I was unable to included one of our events from last night. We had the pleasure of one of Gabes friends performing a concert for just our class. Rolland was an incredibly talented musician and he gave us a one of a kind performance where he was able to included some of us into the act. After a brief intermission he had two friends join him for some combination. Not being someone who is musicially gifted I cannot do the experience justice. But I can say that I absolutely loved the performance. It is rare to see someone perform who is so talented in such a personal venue.
Today we visited Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp that was briefly a death camp for soviet prisoners of war in the fall and early winter of 43 and 44.
The camp is situated just outside Berlin and was in function for a long time. The camp housed mostly political prisoners and criminals. The Nazis used the prisoners as an excuse for the camp. They said that they were reforming the scum of society to make German society better.
We talked about what conditions were conducive to the prison guards treating the prisoners so Inhumanely. One was that a ss training camp was right next door and their training worked to dehumanize the soldiers so they could then easily be so ruthless to the prisoners. Also a solely masculine environment in a very authoritarian society that took young boys made the men more detached as well. Furthermore the soldiers frequented brothels which are not conducive to young men’s developments. It’s healthy for men to socialize In normal way with women.
All of this led to types of men who didn’t even consider the prisoners to be human. They would commit horrible acts onto the prisoners, such as walking on them, making them compete in sports after eating so they would throw up. The acts were awful and all a culmination of the type of environment the prisoners and prison keepers were in.
Sachenhausen was briefly a death camp for the soviets. They would shoot men in the back of the head while they thought they were going to get their heigh measured. Then they would burn their bodies in a series of furnaces. This went on for a while as the Nazis were trying out different methods for genocide. They eventually settled on gassing as we are more used to hearing about.
The camp was unsettling, but there were stories of inspiration. Such as a young group of polish boys who were receiving tutoring from another prisoner. Or other men making sure that rations were evened out. We found that in the darkest of places light still persists.
