Inside Nazi concentration camp

More than 70 years after the holocaust, the pains and anguish of the massacre of innocent souls has not faded out from the atmosphere at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. About 60,000 out of the 200,000 people imprisoned in Sachsenhausen were said to have died between 1936 and the end of Hitler’s Germany in 1945. Located […]

More than 70 years after the holocaust, the pains and anguish of the massacre of innocent souls has not faded out from the atmosphere at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. About 60,000 out of the 200,000 people imprisoned in Sachsenhausen were said to have died between 1936 and the end of Hitler’s Germany in 1945. Located in the old town of Oranienburg on the outskirts of Berlin, it was specially designed as a “work to death camp.”

According to Juliane Roleke, the memorial curator, who took course participants from the International Institute for Journalism (IIJ) on a guided tour of the concentration camp, the camp was designed by the Nazi Special Police (SS) as a model concentration camp where prisoners were worked to death.

Another 20,000 people were also said to have died between 1946 and 1951 when the former Soviet Union used the camp to imprison political opponents and German prisoners of war during the Soviet occupation of Oraniengburg, which was part of Eastern Germany, then under the control of communist Russia.

Later in 1961, the concentration camp was used as a National Memorial by the communist government of Eastern Germany as a tribute to the triumph of communist socialism over Nazi fascist ideology.

To honour the memory of those who perished at the camp, a huge obelisk was built with a robust statue of communist prisoners, symbolizing the resistance and endurance of communist workers despite persecution in Nazi prisons.

Significantly, we were told, in 1993 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the unification of Germany, the Sachsenhausen National Memorial was placed under the administrative control of the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture.

Although most of the original barracks where prisoners were kept had been destroyed, rectangular commemorative stone gravel yards are used to mark the spaces where a barrack once stood.

The entire complex of the concentration camp is approximately the size of 400 football pitches, and accommodated over 3,000 SS soldiers and officers within the same infrastructure, remarkably close to a densely populated residential area.

The roll-call area was situated on a triangular arch in front of the clock tower gate of the camp, which was part of the design; it had mounted on its windows a machine gun pointed at the prisoners in a menacing 90 degrees view of the yard.

Juliane pointed out that many of the SS were young soldiers who volunteered to serve at Sachsenhausen as part of initial training before going on to other death camps outside Berlin.

Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1936, under the supervision of the ruling fascist ideology and increasing political tension at the time, many political opponents of the party were imprisoned at Sachsenhausen. Also people considered as inferior races, Jews and Gypsies were imprisoned, including; homosexuals, persons considered anti social by the regime, like criminals, prostitutes  and Jehovah’s witnesses.

The prisoners, according to Juliane, were subjected to dehumanizing treatments and were deliberately killed in work fields, explaining that prisoners were taken to work at stone quarries not far from the camp to fulfill the purpose of Hitler’s plans to convert Berlin to Germania, the Capital of Greater Germany.

The gate of the “Machine gunned front” building still carries the infamous Nazi logo “Arbeit Macht Frei” loosely translated as “Work makes you free”, which according to Julaine, was a euphemism used by the Nazis to psychologically torture their victims.

Of particular interest are Barracks 38 and 39, which are still being preserved all these years, as examples of how prisoners were cramped in bunkers during that period. She explained that prisoners were given little time to use the toilets in the mornings and were arbitrarily punished, sometimes even methodically killed by drowning in toilet bowls.

The concentration camp was designed from station A, the entrance, to station Z, where prisoners were often killed. Apart from the shooting range  and the gas chamber, the Nazis invented a conning method wherein prisoners are given a fake medical examination and shot through a hole in the wall, while standing on a wooden height measuring device attached to the hole. The bodies are then carried away by other prisoners to the ovens where they are burned.

Curiously the debris of the ovens can still be seen at the most important memorial centre in the camp, where foundation relics of the structure showing the path victims had to walk before they are killed in zone Z, is preserved.

Adjacent the shooting range, the gas chamber where experimental gassing of prisoners often took place in the camp is still preserved as a commemoration to the victims. The gallows used by guards to publicly hang prisoners were also preserved and are on exhibition in a museum on the camp. Also persevered are two blocks of hospital, described as one of the first places where experiment on racial hygiene was carried out by the Nazis to prove their scientific theory on the superiority of the German race.

Responding to a question on how young Germans come to terms with their nation’s past history of such coordinated genocide, Juliane said most young Germans have come to terms with this history and cannot shun it or hide from it, hence the public commemoration and memorials established by the authorities to explain what happened to the victims.

She explained that the Nazi ideology of racial superiority and religious intolerance that fostered the hatred that led to the systematic killing of Jews and other perceived unwanted elements in society has been condemned. It is now compulsory to teach school children about this history as a way of coming to terms with this part of German history.

Although this kind of atrocity is not exclusive to Germany alone compared to the outbreaks of pogrom and sectarian violence in other countries as a result of religious, ethnic and political sentiments, the killings are usually not premeditated, and meticulously planned like that of the Nazis.

Around station Z, the centrepiece of the Memorial at Sachsenhausen Museum, a white square structure has been built around this area and several stone heads are used to mark mass graves where thousands of bones collected from the ovens were buried, often survivors and family members of victims come here to commemorate the atrocities of the Holocaust.

In all, I left the camp with the impression that Nigeria has a lot to learn from this sojourn into history, especially what damage religious intolerance; political and ethnic hatred can do to a people destined to live together.