Monday, June 27, 2011

Adventure #2: STASI Prison and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

On our second day in Germany we traveled just north of Berlin to a concentration camp called Sachsenhausen. This camp was  built in the summer of 1936 by concentration camp prisoners from the Emsland camps. It was one of the most notorious death camps of the Nazi empire and was liberated by Allied troops in 1945. During our trip we went to two concentration camps and this one was our first. 
It was difficult to deal with the reality of what a concentration camp really was when I could actually see mass graves, fences, and watch towers. My feelings were rather stoic during most of the tour because I would not accept that humans would do such terrible acts toward other human being for no reason except that their religion was different. 




To the Right- Neutral Zone is the gray rocks in the picture. Prisoners were not allowed to go in this zone because then the SS guards would think the prisons were trying to escape. Some guards would throw parts of the prisoners clothing into this zone and shoot them in the back for their own benefits such as time off and better food. 


Below- Prisoner's Uniform this uniform was very clean. And usually did not look like this.














Below- Watchtower B this is where guards would be to watch the prisoners.


Another Stop that day was at a STASI Prison. During the time of GDR there was a secret police called the STASI. The job of this undercover police force was to make sure the GDR remained the GDR and that no one interfered with that. The prison held political figures to people trying to escape East Germany. Our tour guide was actually incarcerated in one of these prisons. I saw the cells they were kept in and a torture device. The police used a lot of manipulation to retrieve information from the people they are interrogating. 




 To the Left- Cell a prisoner was to sleep on a wood plank bed in a certain position the whole night. There usually was more than one prisoner to a room. Each room had one bucket for going to the bathroom.




  

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