Hmmm

I just realized after I posted the previous post on Sachsenhausen that I really didn't post any of my thoughts and feelings on the visit. I just posted pics and descriptions for the most part. I think it was because the whole experience was really hard to *digest*. In thinking on that, I just looked at Ben's blog and he posted had posted about it. I'm definitely on the same page with him. It was really hard stuff. Read his bit below.

We went to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp (KZ: Konzentrationslager) just outside Berlin, with the New Berlin tours. It was one of the first planned camps (vs one that was just thrown together), and it served as the headquarters for the whole camp system. The experience is hard to describe. It was cool and rainy–seemingly appropriate to fit the mood. As we went from building to building, it just got more depressing. At first you hear they did A, and you think that is horrible. Then you go to the next building and you hear they did B, and it’s even worse. Then the next and so on. It’s all things I’ve heard before but when you are in the actual place it happened, it’s a bit more real. Eventually it just made me sick–especially when we got to the extermination part, where they perfected the way to kill people without harming the guards’ conscience. (This was a concentration camp–a work/prison camp–not a death camp, where they just killed people, but most there ended up dying from the conditions, though they did also just exterminate people as well.) I doubt I’ll ever go to a camp again, unless I’m taking a group or my kids there when they are older.
In the end, the thing I took away from it is that no matter what negative reprocussions that we think may fall on us, we must stand up for the rights of all. Most of the German people seemed not to know much of what went on in these camps at first (do we question what goes on in our prisons?). Then when the truth started to get out, they didn’t speak up for fear of being put there themselves. It really makes me question things like the Guantanimo detentions where civil rights are redefined and ‘limited’ applications of torture are used. Shouldn’t we distance ourselves from any hint of injustice and totalitarian activities against people? I’m also moving more towards a pacifist position. Maybe there are just wars, but I think more and more that we must be defensive with military force rather than offensive.