Sachsenhausen

August 7th

Growing up I always had an interest in the Holocaust. I can’t explain why or how this interest developed. All I wanted to do was read and watch movies about the holocaust to learn more and more. Visiting Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was probably one of the heaviest and most raw experiences of my life. I can try but I feel I would fail to put an experience like that into words. Walking from the same train station and same streets as the prisoners did down to the camp was a surreal experience in itself. Arriving to the camp I was trying to imagine my life in the prisoner’s shoes. I was looking down at my feet thinking this is the same ground they walked on, I would look at the sky and think this is the same sky they saw. Entering the barracks, I immediately noticed the burn damage caused from a neo-Nazi attack in 1992. It was frustrating that people today still have the capability to show so much hate. What really humanized everything to me were the quotes I read in the washroom. It’s easy to state facts of what happened in the camp and in the washrooms, but quoted experiences from witnesses opened my eyes a lot more. The tour became more and more emotional to a point where I had to take a time out from everything. Our guide brought up how important and upsetting it is for people to visit the camp yet issues similar to the holocaust are still occurring in our world today in places like Sudan and Rwanda. I cannot help but be cynical when thinking about the world knowing that this astonishing amount of genocide and torture still occurs today. Besides the Jews, other groups such as homosexuals and Jehovah Witness were victimized by this dark era and I think most people tend to forget that or not know in the first place. Human rights were completely taken away from everyone that was involved and we look at the holocaust as one of the worst parts of history, ever. Yet, we still do not provide equal rights for these groups that were targeted during the holocaust. I feel like I can write much more but I'm still at a loss for words