You’ve watched the movies, the documentaries, read the books, but until you are really there, you don’t realize the effect the Hitler and his Nazi regime had on the millions of people whose lives were forever changed by persecution, suffering, and loss. When you enter the camp, you walk through a metal gate, and it says “Arbeit Macht Frei” which means work sets you free. Upon arrival at the concentration camp, the first thing I realized was how much larger it was than I thought. The front yard where everyone would lineup was probably the size of several football fields placed side by side, which created an overwhelming sense of scale when viewed from ground level.
We then made our way to the prison barracks, which I thought was one of the most striking parts of the camp because they helped put the scale of imprisonment into perspective. Back in the day, there were 30 barracks with I believe 200 people in each barrack which was insane to me because the space looked like it could only fit ¼ of that. Inside, the living spaces were extremely crowded, with rows of bunks stacked closely together. The sleeping areas were tightly packed, and the communal washrooms emphasized how many people were expected to share the same facilities. We learned about the cleaning routines, and if you didn’t make your bed and clean the floors, you were punished in front of everyone. You were not allowed to wear shoes inside on the barrack floors.
After this we went to see the gas chambers and crematory, where they took prisoners to be killed and cremated after. They told us how they would have prisoners take other prisoners over to the gas chambers to be murdered and then after this they would take the prisoner outside and kill them too, so no one would find out what was going on. This was insane to me, they would have to take their fellow friends/prisoners to be murdered and didn’t know. I also got to see Georg Elser, the man who attempted to assassinate Hitler was held. It was 3 cells wide, and they kept him in good shape because after the war they were going to make an example out of him. When they realized that they lost the war, he was executed 2 weeks before the camp was liberated.
After learning more about everything that went on here, the most important lesson I took is that history is not just something that happened in the past. The site serves as a reminder of what can occur when hatred, discrimination, and authoritarianism go unchallenged. It reinforced the importance of remembrance, education, and individual responsibility in preventing similar tragedies in the future.
