Haunted

The skies were bright and blue over Sachsenhausen, but down below we were trapped inside a dark and disturbing world.

I would consider myself a happy person. I like to find the good in everything and very rarely do I publicly let any feelings of unhappiness or sadness show. However, for the first time yesterday, I became a mindless, numb zombie to my feelings at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. My experience there was gut-wrenching, life-changing, and haunting.

When we arrived, we stood outside of the main entrance, better known as “Station A,” for quite sometime while our guide gave us some background information on the camp’s history. The buildup to entering was becoming overwhelming. Finally, it was time to make our way in. I walked through the gate that had those three infamous words delicately molded together saying “Arbeit Macht Frei” and into the camp. Immediately, I stopped dead in my tracks. Almost none of the buildings are left, so you see an expansive plot of land, looking desolate and utterly depressing. I was frozen. I could not talk. I felt scared. I even felt like I did not want to be there anymore.

We toured many heart-wrenching sites -- the Jewish barracks, the solitary confinement prison, the cafeteria where rations were portioned, and the remains of the extermination building known as “Station Zett.”

As the day went on and I learned more information, my feelings of sadness turned to feelings of anger. I could not get this burning question out of my head: Why is this place of atrocity and inhumanity memorialized and open to the public?

As a society, we live in a constant limbo of forgetting and remembering the past. The Holocaust is no stranger to this subject. Sure, showing these places to the public is a way to show just how terrible and disgusting humans can be to each other. But is the commercialization of Sachsenhausen and other concentration and extermination camps truly a respectable way to honor those who entered the gates and were victims of heinous actions?

This question is hard to answer. On one hand, I was glad I was able to visit this concentration camp and see it personally and not through Hollywood’s lens. On the other hand, it seems as if these places should have been kept private to preserve the memory of the individuals who were sent there.

There is never going to be a right and wrong way to memorialize such controversial topics. It is up to the individual and how they interpret it and the emotion that it elicits to them. Sadness, anger, and desolation consumed me at Sachsenhausen. This is a mix of feelings I have never felt before. It was so eerie and haunting, and I will never forget how I felt on that beautiful Thursday afternoon.