Spent most of the day touring the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This camp housed the administrative offices from which all camps were directed. Maria the tour guide described Sachsenhausen as the spider with its webs spreading out across Europe. Some of the pictures:
The front gate that prisoners were marched through which reads “Work will set you free” which is also on the gates of other concentration camps.
A recreation of the neutral zone that surrounded the camp. Anyone who stepped into the neutral zone would be shot. Stalin’s son committed suicide this way when his father wouldn’t trade a Nazi general for him since he was only a corporal.
The “shoe track”. The German shoe industry utilized the camp to research materials that could replace leather soles for shoes. Prisoners would run on these surfaces for hours with weighted backpacks to test durability. Some of these shoe companies still exist.
The size of the cells in the “VIP” section of the camp. Sometimes there would 10 people in these cells.
Once the camp was liberated the Soviets, they turned it into a political prisoner camp of their own while also using it to spread their own propaganda.
Some of the memorials to different nationalities that were prisoners of the camp. There are more memorial plaques on the other side of this wall. At any given time there were upwards of 35,000 prisoners at this camp.
There are other parts of the camp that I didn’t take pictures of. I didn’t feel that they were necessary, they aren’t something that can be easily forgotten.