Everyone met at McDonald's in the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof to begin our journey. Everyone knew it wasn't going to be a happy day. We were somewhat prepared, but how were we supposed to be prepared to see such a horrible place? Everyone was talking about what their previous night was like and what was new with them. We were all in a pretty good mood. We waited for everyone to arrive before purchasing our train tickets. Afterwards, we all went to the platform to wait for the subway to arrive. The subway would take us from the upbeat station at Friedrichstrasse to a dark and depressing place. Our train ride was 45 minutes or so. Everyone was talking with one another. I decided to read my book, Verblendung, and enjoy the long ride.
After the 45 minute ride, we had arrived at our destination, Oranienburg. There were 24 of us in the group. We took up a good chunk of the sidewalk as we walked. Lsya started giving us a brief history of Oranienburg (in German). She told us "Sachsenhausen exists today because they want people to visit. They want everyone to see what happened and learn from it. It is something that should never, never again be repeated." The group got really quiet for a minute. Lsya said we had a bit of a walk ahead of us. We started and talked with one another. I don't think anyone was ready to see what we were going to see. After a long walk, we saw the sign for Sachsenhausen. Everyone stopped to look at it.
We continued our way into the first building where we would pay for our headsets. Everyone had to wait because they had to know how many needed an English headset, a Spanish one, a French one, and any other language that was spoken within our group. We all got our headsets and walked out the doors. Everyone huddled together to find out what time we had to meet back. We had 3 1/2 hours or so to walk around and see what we could see. Lsya recommended that we go to the cinema there and watch the film. After that, everyone split off and made their way down the long road along the side of the camp.
There was a section along the wall with pictures and testimonies from people who were in the camp. There were sad pictures, but there were some happy ones. You could see the pure joy on the faces of the people in the pictures when the US troops came in and helped free the prisoners.
Kelleen, Emily, and I stayed together. We walked around and headed towards the first building we saw. It was a museum. Inside was the uniform of a Nazi soldier along with propaganda that they used. Horrible. Glass display cases lined the walls. They were filled with letters from prisoners, personal items, postcards, and pictures. It wasn't easy looking at the items, but they were definitely interesting. It was interesting to read what they wrote to people outside the walls of the camp and to see pictures of people. Some people had remarkable stories, because they were fortunate enough to survive. The others who weren't so fortunate pulled at my heart. We finished walking around the museum and made our way to the memorial site. We walked past numerous memorials for those who died. This memorial site and the museum sit outside the gate into the camp. We walked through the gate which had "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" on it and stopped. The camp is huge. It's in the shape of a triangle, but a massive triangle. I started to walk along the wall the surrounds the camp. It has multiple sections of barbed wire along it. There was a sign with a skull painted on it and other reading "Neutral Zone". The three of us made our way over to a building we saw nearby. We entered and were welcomed by a room of computers. You could sit down and learn about the different things that went on in the camp. I decided to read about criminal medicine and the research that was done. I read about how the homosexuals had to wear a pink triangle so that everyone knew they were homosexual. I then read about how they were forced or tricked to sign a consent form to be castrated. They thought that if the homosexuals were castrated, then this would eliminate their urge and attraction to other men. They did other experiments of this sort with other groups of people. The SS would make these people go days without food and make them only work unless they decided to sign the consent form. The experiments that went on were absolutely ridiculous, horrible, and pointless. They proved no real scientific evidence for anything!
We walked through the rest of the long building and down the stairs. We saw multiple rooms. I can't remember exactly which ones, but I know we saw a washroom, kitchen, and a dissecting room in that building. I think we may have also seen where bodies were kept before they were dissected.
We walked over to the building beside it. It was similar to the other building with the rooms. I saw the masks that were made of the gypsies by the researchers. These were the exact masks from then. There were so many and all of them were of gypsies. There was the first mask that was made and then the 2nd which was then painted. Most of them had the name of person underneath it, but some were unidentified. There were kits of different colored hair, skin, and eyes. These were used to determine the eye, hair, and skin color of a person who the researchers were studying. They would make notes of which color each was and try to find a underlying pattern for each group of people. Once again, their research was pointless and they didn't come up with any real data.
This building had a room with three screens in it. I tapped the "English" button on the wall and stood back. Each TV lit up simultaneously. "From the view of the SS" on one screen, "From the view of the prisoners" on another, and finally "From the view of a visitor" on the third screen. Kelleen and Emily walked in and sat down in a chair. I continued standing for a minute and then sat down. It was incredible how different the views were. I'd look at the prisoner view screen and see them scrubbing the floors, putting bricks up, digging, starving, and completely exhausted. Then I'd look at the SS screen and see them standing around smiling and laughing, thinking that they are part of something great. They showed a picture of one of the guards handing a prisoner a cigarette, making you think things weren't bad at Sachsenhausen. They were all lies. Looking at the prisoner screen again, I'd see people digging graves for other prisoners. Interviews came on with people who survived and told about what happened. One man told the story of how people from around the world, mostly journalists, would visit the camp. The guards would warn them a day or two in advance of the important visit. This meant that the camp had to be spotless with every bed made and everyone looking they're "finest". If a bed wasn't properly made, the guard would take away food privileges for a week or so. One prisoner gave another his food in exchange for making his bed for him. There were some people who made the beds perfectly, but they still weren't perfect of the guards. It was unbelievable to see all of that.
We weren't able to see all of the camp, because we didn't have a lot of time there. It was definitely an educational experience that I will never forget.
After the depressing part of the day, we walked to cafe and got some lunch before heading to Schloss Oranienburg. I got a bratwurst with potatoes. It was alright... not delicious.
We walked to the palace, which was huge! We went inside and paid 2 euros each since we had such a large group. I paid another 3 euros to be able to take pictures of things. The palace was alright, it wasn't anything super fancy until we went to the basement. There were rooms of giant beer steins! I'm talking like... 2-3 feet tall ones made from pure silver.
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