Back to Berlin
Trip Start
May 23, 2008
1
46
54
Trip End
Ongoing
Berlin,
Germany
Friday, October 10, 2008
After the busride/ferry ride back to Berlin on Monday, I didn't actually get to bed till 1.30am yesterday morning. When I eventually woke up, I wandered around the city, found a supermarket, got some things to eat, found a big park and chilled out there for a couple of hours, writing in my diary and catching up on my thoughts. It was a really pretty park, surrounded by all the falling autumn leaves. Just as I was about to leave though I was approached by a weird creepy guy with bad teeth who wanted me to meet up with him later and 'do something'. Seriously, why do I always get the weird guys in parks! Yuk. So unlucky. I walked away as quickly as I could, worried he was going to follow me. I walked back under the Brandenburg gate and held off a major temptation for Starbucks. Instead, I went window shopping for a car in the many auto showrooms along the main strip; Bugatti, Volkswagon, Seat, Bentleigh etc
Peugeot super shiny concept car
. At one stage I felt like I was literally in a car shopping mall! And I am so in love with the new Golf. LOVE! I also went to Peugeot and checked out their concept cars. Some of them are so cool!I didn't really feel like being social last night so I hung out in the room instead and tried to retrain my brain with some sudoku. Literally, my mind is turning to mush. I have seen and done so many things recently that I now struggle with even the basic things like remembering the names of people and places, where I have been, where I am going, and I cant even talk sometimes! I seem to tune out and daydream a lot, especially when people introduce themselves. Rude I know, but I seriously cant help it! Its really bad.
Today I went on a tour of the Saxenhausen concentration camp, a trainride out of Berlin. It wasn't the most pleasant day, I cant really say that I 'enjoyed it', but I needed to witness a little bit of that history.
Theres not much I can say except that the nazi's were sick people. The amount of propaganda and crap that they fed the world is unbelievable. When you walk through the front gates of the camp, the title on the gates reads: Arbeit Macht Frei - work will make you free
Peugeot ball pit concept car
. Even though the only way out once you were in there was being carried out dead. Though this was never a death camp like the extermination camps of Auschwitz, this was a work camp. Still, many thousands of people died here. Its horribly sad. The SS guards were trained to be absolutely merciless. Most had some sort of mental disability, as these were the easiest people for the Nazis to brainwash. Plus they knew, if they were caught showing even the slightest bit of sympathy to any of them, that they would be thrown into the camp too.Some of the stories we heard were absolutely horrible. And it wasn't just the jews that were held in these camps, it was also the political prisoners, gays, Jehovahs etc. anyone that was part of a minority or who didn't go along with the plans of the Nazis. All the different groups were devided up using different coloured badges, so that they could be distinguished between. We also saw the prison within the prison, where people were locked away in solitary confinement and tourtured, usually during the main roll call so that the other prisoners could hear the screams. Rollcall within the camp happened both morning and evening. First they would just count the number of people. Then, if I didn't add up, they would have to go through all the names and numbers etc. the longest recorded roll call was like 18 hours. If one person was missing, then they had to be accounted for
Peugeot concept car show room
. If someone had died in the night, then it would be the responsibility of the other prisoners to carry the body to rollcall - to be counted. Really cruel and horrible. Not to mention they wore very thin cotton uniforms, so if they had to stand out in -5 degree tempretures then so be it. They had no other choice. The site also had a track built to test army boots, which was one of the jobs the prisoners had to do. To test the boots, prisoners were forced to run around this track with 25kg packs on their backs, for 40km or more. This would be a mean feat for anyone who was fit and healthy, let alone a prisoner so badly malnourished. Most people fell over and never got up.The site also features a few different memorials, the area where the firing squad did their work, and the area they had built for mass exterminations, a small gas chamber, and ovens for burning bodies. Most of the extermination was purely used as research rather than wiping out, to see what the most economic was way of killing was.
Another method they adopted was dressing up guards as doctors and claiming that the prisoners were coming in for a 'checkup'. First their mouth would be checked, and if the prisoner had and gold fillings they would have a cross drawn on their hand, or an o if not
automobile shopping mall
. They would be taken to a waiting room where they would be playing very loud music, before being taken into another room, asked to stand against a wall, and told they were going to have their height measured. A small sliding door in the wall would open behind their head, and an SS guard would shoot them in the neck. They incorporated this so that prisoners would go willingly and without trouble, and so that the guards wouldn't know who they were killing or look them in the face while doing so. Their process was very thought out, and I think that was one part that sickened me the most.Before I develop depression, I will also mention the 'autopsies' that were undertaken to make the death process seem more humane. The truth was, a Y insission was cut into the chest of the deceased prisoner, then sewn back up again, and a random reason for death selected from a list and written on the death certificate. It was all done to make the camp more proper and legit. Sickening, that's what it is.
Needless to say, everyone was real quiet on the train back home, and for me tonight it is an early night, ready for the bus trip in the morning - to the Czech Republic! Im looking forward to the cheaper prices, and I have heard that the area is absolutely stunning.
Comments
So Sad
Well Kate this blog even made me feel a little depressed. Perhaps we should all have to visit places like the concentration camps to remind us what can happen when crazy people try to remake the world how they think it should be. How lucky we are in Australia with our freedoms and lifestyle and how we need to work hard to keep it this way. On a happier note: in your last blog your were thinking of taking up soccer, now you mention Golf??? Oh! Silly me! You mean the car!!!! Does this mean that your poor little vehicle that's been locked away for 6 months is going to be obsolete when you get home? I will close with a word of advice: Watch out for wierd men in parks!!!! Lots of Luv Mumxox