ARBEIT MACHT FREI

So much to take in and so little time! The last two days have been, see the sights and do a tour of Sachsenhausen, the model concentration camp. Now I'll get to the emotions and everything about that tour that happened today a little bit later. I've recorded everything the tour guide has informed us of, so i will re-visit what he has said because i don't want to misquote or misinform you about what happened in Sachsenhausen. 

Berlin, 8th of november. It was a typical grey, foggy, wet, autumn day in Berlin but that gradually improved to just grey and dark, making decent photos near impossible. Light is a photographers best friend. If there is light there can always be good photos. First i went to a section on the wall in the northern part of the city, pretty small and most of the wall has been moved there for the memorial. The info was very interesting and showed archival images of the area. Like when the wall was built, few years before it was taken down the and the area we see it as now. It also included stories of people who lost their lives as a result of the wall. For me the topography of terrors the previous day was much better, had more info, but was also in a better more historical area, right on the former Gestapo headquarters, and the wall as far as i know is the original, hasn't been replaced or moved. Even in the souvenir shops they are selling bits if the wall. I didn't buy any, it's not mine to take, and has no cultural significance to me personally. Then i had to head to the main train station, Berlin hauptbahnhoff. I needed to book all of my eurail pass seats on all of the trains i was going to be taking across Europe. As I'm writing this I'm on a sleeper train heading to Munich. Probably should be sleeping! But there is so much i want to get down and out before my next adventure. And Frankie was right you really need a patient person to help you with your rail passes and reservations. All up it cost €210 for reservations, that includes the single sleeper I'm in now. Could of saved €90 not getting the sleeper, but here i have my own "space" and i use the term space lightly! I'm pretty sure I've been in bigger plane toilets than this room. I managed to get every train i wanted so that was great. I had all of the train timetables on my iPad, i just showed him the screen and he went to work, good man. He doesn't want Ferrari to win F1 drivers title, as long as it's Webber or Vettel he'll be happy. I then took to seeing the sights. Went into tiergarten, the big park area in Berlin. I wanted to see the victory column, which was under refurb as was the kaiser willhelm cathedral?????
.?? 

I was planning to see the big stretch of wall that is left, and go up the TV Tower but the low fog was there all day making it a bit pointless, unless you're a fog officianado. 
So i decided to spend some time at the Berlin zoo. Lions, polar bears, a panda, gorillas, monkeys, elephants, giraffes (the only animal born with horns), baby hippos, beavers......haha i said beaver! Well i hadn't seen one in a while! Very cool place, poorly signed i found myself back tracking a number of times, and this wasn't me getting lost, go this way, ok, where's the next sign? It's not in front of me.... There is no flow to the place. Nice animals, decent sized enclosures, a lot of repetitive behaviours though, especially this one leopard and male lion, the same path around it's cages. It was a bit cold for most of them to be out on exhibit, so they were inside but you have access back there too! Would've loved a sunny day so they were outside and i could have gotten some good shots of them, but work with what you've got! Afterwards, back to the hotel, put the point and shoot camera on charge and get the big boy out for some Berlin at night (nacht) shots. Im always concerned taking my camera out at night every since i nearly had a run in with some guys blocking off my exits in Melbourne. Luckily that night Amber saw what was happening and walked over and they then realized i wasn't on my own. I saw what was happening and what they were doing, but it didn't tick over in my mind what was going to happen. Too much faith in the common man. But ever since then, no matter where i am i have my wits about me and the thought is constantly going through my head, be smart, walk with the camera over head and shoulder, and hold onto the strap, have the camera close to the building i'm walking past so they can't run past and grab it, and of course my tripod in the other hand. I love the Brandeburg Tor at night, and I'm really happy with the stuff that came out. I would've liked to get a wide shot directly in the middle, but they have massive floodlights on the opposite side that would have ruined the shots with flare. But all in all a good night and day of sight seeing.

Now onto the 9th November. 

