Photo of the day

This photo was taken at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp last fall when Todd and I visited it on our final trip to Berlin for the GLD. I had always wanted to have the opportunity to visit one of the WW2 Concentration Camps, but was too young when we lived in Rotterdam for my folks to be willing to take me to one. Sachsenhausen was primarily a labour camp (vs. death camp) and housed more political prisoners than jews, but the experience was still extremely powerful. The site has only been partially preserved, and even those parts that have been preserved have been done so in a very sterile way, so it wasn't as if you were stepping completely back in time, rather as if you were walking through a museum that just happend to be built in the same location. It may sound crazy but even with the changes that had been made to the place, there was still a very haunted spirit about the place. The old prison building (sounds odd doesn't it, a prison building in a concentration camp?) was kept mostly in tact, as was the yard, and walking through that extremely narrow hallway, looking into the various tiny cells... it was terrifying... even in broad daylight. Before you enter the actual camp through the gates, there is a garden of memorials and monuments that various organizations and individuals have placed within the outer walls of the camp, but not in the inner santcum. Some were very striking, some were very abstract, all were touching. I don't exactly know what I believe about the afterlife, but I do wonder sometimes if I had a past life that was in some way deeply and directly connected to the Holocaust, because I have always felt a very strong draw to it, and I can't figure out any reason why I should feel that way.

I absolutely recommend that anyone who has the opportunity to visit one of these sites should do so, or visit a more local Holocaust Museum (the one in DC is phenomenal, but there are much smaller ones across the nation that are also very good)... the experience will be a powerful reminder to us that we are all human, no matter what, and that no matter how big differences between us may seem, they are no excuse for letting atrocities such as this ever happen again.