A stop over in Oranienburg, about 25 km North of Berlin, included a visit to the nearby
concentration camp Sachsenhausen.
On a day with plenty of sunshine and warmth this turned into a chilling experience.
Built in 1936 with mainly prison labour from the nearby smaller Oranienburg camp and run by the German SS this was to be a "model" camp for the rehabilitation of it's occupiers.
You enter through gates beneath the three story building from where the SS command ran the camp.
But before passing through these gates prisoners were beaten with batons and ridiculed to show the authority of the German Nazi and SS...
You enter the inner camp and even though there are many visitors about an airy silence descends.
Most of the barracks have been demolished but the foundation for every one, about 70, still remain in the exact place.
More than 200,000 prisoners were kept here and tens of thousands died from starvation, tortue and disease and forced labour...
Looking toward the remaining laundry building. To it's left was a gallows used to execute prisoners in front of their comrades as a deterrent.
At Christmas the SS had a Christmas tree put up there.
Surrounding the camp the wall was electrified...
For any prisoner who became disillusioned enough to cross the strip.... neutral would be the gear his body selected as he was shot in the back by the SS guards...
A couple of the original barracks stand..
Barrack No,39... toilets.. the prisoners were only allowed to visits a day, once in the morning and again in the evening and they had a maximum time allowed per visit.
The wash room.. large centre basins for upper body and to the right are tubs for washing feet.
If a prisoner exceeded his time limit to wash he was bludgeoned to the floor then a SS guard would use his jack boot to stand on and hold the prisoners head beneath the water in a foot trough until drowned....
Another game the SS played in these rooms was to make prisoners cram into the broom cupboard until several suffocated to their death.
A way of showing the superiority of the Nazi race...
There is still one wing of the prison standing.
It held those punished by the SS for infringements of camp discipline as well as prominent figures arrested by the Gestapo.
A place of torment and murder.. This cell had a total blackout... only now light enters through rotting timber over the window..
The foundations f another wing show the cell sizes....
The poles with the steel bars inserted were used to hang prisoners from their wrists and inflict torture...
A guards tower stands on the perimeter wall...
The Execution Trench is still as it was...
To walk down into and to stand at the "Death End" for me was an experience with thought that I had never felt before... To stand where men had fallen to the ground riddled with bullets, taken their last breaths, and blood had flowed and congealed to mixed with the dirt floor....
The walls are lined with logs, timber, to deaden the sounds...
Of course nobody wants to hear the over loud pleas from a conscientious objector or a man who's only crime was fighting for his countries freedom......
Looking from the plinth from where say a machine gun was mounted and toward the spot where the condemned stood...
The logs end on behind were bullet catches...After they had torn your heart out....
Any prisoner who walked down into the trench...
Never had a chance to turn and scale this Everest....
Next to the execution trench were the foundations of a building that was used as, supposedly, a place to go for a medical examination. Once inside the prisoner went through various procedures until he entered a small cubicle for an examination. Loud music played over interior speakers to add to the atmosphere of well being but it's real purpose was to mask the sound of the rifle shot.
The SS were proud they had mastered what they called the neck shot. A hidden guard beside the cubicle shot the unsuspecting prisoner from the side through the neck.
A large area in front of the barracks was for roll call.
A roller sites on the site.. Guard towers are visual on the fence....
It was here one winters day with below zero temperatures that the camp commander made all prisoners stand motionless for the whole day...
As he sat observing in the comfort and warmth of the control building naturally the weakest prisoners succumbed and dropped to the ground.
Enjoying the pleasure of cigarettes, the nicotine adding toxins to the already overflowing poisons from within, and with an evil mind, the order to shoot the fallen prisoner through the head was easy to make....
When Germany surrendered the prisoners were sent on what is known as Death marches after the evacuation of the camp. Around 3000 sick prisoners who had been left at the camp, among them doctors and medical assistants, were liberated by soviet and Polish troops on 22 - 23 April 1945...
The camp then became, 1945 - 1950, a camp for prisoners of the Soviet Secret Service.
They imprisoned up to 60,000 people here...
Huts were built to house the prisoners on the outer of the original wall and the camp extended... Prisoners were not allowed out during the day.... By 1950 12000 had perished.....
Visiting the mortuary was......
Being able to walk freely in and around... touching the tiled Slabs.......the instrument cabinets were empty but real...
Every prisoner who died was meant to have had the dignity of an autopsy and the "Real" cause of death would be noted for next of kin..
The medical personal had a sheet with 6 explanations as cause of death listed and the appropriate one was to be ticked off.
Over run with bodies the staff resorted to making one incision in the body then stitching it straight up and randomly ticking off a cause of death on the deceased certificate...
It was hard to conceive that......
This room....
This room.....
And here would be stacked full of bodies........
Eight tonne of ashes were dumped in a local canal from the camp ovens.....
Leaving through the gates beneath camp control...... A freedom thousands never new.....