Today especially was a great learning experience and listening to our Canadian tour guide Derek on my voice memos it's great to listen to his tour again. The photos will link up to the voice memos and let me get across how i felt and what i've learnt. Derek did Dachau tours for two years before heading to Berlin to now do the Sachsenhausen memorial tour. He used to think Dachau was the model concentration camp, but after understanding the philosophy that went on in Sachsenhausen, he has made up his mind. Dachau was the first built but Sachsenhausen was what the Nazi's would hope could be a blueprint in which all camps would be made. He stressed that this isn't the first time concentration camps are not the invention of the Nazi's they just have different names, internment camps, detention centres. The term means that the camps work outside the legal system. Jails are for people who commit crimes, concentration camps are for people who they think may cause a crime. Before we enter Sachsenhausen we walk down the streets where SS guards and their families lived (now residential) and our first real stop and chat about Sachsenhausen was at the administration building, unimpressive but chilling to know what went on. I hadn't turned on my voice memo yet so i think it was put in place in 1938. This is where the concentration camp headquarters was, this is where genocide was plotted. Decisions like what the prisoners would have to eat, what kind of forced labour they'd be taking part in, what kind of killing methods would be used, experiments, well you get the idea. Evil was orchestrated in that building.  Sachsenhausen was made in the shape of a triangle, this was so that the Tower A (entry point) could see down the corridors of all of the barracks, the barracks were a fan shape. So if anything was happening they would see it, didn't really work that way, but it was meticulous, as was so many things they did. Fear and intimidation, keep them afraid to keep them in line. So many things they did were well thought out, dunno how someone thinks of how to act the way the Nazi regime worked but they did it to the nth degree! In the early years the prisoners heads from berlin to orienenburg by train they were marched through the towns streets to Sachsenhausen. This was for propaganda purposes, and the towns people were encouraged to come down and see the opponents to the Nazi regime. They threw food, rubbish and stones. From when the war started though the prisoners were walked through the forest to avoid detection and to keep the public unaware that their government was the government of mass murder. When the prisoners made it to the camp they were assembled in front of tower A, which was inside the camp but still not inside the main part. The SS guards had a series of tables and the prisoners would come up, give his name give his birth date and the type of crime he committed. These aren't normal crimes, these were suspicions of crimes, they had to say they were a communist, a homosexual or a race defiler, now a race defiler is a non jewish german man who slept with a Jewish woman. After registering heed they are walked through the gates, which reads ARBEIT MACHT FREI or work makes free. The point is for deception and all concentration camps had this sign. No one was ever released from Sachsenhausen because they were a good worker. They wanted them to think that this was a rehabilitation camp. Sachsenhausen wasn't an extermination camp like Auschwitz, it was more of a working/labour camp. Some people were released to show the population that it was a kind of rehabilitation camp, they had to sign waiver, if the SS found out that they were talking about the camp on the outside they'd grab them and put back inside. After passing through the gates, the head into roll call square where they go through an initiation, kind of like drills in the army, standing in one spot, hands by your side, eyes down for hours (the longest a survivor recalled was 14 hours of standing there), initiation also included jumping squatting etc. Now some of the prisoners were coming from other camps that weren't as good as Sachsenhausen, so they were already malnourished yet still had to partake in this initiation. This process alone would kill some of the prisoners. Again this process was to instill fear that if they did something wrong they would be punished. After initiation they head into their barracks where they entered the effects room, where they have to give up all of their personal belongings, anything that ties them to the outside world. They are given a number, not a tattoo which was only for Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Then they are lead into the next room where they are shaved of all body hair. One survivor said this was the hardest part, the last shred of individuality was being taken from him. They then have a quick shower before getting issued with their belongings, striped uniforms, underpants and undershirt. Now winter 70 years ago was much colder than they are today, getting down to -30! After receiving such generous belongings (there is a lot of sarcasm there) they head to the barracks where they will eat and sleep. Their group leader, a SS guard gave one a speech to a new arrival, he said the only way out of Sachsenhausen is through the chimneys in the crematorium. Now everyone looked the same, shaven bodies, same clothes and they now have a very grim view of what their life will entail while they are at Sachsenhausen. Firstly we went through the special section, this is where one of Hitlers personal prisoners was kept, also Stalin's son was being held in the special barracks at Sachsenhausen. These prisoners were taken a bit batter care of since the SS was planning to use them for bargaining at a later date. Stalin disowned his son for being caught. Many believe he committed suicide, which was not uncommon. Now to escape or in Stalin's sons case commit suicide you had a grass strip call no mans land, as soon as you stepped on there you would get shot. Then there was gravel, followed by rolls of barbed wire fence, and an electrical barbed wire fence as well. Most prisoners would either step into no  mans land and wait to be shot, or throw themselves into the electrical fence. If they managed to get past all of that they had to scale the 2+ metre wall, that also had three rows of barbed wire on top. That was part one, then they would have to get past the administration building and the outside perimeter wall, and to get into town you had to walk past the SS training facility beside the camp and then past all of the SS guards family houses that lined the streets into Sachsenhausen. Once into town, your shaved, malnourished and wearing a striped prisoner outfit! So not an easy task. Every day twice a day there was roll call. If someone has died in the night the they had to be brought out as well, if there was a number short, the sirens would sound immediately, and the remaining survivors would be punished for someone attempting to escape. They had public executions, they had prisoners kill other prisoner. This was to continue to divide the camp, and keep them scared. The Jews were kept with the Jews, homosexuals with the homosexuals etc. This was again used to divide the group. As a whole there was a lot more prisoners than guards, so to keep this division made sure they never unified and rebelled. 

