Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Wednesday : fine
After breaky we had to walk back to Brandenburg gate to meet our tour guide. We had a big group today, maybe 40-50 people, but the guide spoke loudly so it shouldn't be a problem. Like yesterday the guide has had a lot of experience, he has been a guide for 5 years, and for the last 3 years he has been a guide for Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
We were taking a couple trains for about an hour out of Berlin to the camp. The guide did very well directing everyone through the stations and to the correct platforms. While waiting for the trains, he spoke about the camp and what we would be seeing today.
Once we were at our destination of Oranienburg we had a short walk to Sachsenhausen. The camp was opened in 1936, and used for nazi political prisoners. It was the main model camp for all Nazi concentration camps, the towers just dominated the camp and had an easy view over the barracks and the perimeter walls with their no go death strip. It also became a training facility for the SS before they were shipped off overseas.
Sachsenhausen was a Labour camp opposed to an extermination camp. The prisoners were worked to death. They were used as laborers by local brick and aircraft manufactures. They also were used to test the longevity of German army boots, by running 40kms per day, the prisoners with this job had a life expectancy of two weeks. It also was the site of the largest counterfeiting operation ever! Inmates use to make US dollars and UK pounds.
Prisoners where executed there, they were mainly shot or hanged. In 1942 large numbers of Jewish inmates were relocated to Auschwitz to be killed. That stopped in 1943 when gas cambers and crematoriums were built to kill larger amounts of prisoners, and to cut transport costs. The prisoners wore coloured triangles on their shirts to form a hierarchy at the top were criminals, then Communists (red triangles), then homosexuals (pink triangles) and at the very bottom Jews (yellow triangles).
More than 220,000 people passed through the front entrance gates reading the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free). More than 30,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, pneumonia and poor living conditions. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal bashings or medical experimentation.
The camp was liberated by the polish and red army's in 1945, but was not closed until 1950. The soviets used Sachsenhausen as a political prison too, and then opened as a soviet memorial in the 60's
It was a good tour, the guide told some awful and depressing stories, he really painted a picture of how horrible it must of been for the inmates. The complex was setup well, it had a few original buildings, that are now museums. We stayed back to go through some of the museums that the tour skimmed over.
When we were finished at the camp, we made the fast train back into town, and hopped off at the huge Hauptbahnhof station. it was this massive multi level train station/shopping centre, pretty cool.
We changed trains and headed down to the east side gallery, to have a look at a section of still standing Berlin Wall that is now a mural. We stopped at a cafe for a beer and some cheap snitzel, then we followed the wall past all these shanti looking riverside bars and cafes through the Nikolai Quarter. A beautiful looking old part of town rebuilt to show the cities past.
We crossed the road into Alexanderatz which had Neptune's Fountain, Marienkirche church, the 2nd oldest church in Berlin and the 368m high TV tower, built when the soviets controlled east berlin. They built the tower as a symbol of the strength of east Germany. Unfortunately for the communist government at the time, when the sun shines on the stainless steel tiled dome the reflection appears in a huge cross. Berliners, having a good sense of humour started calling the cross "the popes revenge". The government wasn't too impressed and after trying desperately to cover the cross and change the reflective tiles unsuccessfully, they told the people it wasn't a cross, it was a plus sign for communism!
It was getting late so we headed for the station, but stumbled upon a night market. We picked up some slushies and had a walk around.
Back at the hotel we printed out our bus and train tickets to Dresden and Prague. The hotel staff he have been great! The gave us free wifi, and printing and didn't charge us to store our luggage for when when arrived early. Maybe because they thought it was silly to charge for those things too.
- comments