KZ Sachsenhausen: four layers of memory

Our visit to Buchenwald last weekend left us all with much to think about concerning the troublesome history of the Holocaust and the aftermath of WWII. This past Friday, we visited another concentration camp site, this time much nearer to Berlin. As opposed to Buchenwald, which is somewhat removed from the town of Weimar, Sachsenhausen is set essentially within the town of Oranienburg. The students were shocked to see how close the camp was to the surrounding houses: it reveals much about the attitude of many Germans toward the existence of these sites during the Nazi era.

The exhibitions and interpretive materials on the site (which is still in the process of being remodeled) seek to reveal four major eras in the camp’s existence. The first is the building and use of the camp by the Nazis, beginning in 1936. Though many Jews were imprisoned here, it was better known as a camp for political prisoners, especially Communists. It was also a prominent training site for the SS, as well as a “show” camp for Hitler and his officials. Though it wasn’t a death camp, tens of thousands of prisoners died here as a result of starvation, disease, abuse, and torture, as well as medical experiments.

After the war, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as a “special camp” where they held various German prisoners to await trial. (Above: extra housing outside the camp walls which was used during this time.) Several thousand people died during this stage of the camp’s existence – mostly of starvation, disease and exposure. It’s difficult to know what to do with the memory of these deaths, as many of the prisoners were either Nazis themselves, or had been willing participants in the culture of the regime. Still, the evidence of human suffering here is also staggering.

After the Soviets abandoned the camp, the GDR government refurbished it (as they did Buchenwald) as a memorial site. Here at Sachsenhausen, this included a large memorial structure (where soldiers were regularly inducted into the army), as well as a museum that emphasized the suffering of the Communist prisoners held here by the Nazis. For East Germany, the identity of the Communists as victims of the fascist regime was a central part of the national narrative, so sites like these became points for the public expression of collective persecution at the hands of the Nazis – even if very few GDR citizens had actually been Communists prior to 1945. On the other hand, the memory of the Soviet camp was completely suppressed under the East Germans, so that families who had lost loved ones here during the post-war period were unable to speak about their own suffering until after 1989.

With the fall of the wall, the camp became a flashpoint for conflicting narratives and memories: how can both victims of the Nazis and Nazis or collaborators themselves be remembered and mourned on the same site? This is a question that haunts many spaces in Berlin, not only Sachsenhausen. The current design of the site attempts to deal with this through a “decentralized” approach, using the various structures to house extensive exhibitions of archival material. Still, we’re left wondering: how do we decide who has the right to be remembered, and how?

There are many more buildings on the site, but I couldn’t bring myself to photograph them. Sites of terrible suffering and unspeakable crimes, I think they are best left to be pondered in the abstract. If you’re interested, however, you can read more about the site here.

A trip to Weimar & Dessau

This weekend we traveled to the beautiful city of Weimar, home of Goethe, Schillar, Liszt, and the birthplace of the Bauhaus! Our first stop on Friday afternoon was the Bauhaus museum – a small but unique little space with treasures from the first years of the school’s existence. Unfortunately the Bauhaus school was forced to leave Weimar after the Nazi party gained power in the state of Thüringen in 1924.

This opened a difficult chapter in Weimar’s history, and on Saturday we visited the nearby site of Buchenwald concentration camp.

The most striking thing one finds on entering the camp is the view: the camp is set in the middle of the forest (Buche means “beech” and Wald means “woods”), on a hill that allows a view across the valley. It’s difficult to believe that such horrible things could transpire amidst such natural beauty.

The original barracks are no longer extant – most are now marked with dark loose stones, but one has been rebuilt in its original form. One of the few other buildings still standing on the grounds is the crematorium, which was strangely located adjacent to a little petting zoo built for the children of the SS.

The Goethe Eiche – Goethe’s Oak – was an oak tree left standing in the camp by the SS. The prisoners named it in remembrance of Goethe’s trips to this same forest. It was damaged in an Allied bombing in 1944 and subsequently chopped down.

Buchenwald was also used as a Soviet internment camp after the war. It’s thought that about 7,ooo people died during this time in the camp’s history, and they were buried in unmarked graves in the woods surrounding the site. Because Thüringen became part of East Germany, the deaths were not acknowledged during the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall finally allowed the victims’ families to speak up and publicly remember their relatives.

The Soviets left another highly visible legacy: a huge memorial to the camp’s liberation, on a hill overlooking Weimar. Buchenwald’s many layers of tragic history gave us much to consider …

The class was free to spend the rest of the day exploring the town. Chance and I took a stroll through the park and admired the “Roman House,” the amazing landscape and the first Bauhaus demonstration house, the Haus am Horn.

Today we left Weimar and headed back to Berlin, with a stop in Dessau to visit the most famous site of the Bauhaus, their school building, designed by Walter Gropius and built in 1925-6. We got a fantastic tour from a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide, and I think our students might almost be convinced that Modernism isn’t all horrible … (those of us who study architecture are already sold).

We couldn’t have asked for a more lovely day to see this truly seminal piece of architecture. This week we dive into the study of the specter that haunts both the history of the Bauhaus and Buchenwald: the Nazis and their influence on Berlin and Germany.