I'll just go through a few of the punishments. They have a big rolling pin with a handle, basically something you'd get a horse to pull. If they did anything wrong they would have to pull the cement roller around the roll call yard, and do whatever the guards told you to do, left, go left, right, go right. Another one was to help the SS test the boots for the troops on the frontline. They had a series of different surfaces, slate, gravel, sand. This was to test the durability of the shoes. Size wasn't an option, and to make the test more legitimate they would have to carry sacks on their back just like the infantry pack the soldiers would have to wear, they would walk in figure eights over and over again, this could last many hours and it's estimated they did approximately 30-40km! The last one i will touch on is a chain hanging. The wrists of the prisoner was chained together behind their back, then they were lifted onto a metal stake in the air and the block of wood from under them was kicked out, leaving all of the weight on the shoulders and the chained wrists of the prisoner. This would last 1-2 hours, and would severely damage their wrists and dislocate their shoulders. This practice was stopped after a few years since the concentration camp changed from a propaganda rehabilitation camp to a work till death camp. Once they changed that facility to a work camp they did improve their food and conditions because they needed them longer to work. And doing crazy jobs that we now have machines for. 

The prisoners would sleep in three tier bunk beds, the higher you are the longer your life span would be. Why? Well at the bottom you would have to deal with vomit and diarrhea from the above beds and if you were strong enough you'd make it to the top, so your in better condition physically. They were given a straw mattress and a blanket, each bed would have approximately 3 people per bed, and in the high time of the war they would fit up to seven in a bed! Diseases and malnourishment was the main causes of death at Sachsenhausen. Once more and more prisoners were dying they needed to find a way to dispose of the bodies. They were using an offsite crematorium in Berlin to dispose of the bodies, until one gruesome act made them change their policy. One of the truck drivers driving the bodies into Berlin was in a car accident in town, and bodies were all over the street, causing panic through the community. So they made an in house crematorium and killing rooms with a chilling name, it was called Station Z. You come in Tower A and leave through Station Z! Fitting use of the alphabet huh.

They had two main killing rooms, now each of the rooms was disguised so as not to cause a panic amongst other prisoners, and the prisoners who were working in Station Z never had any contact with prisoners living inside the triangle. If you've forgotten, the triangle was the shape of the prison, the model concentration camp, with the barracks in the shape of the fan so Tower A could see down every corridor! Station Z was blown up by the East German army in the 50s. At Station Z the prisoners were either gassed or shot in the back of the neck. The gassing was in a room that could fit apparently 25, comparatively small compared to a gas chamber of a extermination camp. They are disrobed and ushered into what looked like a shower room and the prisoners were told they were having a quick shower. At that point the door was shut behind them, and the SS guard had a liquid chemical in a glass bottle called Cyclon B (not sure about the spelling) it was then inserted into a duct that was connected to the gas chamber. The guard then presses the button that releases a metal pin that shatters the glass bottle releasing the chemical from the bottle, in order for Cyclon B to react and make a poisonous gas it had to react to warm air. Some of the big extermination camps believed if they had enough people in a gas chamber the body heat would create enough warm air for the chemical to react. In Sachsenhausen the pumped in warm air to start the reaction. Death would tale about 30-40 minutes, the prisoner would die from suffocation. The room was opened to let the excess gas escape and prisoners would come and clear the bodies and take them to the crematorium which was now based inside Station Z. The other room was the shot in the back of the head room. They walked in to a SS guard dressed in a white coat giving the deception that they were getting a medical. The guard checked them for any gold fillings (to be removed afterwards), they were then asked to back up against a measuring stick to measure their height, once the prisoners head was against the wall, another guard w behind the wall and through a small slit they would shoot them in the back of the head. All the while loud classical music was being blared so as to cover up what was happening in the other room. Both of these methods was to dehumanize them for the guards, the don't actually see what is happening and they don't have to face it. Afterwards all of the fillings, gold teeth or anything of value was stripped from the body and taken to the crematorium. Our guide Derek showed us photographs of the amount of fillings they had accumulated over the years, there was two full buckets of teeth and fillings! Gassing at Sachsenhausen only began in 1942, and is estimated to have killed 300 prisoners. Shot in the back of the head was the most used form of killing at Sachsenhausen.   

The Nazi's upheld the Geneva convention to some extent when it came to POWs. The biggest massacre at sachsenhausen was of at least 10,000 Russian POWs in 10 weeks.

