Has anyone visited a concentration camp? What were your thought afterwards?

Question

Visited Sachsenhausen a week ago, wondering what everyone elses experience in visiting one was.

Answer 1

I went to Sachsenhausen, in the middle of winter too. My visit made me feel horrified that humans could be treated so poorly, with little or no food and living in a concentration camp in winter must have been awful because it was so so cold there. I think the corpse cellar was the worst part of the experience, the smell of dead bodies just made me horrified and saddened by what the Nazis did. Although there was little evidence of what had happened at Sachsenhausen because a lot of it had been destroyed I still felt horrified and shocked at the way the Nazis treated the Jews and others that they locked up in the concentration camps. The corpse cellar was probably the main part that really hit home that hundreds, possibly thousands had been killed in that concentration camp because of the stench of death and the room above just seemed so inhumane as they used the tables to extract everything valuable from the people they killed.

Answer 2

I visited Bergen-Belsen on a school trip when I was 11. Imagine an area raised by 1 metre, flat topped and the size of a football pitch. On one side is a stone plaque with 30,000 or 60,000 etc. Imagine many of such mounds. The numbers are the unidentified bodies in each mound.
There is a lovely memorial but it's spoilt by tourists giggling as their photographs are taken in front of it. The bases of the ovens were still visible in amongst the beautiful trees. I have never forgotten the complete stop of my senses and emotions when I realised what I was viewing. I remember crying silently.
About 10 years ago I was touring southern Germany and went to Dachau. Being older I knew roughly what to expect but I was still stopped in my tracks. The exhibition in the camp cannot be described, so gut-wrenching it is. There is nothing you can say that will express the horror and evil perpetrated on innocent people who have been sent to oblivion, and for totally spurious reasons like race or religion.
It is my belief that all children should visit. Not for vicarious pleasure but to let them know that within themselves lies the ability to do the same thing. Whether it is politically acceptable or not we all have to face the fact that concentration camps have been used by many nations for many years, and the desire to create them has not been constrained to any race or group or party. I include ghettoes which are almost as old as mankind.

Answer 3

I have been to Theresiensteadt (Czech Republic-Terezin) where Jews and other "enemies of the Reich" were held against their will in what otherwise looks like an ordinary city. The cafe had no food, the art shop produced only propaganda posters for the Nazis, the outdoor performances and theatre spectaculars which were put on by the inmates were all tightly controlled, and so on. It is difficult to imagine that people were tortured, mutilated and, even worse, sent off from there to the real extermination camps because it is such a serene setting. Only the walls and cobblestones know of the true suffering that went on there, but alas, they are not able to speak.

Answer 4

I am German and all german schoolchildren are obliged to visit one in 10th grade I think.
I have visited two, Dachau and Buchenwald. Both times it was a very deep and shocking experience, especially in Buchenwald, because they had an exibition there, showing pieces of art from survivers and ones that died. Also there was a large photo exibition showing the photos that had been taken the first days after the liberation of the concentration camp and the different views fotographs all over the world had.

I cried in Dachau, as I was 15 years old, and this seemed to cruel to be true. In Buchenwald I was 18 and I started to think a lot about the ability of humans to be cruel and brutal worse than any animal.
Of course you refer back to your own family (especially as a german), how this was possible to take place in history.

Visiting a concentration camp is an experience you will never forget and it will extend your sight on life, that is sure.

Answer 5

I visited Dachau on the outskirts of Munchen (Munich). It had NO signs pointing the way. I wasn't so much bothered by the ovens or the conditions. I was already deeply moved by a huge Black and white photo of a huge pile of shoes hanging from strings attached into the rafters. It took some 3 days for me to regain a sense of reality. I felt great anger as I lived amongst the German population in my small town of Untterderbach in Weurzburg, Germany. The German population is a vary curious breed, especially the older generation. They exist to be alone and didn't interact with each other, my instincts think it's because of the Holocaust and people just wanting to forget.

Answer 6

I experienced Bergen Belsen in February 1996. We stepped through the snow covered mounds, each one of them holding thousands of children, women and men, most unknown to all but their families. Yet knowing that Anne Frank - the very image of the War's murdered child - was somewhere here inspired a more intense feeling. We were cloaked by the invasive silence of the site - we learnt late that nature is repulsed by the lime used to cover the bodies - until we went into the visitor centre. There, backdropped by the decaying shoes abandoned by their missing owners, a group of young German conscripts laughed and joked amongst themselves, hopefully oblivious to their surroundings. We were extremely saddened by this display, until some elderly locals moved toward them and gently started explaining a few things. Silence returned.

Answer 7

Yes i have, Bergen Belsen near Hanover in Germany.....it was a really intense and emotional day.....essentially it is just a field with a building but the knowledge of what went on their stirs your emotions and makes it the most evil place on earth...

eerily there are no birds singing (even though the place is surrounded by trees), its as if they knew of the pain and suffering that went on there and chose not to visit..

Answer 8

hmm part of a British army camp overlaps a concentration camp im not sure were it is but a chap i was speaking to in the sgt mess one evening over a pint told me that part of the camp was defly quiet and some soldiers used one of the old buildings as a cold store but wouldnt go in the building without someone holding the door open as it used to shut by itself, the funny thing was if you didnt enter and just left the door open it would stay open all day long untill someone shut it but go in the building and it would close itself behind you ...not quite what you asked but interesting tale

Answer 9

I too visited Bergen Belsen when I was in the military. I did notice the lack of birds as well. I can close my eyes right now and feel the hollowness and pain the place left in me. Holocaust deniers are a bunch of ignorant, narrow-minded, freaks.

Answer 10

I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp near Krakow in Poland. There's no words to explain. I was actually physically sick. You really need to see for yourself.