My memory about concentration camp start from the essay written by A.M.Rosenthal: "No News from Auschwitz":
"Brzezinka, Poland—The most terrible thing of all, somehow, was that at Brzezinka the sun was bright and warm, the rows of graceful poplars were lovely to look upon, and on the grass near the gates children played.
It all seemed frighteningly wrong, as in a nightmare, that at Brzezinka the sun should ever shine or that there should be light and greenness and the sound of young laughter. It would be fitting if at Brzezinka the sun never shone and the grass withered, because this is a place of unutterable terror. "
Unlike Brzezinka, Sachsenhausen today is cloudy, windy, quiet and sad. Even though I saw some kids coming to this concentration camp, I didn't feel happy from them. I met one girl who was visiting camp with her father in the medical center, and she is quiet. When people visit in Sachsenhausen most of them keep silent. Maybe they don't want to disturb the ghost there or they don't know what to say facing the death, the murdering. I can see the green trees, flowers, and grass, but I still can't get the feeling of life. Most prisons are already moved. There are only several prisons left for visiting. But they are enough to tell us all about that horrible sturdy.
"And yet every day, from all over the world, people come to Brzezinka, quite possibly the most grisly tourist center on earth. They come for a variety of reasons—to see if it could really have been true, to remind themselves not to forget, to pay homage to the dead by the simple act of looking upon their place of suffering. "
As Jen said there are many tourists coming to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and she also mentioned about the people took pictures and made fun of the things there. They don't have such painful memory, maybe the camp to them is just like a new place filled with interests. But the camp is the nightmare of the prisoners. From the description in the museum and in the essay:
"There are visitors who gaze blankly at the gas chambers and the furnaces because their minds simply cannot encompass them, but stand shivering before the great mounds of human hair behind the plate-glass window or the piles of babies’ shoes or the brick cells where men sentenced to death by suffocation were walled up.
One visitor opened his mouth in a silent scream simply at the sight of boxes—great stretches of three-tiered wooden boxes in the women’s barracks. They were about six feet wide, about three feet high, and into them from five to ten prisoners were shoved for the night. The guide walks quickly through the barracks. Nothing more to see here. "
In Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp I didn't see those horrible things, but from their bathroom, toilet, and beds I could feel their painful. When I did my research about the comparison about the society in 1920s and contemporary society of Berlin, I found that one distinctive difference is that today Berlin has more memorials. Most of them are used for memorizing the history of World War II. The war lives this city unforgettable memories and also bring it to a new stage.
I have no idea how many people slept on each bed. But I can see the third level is so close to the roof.
Prisoners could only use toilet in the morning and in the evening, and only for a short time.
Jen said this is used for shoes testing. They let prisoners run on this road back and forth to test the how lone their shoes can be used. We all feel this is no use. They just wanted to maltreat the prisoners. I think up an psychological experiment done by Stanford University. The professor let there students divided into two groups, one group play the part of prisoners and another play the part of prison guards:
"Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned randomly. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the "Officers" to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as "Prison Superintendent," lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts made publicly available." --Wikipedia
A really interesting experiment, isn't it? And human nature is also interesting. But they make me feel a little bit sad.There is a video about this experiment on YouTube, if you are interested in it you can have a look: Stanford Prison Experiment.mp4
The last picture is my favorite one:
An old people is looking at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp standing at the exist of the basement of care center. History is in the past, but memory is still going with it.
"Brzezinka, Poland—The most terrible thing of all, somehow, was that at Brzezinka the sun was bright and warm, the rows of graceful poplars were lovely to look upon, and on the grass near the gates children played.
It all seemed frighteningly wrong, as in a nightmare, that at Brzezinka the sun should ever shine or that there should be light and greenness and the sound of young laughter. It would be fitting if at Brzezinka the sun never shone and the grass withered, because this is a place of unutterable terror. "
Unlike Brzezinka, Sachsenhausen today is cloudy, windy, quiet and sad. Even though I saw some kids coming to this concentration camp, I didn't feel happy from them. I met one girl who was visiting camp with her father in the medical center, and she is quiet. When people visit in Sachsenhausen most of them keep silent. Maybe they don't want to disturb the ghost there or they don't know what to say facing the death, the murdering. I can see the green trees, flowers, and grass, but I still can't get the feeling of life. Most prisons are already moved. There are only several prisons left for visiting. But they are enough to tell us all about that horrible sturdy.
"And yet every day, from all over the world, people come to Brzezinka, quite possibly the most grisly tourist center on earth. They come for a variety of reasons—to see if it could really have been true, to remind themselves not to forget, to pay homage to the dead by the simple act of looking upon their place of suffering. "
As Jen said there are many tourists coming to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and she also mentioned about the people took pictures and made fun of the things there. They don't have such painful memory, maybe the camp to them is just like a new place filled with interests. But the camp is the nightmare of the prisoners. From the description in the museum and in the essay:
"There are visitors who gaze blankly at the gas chambers and the furnaces because their minds simply cannot encompass them, but stand shivering before the great mounds of human hair behind the plate-glass window or the piles of babies’ shoes or the brick cells where men sentenced to death by suffocation were walled up.
One visitor opened his mouth in a silent scream simply at the sight of boxes—great stretches of three-tiered wooden boxes in the women’s barracks. They were about six feet wide, about three feet high, and into them from five to ten prisoners were shoved for the night. The guide walks quickly through the barracks. Nothing more to see here. "
In Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp I didn't see those horrible things, but from their bathroom, toilet, and beds I could feel their painful. When I did my research about the comparison about the society in 1920s and contemporary society of Berlin, I found that one distinctive difference is that today Berlin has more memorials. Most of them are used for memorizing the history of World War II. The war lives this city unforgettable memories and also bring it to a new stage.
"Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned randomly. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the "Officers" to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as "Prison Superintendent," lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimental process and the results remain controversial. The entire experiment was filmed, with excerpts made publicly available." --Wikipedia
A really interesting experiment, isn't it? And human nature is also interesting. But they make me feel a little bit sad.There is a video about this experiment on YouTube, if you are interested in it you can have a look: Stanford Prison Experiment.mp4
The last picture is my favorite one:
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