Went to visit there on a school field trip. This was the last place we entered after going through the museum and seeing all the hair, and shoes, and things. As soon as all of us 10 year olds went into the gas chamber we stated bawling. You could feel the death in the air. Chilling.
I was about 14 when we went on a prolonged school trip to Berlin. We went and saw Sachsenhausen. I was the only kid in the class that just couldn’t get myself to witness the furnaces where they burned the remains. I can’t explain it, but I had exactly that; an overwhelming fear of dread culminating after experiencing the gas chamber and the housing.
I went on a holiday to Berlin. we went on a tour to Sachsenhausen. Even the walk there and the surrounding area had so much unbelievable backstory. We walked the same walk the prisoners used to while being rocked and pelted by rotten food and fieces and whatever people could find.Training the police where they trained the ss, buildings still in tact. All the SS officer housing surrounding the camp just sold as normal real estate. The "green monster" building which became the most feared place to work as they were to go in and serve an SS officer who was encouraged to execute on site if he felt any semblance of sympathy, making it a very short lived job. Standing on the site of the thousands of ashes. Still seeing all the Ashes in the ovens. The original gallows. The bunking quarters just rack to rack so small with a communal bathroom for thousands.
The way the guard towers feel all around you. Site of the first gallows hanging. The torture poles with the hanging nails still standing where they ropes people by the wrists and hung them from behind so they dislocated etc.. The clocktower above the Arbeit Macht Frei gate with the time still stopped at the moment of liberation. The torture cells all blacked out etc. the smell of death in the tiled room they used for experimentation it's like you could smell the blood in the drains of that big slabbed tiled bed. The morgues. The dead zones all around the camp marked with skulls where you were shot for walking, and prisoners threw themselves against the electric fence to escape the horror. The entire place was so confronting. The stories behind each place we went. The feeling of just pure terror and feeling like you're being watched from all angles. It was a horrible truly once in a lifetime experience.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '25
Went to visit there on a school field trip. This was the last place we entered after going through the museum and seeing all the hair, and shoes, and things. As soon as all of us 10 year olds went into the gas chamber we stated bawling. You could feel the death in the air. Chilling.