Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

After visiting World War II related locations in Central Berlin yesterday, we took a trip outside of the city today to the site of the former Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

The camp was built by prisoners in 1936 as a model for other camps, by 1945 around 200,000 people had passed through its gates. Initially it housed political prisoners but later the full range of prisoners of the Germans. Tens of thousands died here including many when the camp was evacuated in April 1945 when it was evacuated ahead of the arrival of the Red Army. After WWII the Soviets kept around 60,000 German POWs on the same site. After mixed use by the Soviets and the GDR, it finally became a memorial site from 1961 and has received various updates since.

The day was a really sobering experience, difficult to describe how we all felt looking at the various exhibits and the huge scale of the site. The blip was taken inside one of the prisoners' huts, the statistics about the use of these washroom facilities were staggering in themselves. The graininess of the shot (ISO6400, very low light!) seems entirely appropriate.