Berlin Pt 3: Pub Crawl and Sachsenhausen (Awkward Pair Up)

So the same day I went on the walking tour (Tuesday) I went to a pub crawl at night with four people I met in my hostel. Two of those people were from DES MOINES!!!! Two of the others were from Liverpool (although oddly, they had never met until the hostel). We went on something that advertised itself as an "anti" pub crawl, meaning it stayed away from the fratty-esque bars you usually find on these organized pub crawls. Neat idea. That being said, we didn't exactly go to anywhere I imagine a Berliner would call a local. We went to five bars and they were all...gimmicky. One was a flower power-themed bar, the other was this Goth-themed bar (that one freaked me out a little), then there was a ping pong bar, followed by an indie rock bar (that one was actually awesome) ending at an 80s bar. So yeah. Fun because it wasn't packed with OTHER pub crawls but yeah, I doubt the average Berliner spends their evenings in the flower power bar, you know?

So anyway, what's the logical thing you do the morning after a pub crawl? You go to a concentration camp, right? Well, that's what I did. I went out to Sachsenhausen, which is about 25 km from Berlin. You can actually access it on the S-Bahn, which is the suburban rail commuter system. I mean, it is the VERY last stop, but the suburban rail does go all the way out there. Stephanie, my fave person ever, had told us on the walking tour that she was leading a free tour of the concentration camp today, and because I love Stephanie now and want to be her best friend, logically I decided I had to go on her tour. And she did not disappoint.

First, I would like to clarify that visiting a concentration camp was legitimately the single most depressing experience of my life. I can actually think of nothing that had the power to depress me so deeply in such a short amount of time. Honestly, the only other scenario I could come up with was when my three grandparents died, but I was SUPER young when they all died so a) I didn't know them very well b) I couldn't really comprehend what was happening and c) We all kind of knew it was coming in all cases. So sure, I was depressed ON the day, but it wasn't like a shock that I had to recover from. That was also legitimately the only thing I could think of that has happened in my life that has had a comparable depressive quality for me. This was just... Jesus Christ.

Okay, so Sachsenhausen. It started off life as a labor camp for political undesirables, but towards the end of the war when the Soviets were making advances from the east and the Americans and British from the West, Berlin became one of the only places left that was a Nazi stronghold. So because the Nazis realized that the Soviets were going to liberate the camps in Poland soon (Auschwitz, Chelmno, etc) they shipped all the Jews they hadn't yet killed (I'd also like to apologize right now if anything I'm saying sounds crass... I genuinely don't mean to) BACK to Berlin to be killed at Sachsenhausen. The gas chamber was destroyed by the East German government, but most of the rest of the camp is still intact.

I assume everyone in the world has read this quote?

"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up for me."

That was written by a pastor incarcerated at Sachsenhausen (when the camp was still being largely used for political prisoners). So... yeah. Little human interest byline.

I just honestly cannot describe how depressing this experience was. I was sort of morbidly and probably unhealthily obsessed with the Holocaust as a child, and visiting a camp has been a lifetime... not dream, that's certainly not the right word, but goal? for me. I have just always wanted to see it for real. First of all, when I was on the S-Bahn going out there, I felt like I was going to vomit because all I could think was, "This is the same train ride people would have to take when they were going to the camps. This is the same scenery they saw. They must have had this insane sinking dread in their stomachs as they were going out there." It was nauseating. I hadn't even gotten to the camp yet.

The camp has been actually fairly well preserved. It was in East Germany and because the Nazis used it to imprison political undesirables (aka Communists) the GDR saw this as an excellent opportunity to make some martyrs out of young communists. So they leveled the gas chamber (which was only used for Jews) and concentrated on making it into an example of what happens when you're ruled by someone who isn't a communist. Irony. You slay me. I will say this: because the camp was largely, in the beginning stages of its life, used for slave labor for people like communists, antisocials (homeless people, vagrants, drunks), homosexuals, etc - people who didn't fit into Aryanism for whatever reason - and the Jews only came later, it is a remarkably well-preserved memorial to what I hesitatingly call the "other" victims - the ones we don't think about as much as the Jews. You know? I mean, a LOT of Jews lost their lives here tragically - not trying to say that didn't happen by any stretch - but because for so long it WASN'T used for that purpose, it provides a real opportunity to think about the Roma, the disabled, etc, who were first used as slave labor and then exterminated in the camp.

Okay so anyway. The worst part about the camp, honestly, was that they've converted one of the barracks into a kind of memorial where they've spotighted 20 or so former inmates. There's like a little box for each individual. Some survived the camp, some didn't. It's basically an attempt to reconstruct each person's personal history. So I remember one guy in particular named "Bully" Schmidt. Bully was Jewish and there are these pictures of him from the 1910s of him being Bar Mitzvahed, then his wedding, then him boxing with an amateur club in Hamburg, etc. It's so remarkable how...real that made it, you know? So anyway there are all these pictures of Bully just living his life and he looks so happy and so normal and just so... like, one stuck out in particular of him on his wedding day and he's holding what's labeled as his niece on his lap and he is just BEAMING. You can tell he is just so happy and pumped to be alive and pumped to be married and surrounded by his friends and family and he just feels like the luckiest guy ever. The next picture is from 1954. Bully looks ANCIENT. He would have been in his early 50s, and he looks like a decrepit old man. What's worse though, is how utterly angry he looks. He is glowering at the camera, and there's an unlabeled woman sitting next to him and he's gripping her arm in what looks like a very forceful manner and she looks scared as hell and just all life and joy has completely left him. I cried right there and I definitely was not the only one crying in that exhibit. I mean, I suppose he's lucky he survived, but realistically, that man did not look happy about it. It was so unbelievably heart breaking.

Wow, this post is a real downer.

So anyway we looked around the camp and what I kept thinking was how freezing I was and then remembering I was wearing two pairs of socks, Ugg boots, leggings, jeans OVER my leggings, a long-sleeve t shirt, a cardigan, a coat, a scarf, hat and mittens. And the prisoners wore cotton pajamas. Are you kidding me.

Like I said, probably the heaviest experience of my life. It was earlier today and I'm still sort of trying to process it. I have to give Germany kudos as to how remarkably up front they are about this unspeakably ugly chapter of their history. They do NOT whitewash it in the slightest. I really respect them for it.

Last thing: this was on the gates as you left the camp. I took a picture but I haven't uploaded it yet.

"And I know one thing more - that the Europe of the future cannot exist without commemorating all those, regardless of their nationality, who were killed at that time with complete contempt and hate, who were tortured to death, starved, gassed, incinerated, and hanged..." - Andrzej Szczypiorski, Prisoner of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, 1995.

So...yeah. This is really a downer, I am so sorry if you read this all the way to the end.