The tough stuff

Since arriving in Berlin, I have truly come face to face with the city's dark and turbulent past. Berlin has experienced more darkness than any other city in Europe in the past 100 years, and today it is still reeling emotionally, as well as scarred physically, from recent history. Nothing I have seen yet, however, has hit me as hard as the memorial sites I have visited the last two Fridays.

Last weekend we were given a tour of Hohenschönhausen, the old Stasi Prison in the center of Berlin. From 1946, the end of WWII, until 1989, Germany was divided into two countries--East Germany, a Soviet satellite state and the most policed country of the time, and West Germany, a country that retained its capitalist democratic ideals. Berlin, as a city, was unique, because it served as a microcosm for the rest of divided Germany. Berlin is directly in the middle of Eastern German territory, but Britain, the US, and France negotiated with the USSR to allow a piece of Berlin to remain as part of West Germany, and so Berlin became a divided city. It was a decision the USSR would later regret, as thousands of people were fleeing East Germany via the open border between East and West Berlin. In 1961, East Germany decided to put a stop to the defectors and erected the Berlin wall.

Parts of the wall left standing in memorium

East Germany became a police state--the stuff of nightmares. People were watched night and day by the Stasi (secret police). Homes were wired without the owner's knowledge. "In public" was considered three people or more, or speaking to your children. Even simply applying to leave the country was considered a crime. Paranoia was rampant. Friends and family members accused each other of anti-party sentiment. Street abductions by the Stasi were not uncommon.

It is so eerie to think that this was happening until 20 years ago. This prison was not something out of old history.

Hohenschönhausen was used primarily for political prisoners. These prisoners were tortured and placed under psychological stress in order to break their wills and "protect the state."

This is a cell from the 60s. There would have been one large wooden bed with no sheets, matress or pillow, and a pot for doing one's business. 10-12 people would have been in this space. They were not allowed to lie down during the day, but must stand packed together. There was no window in that time, and only a tiny hole for ventilation, but it was not enough. The breaths of the people would condense into water and everything would have been damp. Water would have been constantly dripping from the ceiling onto the freezing prisoners.

 This room was a "water cell". The prisoner would be thrown into this room and cold water would be thrown over them until the cell was ankle deep in water. Then they would be forced to stand in the cell for hours, sometimes days.

Cells from the 70s and 80s. In Erich Hoenecker's time, the Stasi focused more on psychological torture rather than physical torture. These cells were mostly single occupant cells meant for the practice of isolation torture.

This was an isolated chamber. Prisoners were not allowed to lay down during the day. They could sit on the stool, but not rest their backs against the wall. Prisoners were not allowed to talk, sing, whistle, read, write, etc. At night, interrogations took place for 17 hours at a time where the prisoner had to sit on their hands and was not allowed to eat, drink, or sleep. When they were allowed to sleep at night they had to be in the "sleeping position," flat on their backs with their hands over the blanket. This was to keep people from committing suicide. You would be observed through a peep hole in the door every 20 minutes by a Stasi guard. They would turn on a light and look through the hole. If you had accidentally moved in your sleep they would bang on the door and force you to return to the sleeping position. Sleeping was almost impossible.

This simple wooden cross marks a mass grave from WWII. In the background stands the remains of the Berlin wall.

No matter how horrible Hohenschönhausen was, and it was undoubtedly horrible, there is something that is and will always be innately evil about anything connected to the Nazi regime. East Germany set up Hohenschönhausen because they were trying to control their population. Hitler created Sachsenhausen because he was trying to eradicate an entire people.

This morning I spent four hours walking around Sachsenhausen. Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp constructed in 1936 and in use until 1945. Here, thousands of men, women, and children were treated as slaves, starved, beaten, and animalized. Thousands were gassed or, as was the case with 10,000 Soviet Prisoners of War, systematically shot in the neck.

It was a gray, cold day, and an icy wind whistled eerily across the open space where the barracks used to stand, where thousands of people were crammed into a tiny, squalid space for an "indefinite imprisonment." Unlike Hohenschönhausen, whose prisoners were given a specific amount of time for their sentences, the prisoners of Sachsenhausen lived with little hope of freedom.

Like at Auschwitz, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free) was inscribed on the gate into the camp. Those three words are, and will remain, one of the most terrifying phrases.

A peaceful garden rested outside the walls of the eerily silent camp. In this garden, personal memorials were set up to the victims. This broken cross moved me deeply.

Each cell of the camp prison had been turned into a memorial to those who had suffered an even darker fate in the prison within the prison.

This picture, more than any I took, I felt captured the darkness that hung over Sachsenhausen. The white building in the center is the gate house. Directly between those trees, the gallows used to stand. 

A guard tower. The gravel inside the squares mark the places where the barracks used to stand.

These barracks were built in 1945, after the war ended, and were used by the Soviets to hold prisoners. After the camp was shut down, these prisoners were moved to places like Hohenschönhausen.

Camp hospital. Prisoners were experimented on, and many were sterilized. People were not taken care of, and were forced to wait outside for hours in the cold to have minor injuries looked at. Those with tuburculosis were beaten for "pretending to be sick".

The cross marks a mass grave of prisoners.

Barbed wire along the wall.

I also visited the gas chamber and the execution pit. I did not take pictures there because it did not feel respectful of the horrors that took place here. Sachsenhausen remains as a chilling memory of what happened, and hopefully, stands so that what happened in Germany might never happen again. There was a sense of utter darkness hanging over this place. While it was a difficult visit, it was a necessary one, one that I think everyone, if they can, should endeavor to take. The scariest part about all of this is that places like this still exist in countries like North Korea. For the sake of the victims, and for those who are experiencing horrors like this today, it must be memorialized. It must be remembered.