Berlin July '09 - 3

Sachsenhausen. Today was earmarked for a visit to Sachsenhausen, the first camp built by the Nazis to house dissidents and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenhausen_concentration_camp It was a short train-ride out to the suburban town of Oranienberg and then a brisk walk, Noodle and beer stop included, to the camp. The train used to go as far as the gates but that service has been discontinued. Like I said before, I’ve been to Auschwitz and I’ve also visited Dachau and the impression of the absolute terror, of industrialized mass-murder carefully contrived to eliminate ‘undesirables’ is beyond belief – but it can’t be – it actually happened and the walls and ruins are there, marks on walls made by people long dead, tortured, executed and disposed of in a clinically efficient manner. The first political prisoners were kept here and then the usual suspects were rounded up. The lists are there, the symbols that prisoners had to wear. The execution wall, the gas chamber, the gallows, the ovens. At the end of WWII the Russians took it over and put it to their own use.

We walked back to town, well that is an understatement. First we went to the nearest bar and quaffed a few beers and spoke about this, that and everything. One other customer came in and asked us had we visited the ‘Center’, we said we had and he said he has worked there as a gardener for 15 years – the barmaid shrugged her shoulders and said ‘You gotta make a living’, well I think that’s what she said. We trawled every bar back to the train station and got the second last train out of Oranienberg, lucky us.