Our first camp of the trip was Ravensbrueck. What a beautiful setting – it’s on a beautiful little lake with an idyllic little German village across the water. What a bizarre site for such a horrible place.
Ravensbruck
This camp was primarily for women. The prisoners worked for various German corporations like Siemens.
Our first stop inside the camp was the crematoria. It was built right by the lake so that the ashes could simply be thrown in the water. This camp was not a killing center, so there were no gas chambers – the women were there as slave laborers and to be removed from German society. The crematoria were used when women would die of malnutrition, exhaustion, etc.
There were three ovens – not original to this camp, but brought in to complete the reconstruction of the site. We had a fascinating discussion about the German engineers who would have received the request to build these ovens. What kind of questions would they have asked? They must have known what they were to be used for – what kind of engineer builds something without knowing it’s function, it’s purpose?
Crematoria
After a few minutes, Elaine asked us – no, told us – to get out of there. She was clearly unnerved. If I haven’t mentioned this before, Elaine Culbertson is one of our tour directors. She has been one of the leaders of this trip for years and years. She is also the daughter of two Holocaust survivors (Jewish). Her mother was sent to Auschwitz and then went on the Death March when the camp was evacuated as the Soviets approached from the east. Somehow this 17 year old girl (weighing about 60 pounds) survived the march and made it to Ravensbruek. It was there that she was liberated.
Elaine had never been to this particular camp before and she was really struggling (I can’t even imagine what she was feeling). I think many in our group were glad for the excuse to get out of that building. . . .
Inside the camp itself there is little to see. The only original structures are the workshops where the women worked. However, one of the instruments of punishment remained. There is a large concrete wheel – like the front of a steamroller – sitting in a corner of the courtyard. There is a handle attached to the front. Women were forced to pull this around camp as a punishment for some kind of infraction.
After walking around the camp for a few minutes we went into a little information room. Here we saw hundreds of pictures of the women who were imprisoned here. All kinds of different expressions stared back at me – proud, fearful, timid, pained. It was difficult to look into their eyes.
On a table in the room was a large book with hundreds of pages. On each page were the names of all the women who died in this camp, their approximate age and their nationality. We flipped through the pages for a while. . . . . and then it was time to move on.
Our last point on this visit was the main gate – it seems that we went through the camp backwards, having started at the crematoria. I felt the gate was pretty unassuming – no large building, no “Arbeit Macht Frei” on a gate, no train tracks. But still, the result was the same.
Main Gate
The strangest thing about both camps that I visited today is the fact that they are right on the outskirts of a town or city. No one could have been fooled as to what was happening here. No one could have missed the stench, the sound, the sights of the camp. But, in Nazi Germany – not knowing things could often keep you out of trouble. I think people chose not to “know” – even though they had to know.
After a lengthy bus ride – somehow we our bus got stuck behind a tractor pulling some kind of farm implement – we made it to Sachenhausen. I’ve been to this camp before so I knew what to expect. However, this visit focused on things that I didn’t notice on my first trip to this camp.
We spent some time looking around and going through the barracks. We also went to the cell block (a prison within a prison) where “special” prisoners were housed. Josef Stalin’s son was imprisoned here, as well as Martin Neimoller (sp?).
However, what I really didn’t know from my first trip to the camp were the medical experiments conducted on the prisoners in the camp. I don’t know how I missed it the first time, but there is a building in one corner of the camp where experiments were done, bodies were autopsied – complete with a morgue in the basement.
The rooms are all tiled in white and we all filed into the room with two tables with drains in the center. I can’t even imagine what kind of pain – physically and emotionally – was caused in this building, but it seriously creeped me out. The morgue rooms downstairs were pretty unnerving as well. I was all too happy to get back outside where I could breathe normally again. (I decided against including the picture of this one)
Another new bit of information that I discovered were the semi-circular paths around the camp that had different kinds of surfaces. Some were sharp stone, some smooth, some smooth stones. We were told these were to test shoes for the German Army. Inmates were forced to march for approx. 40 kilometers (around 26 miles) each day on different terrain to test how that terrain affected the wear on different types of shoes. Inmates would occasionally collapse and die as a result of these “tests.”
terrain "track" for testing shoes
Other than the bookstore, that was the last stop on our trip to Sachenhausen. We skipped “Station Z” where the gas chamber, the killing room (rifle shots to the base of the neck), and the crematorium were. I’d been there before, and at that point, I didn’t feel any particular need to see them again.
Now it was time to head back to Berlin. We have an early train to Warsaw in the morning and we need to get things packed and ready to go. But before dinner, Jason and I have a little excursion to complete.
Jason mentioned that he would like to find the memorial to Col. Stauffenberg (sp?). He’s the guy portrayed in the movie Valkrye (Tom Cruise). He played an integral part in the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler and take over the German government. Unfortunately, the plot did not succeed and he, along with many of his co-conspirators were executed. The memorial to those victims of the Nazis is at the site of their execution. I thought it was a great idea to go find the memorial, so off we went.
We found it on the street that bears Stauffenberg’s name (now). In a courtyard there is a memorial as well as the entrance to the museum for German resistance to the Nazi government. It didn’t close for about 20 minutes so we went in.
Courtyard where Stauffenberg was executed
The whole exhibit was in German – no English – so about all we could do was to look at the photos. They were powerful, and even with our very limited understanding of German (we should have asked Shauna if she wanted to come with us) we were able to get the general idea of what the exhibits were all about.
On our way out of the museum at closing time, we were walking down the stairs and notice another little exhibit. It was just a little room with photos and the stories of siblings caught up in the Holocaust. Entitled “My brother, my sister” it sounded kind of interesting (and it had translations in English), so we went in.
I was fascinated to see one quote from a young teen-age girl who (now as an adult) explained that she no longer believed in God – though she did believe in good and evil in people. She described being on the train car being transported to Auschwitz with her mother. They had been without water for days and were in bad shape. At the next stop the door was opened and a bucket of water was put in the car. A massive commotion – fight, really – broke out among the women to get at the water. When the German soldier saw that this girl and her mother didn’t get any of the water, he forced the others back so they could drink. This man – working in the middle of this evil campaign to kill the Jews – showed her kindness.
I was touched by the quote and noticed a picture of the girl from 1960. She had survived and had grown into a beautiful woman. Jason, beside me, noticed her name and we were stunned. She was Hannah Kent – the wife of Roman Kent. We had met them in Washington DC as we began the trip!!!! We couldn’t believe that we had made such a fascinating connection on our little side-trip in Berlin.
Hannah’s brother also survived and now lives in Chicago. She wrote, “My brother and me – we talk a lot on the telephone.” What an amazing find.
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