, shaved of all their hair. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of human individuality and by shaving it all, everyone looks similar. They are all given a uniform, and a registration number. They are no longer known by their names. The Nazis later introduced coloured triangles to show the officers why the prisoners are in the camp. Red was for Communists, Social Democrats, anarchists, and other “enemies of the state”; green was for German criminals; blue was for foreign forced laborers; brown was for Roman Sintis(or known as Gypsies); pink was for homosexuals; purple was for Jehovah’s Witnesses and black was for asocials, a catch-all term for vagrants, bums, prostitutes, hobos, perverts, alcoholics. Once they get through the gates of Tower A, 200,000 of them never returned. 53,000 died due to labour. The remaining 147,000 were probably sent to Death Camps.

Entering the front gates we see a big field infront of us. This is the “roll call” area. Barracks are lined in a 3 semi circles facing Tower A. Everymorning, prisoners are given 30minutes to wake up,dress up, pack their beds, clean their lockers, shower, wash up, eat breakfast and report to the roll call area. It is okay for mayb 10 people, not when there are 200 or more in a barrack. The barracks were made for 150 people but by some time they were over capacity to maybe 300 per barrack. Often people die being trampled on and drowned. Not to mention that SS officers often give trouble to the prisoners by purposely causing jams in the hallways, and drowning people in the washrooms. If they do not make it out on time to the roll call area, the prisoners are immediately dragged to the front of the field to be hanged on the gallows, often prisoners are made to do it to their fellow prisoners.

The front of the roll call area is barricaded by barbed wires and an electric wire that will kill upon a single touch. Officers are also given the command to shoot anyone who makes a run for it. Often, many prisoners gave up with the touch lifestyle and ran forward to die. Soon, the SS officers realise that too many people are taking the easy way out. Hence, they decided that they were going to take away the one right that people had. The choice to live or to die was going to be controlled by the SS officers. Anyone who takes a run for it, will be shot in the leg, and then tortured and dealt with accordingly. Soon maybe dropped dead from the 3 hour long roll call in the early morning, and the evenings, especially during the harsh winters. After morning roll call, they are all sent off to their various work details. Many of them were working for companies that built their factories outside of the camp, some of them still in existence, like Siemens. Brickmaking, building of houses, serving the SS officers, working in ‘Station Z’ and Boot Testing. Boot testing was known as the ‘death detail’. Many prisoners who were made to do this, mostly the homosexuals, dropped dead. Their average life span is no more than 14 days. They were made to wear boots that were purposely sizes too small. They had to carry backpacks filled with sand, and then made to run back and forth the roll call area for the whole duration of the work detail time in the day, around 12 hours. If that was not enough, they were made to run across different kinds of ground that a soldier might encounter like volcanic ash, rocky terrains and such. Prisoners were given only some water, and a small piece of stale bread for their ‘lunch break’.

Then there was the Special Prisoners Unit. These contained the more important prisoners like members of resistance and others. They were tortured and interrogated most commonly by handing them by their arms inversely. They walk up a small elevated platform near the pole, their hands tied behind them. Their arms are then lifted behind them, hooked onto the pole and the platform in kicked away. While this special area was walled, prisoners in the concentration camp could hear the screams of these people.

Station Z. Termed as the last alphabet because there is no exit from that place, as opposed to Tower A. It is the extermination center of Sachsenhausen. We see a trench upon our initial entry into this area. The earliest method of extermination was to line up the people in a line in the trench and shooting them. They then drag their bodies into a big room and once it becomes full, a vehicle comes to pick up all the bodies and transport them to an crematorium in Central Berlin. Soon it became a logistical problem as the number of bodies needed to be cremated were increasing too quickly and there was an accident that occured when one of the vehicles transporting the bodies was hit and the bodies spilled out onto the road. That is when they created the more systematic way of extermination. POWs(most of the time they are not worked but killed) are brought in thinking that its an infirmary. They are greeted by Prisoners working there, who are in lab coats. They first enter the ‘waiting room’, and one by one they enter the rest of the room. The next one is the ‘body checkup area’ but most of the time, they are checked for gold teeth. If they have gold teeth, the prisoner working inside will make an X on the POW. Later they are walked into a small room and they stand with their back against a ‘measuring stick’ that has a small gap between the neck and head of a person. The prisoner who led him in will push a button and a light will go on in the back room. The SS officer on duty will stand up, aim, and shoot the person in the head. There is no mess, and no resistance from the unsuspecting POWs, and the officers do not have to deal with the emotional stress of killing them. The prisoner who pushes the button then deals with it. He drags the body in the next room and the next POW comes in unsuspectingly. The dead bodies are sorted and gold teeth are plucked. The bodies are then loaded into 3 large incinerators and burnt once it becomes full. The ashes are then dumped outside.

Finally we made our way to the pathology lab and the infirmary where they carried out grotesque experiments on prisoners. One such test would be the study of Gangrene. They would give a prisoner a fresh wound and place a rusted piece of metal inside and sews the wound up. WITHOUT anaesthetic. In the pathology lab, dead bodies were cut up and inspected and their death would be given a ‘natural cause’ so that if external institutions start poking their noses in they would have justified deaths.