JeremyLaDuke.com

Today I went to the Sachsenhausen (sock-sen-house’n) Concentration Camp. There is a museum there and plenty of plaques to read about each location you visit within. All but two of the buildings that housed the inmates have been destroyed. The officers barrack, walls, and towers also remain. If you are unfortunate enough to find it you can walk down into the execution pit where inmates were hanged, shot and tortured. Unthinkable medical experiments took place there. The worst part is that the camp is literally feet away from houses in a residential area. This camp is not off in some forest in the middle of no where. It is literally at the end of residential area as if it were a neighborhood park, and the homes have been here the whole time. Most had clear views over the wall inside the camp from their top floor bedroom windows. The SS ran the camp with Deathshead Guards and SS commonly interacting with locals in town. Apparently, most people in town thought the SS soldiers’had nothing to do with the camp but were fully aware there was a camp here as they watched the inmates build it.

Unbelievable experience. I have photos I’ll post when I get an internet connection that doesn’t suck. Tomorrow I’m off to Prague in the Czech Republic by bullet train! I made a new friend who seems to be traveling a very similar route thru Europe so we may travel together for a bit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2005 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.