One the date of the tour 9th of November, it was actually quite a big day in german history and Sachsenhausen history. 1940, 33 polish prisoners were massacred, the first mass massacre at Sachsenhausen. 1938, "the night of the broken glass" a polish Jew, shot and killed a member of the German embassy in Paris. In the aftermath the Nazi's grabbed the event to use it. The Jews attacked us, we have to protect ourselves against them. The Nazi's were hoping it was going to create outrage and attack the Jewish population in Germany. It did happen to some extent but most crimes were made by the SS and the SA. Jewish businesses were looted, synagogs burnt to the ground, in all 100 Jews were killed while 20,000 were shipped off to different concentration camps. 6,000 of those were sent to Sachsenhausen. 1989, the Berlin wall came down.

After 1942 there shouldn't be any Jews in Sachsenhausen. There was some, but they were specialist craftsman working on counterfeit UK pounds. Flooding the UK market with fake money would make the pound worthless sending it into an economic melt down. From what I've learned today 1942 was a big year for "the final solution," there was a conference in late 1941 and became clear in January 1942 that the Nazi's had decided that the answer to the Jews in Europe was to wipe out all 12 million Jews of Europe. That is why there shouldn't be anymore Jews left in German concentration camps, they should have all been sent to the big extermination camps in Poland. They had been built as mass extermination camps. Where Sachsenhausen was a work concentration camp. Derek said that many different names have come up o veer the years for concentration camps which i touched on earlier, and he said, if it quack like a duck, walks like a duck, god damn it's a duck. Why Poland for the big 6 extermination camps, as i touched on before the German population isn't supposed to find out that their government was killing millions of people.

The last area was the medical pathology building, underneath in the basement was the mortuary. The pathology room was used for autopsies. The reason they did autopsies was so that there was some sort of facade of legality to the whole operation. They weren't done on all of the patients, only a select few. Nine out of ten times the person who performed the autopsy wasn't a SS doctor but in fact a prisoner who was asked to do a task. The prisoner was given a list of seven different causes of death on that list. And they would choose a cause of death to put on the death certificate. Each of the causes on the list were all natural causes, like stomach ulcers, heart failure, old age, none of these causes had anything to do with being gassed or shot in the back of the head. Next to the pathology building was the medical facility. Why would the SS even have medical facilities? Before the war broke out Sachsenhausen was used for propaganda purpose. Even the red cross and international media were allowed on the grounds to inspect, but they were shown a select few areas and spoke to select prisoners. One of the first building they see when they come in to inspect is the medical building which is well equipped. Another reason they had the medical facility is because the only time they are in the camp was to eat and sleep, the rest of the time they are working. Working outside the camp, working in quarries, road works and unexploded bomb disposal, they will have a some kind of contact with the outside population. Now if you have someone who is sick or infectious that then could break out to the outside population. They need to protect the outside population. It wasn't easy for prisoners to get medical attention, it was always up to the SS doctor, if the SS doctor didn't the prisoner or didn't want to help then there was nothing forcing him to assist. Once your in the medical facility there was no guarantee you would get medical help, in fact most of the prisoners working in the medical facility didn't have any medical training what so ever. Prisoners who had medical training were forbidden to help after 1942. Other times the doctor would give them a lethal injection just to kill them. As for medical experiments that also happening inside the medical facility. Most of the medical experiments at Sachsenhausen were for military reasons. Gangrene experiments. The German army was losing a lot of soldiers through battle related woulda that would become gangrenous. A prisoner was selected, his arm or leg cut open take moldy pieces of shroud place it in the wound, wait for it to become infected then the SS doctor would then try and save that persons limb. Hepatitis experiment. Early in the war the Ease German army had a hepatitis outbreak. 11 Jewish boys were selected for the experiment, they were infected with hepatitis. With hepatitis their livers begin to enlarge, so the SS doctor would want it to be tested, so they grabbed a needle , shoved it in their backs and got a sample for testing. Miraculously all of the boys survived the second world war. The last experiment i want to talk about is the desired use of poisoned weaponry. They had this idea that they could mass produce this poisonous ammunition, it didn't get beyond an idea, but it was tested at Sachsenhausen. They would shoot the prisoner in a non fatal area, then wait and write down symptoms and duration before death. 

It was a pretty heavy day and something i will never forget. All of the photos i took in black and white, except one. I feel there was no colour or positivity came from Sachsenhausen. The colour photo i did take was of a cartoon drawn in the kitchen by one of the prisoners. Beautiful artwork made by someone in such a terrible position, it's the only colour i felt during the day and the picture justifies it. 

I knew this was going to be a long one.

Thanks for reading, i hope this gives an insight into life, death and the operation of the Nazi's at Sachsenhausen.