Berlin - the sad side part one - the Nazis

I took a day trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp while I was in Berlin and deliberately did not take many pictures.  How exactly does one pose next to the barracks where human beings wasted away in hot crowded dorms?  But there were a few things that particularly struck me and I wanted to share.

Far left: At the start of the camp there was an electric fence lining the yard where the prisoners spent hours of roll call and hard labor.  Apparently some of the prisoners, giving up all hope of rescue and with their last sliver of sanity, would throw themselves against the electric fence to end their lives.  Well.  The Nazis would have none of that.  Only the Nazis were to have any say in when your life would end.  So they added this "Neutrale Zone" before you reached the fence, which is the most inaccurate name they could have given it.  If you stepped on foot on the gravel leading to the fence, you were instantly shot.  I was told that the wording on the sign says that no warning will be given.  Lest you think gunfire a more pleasant death than electrocution, the guards actually aimed for the abdomen so that you would take hours to die.  And they would leave you there, screaming in agony, as a warning to the other prisoners.  As we walked by the people around me crowded in and since there is no barrier, I stepped on to the gravel.  It was a sickening moment to think that mere decades earlier I would be dead for that.

Top right: This memorial to "the victims of Sachsenhausen concentration camp" is located in the old kill rooms where the Nazi's perfected the psychology necessary for human beings to live with the fact that murder other humans for a living.  The key is for each person to perform only one menial task, so that they can always say to themselves "I don't kill people! I just show them to the next room!" "I don't kill people! I just flip a switch!"  They actually had mobile kill units at Sachsenhausen where one Nazi would load the victims into the back of a truck, another Nazi would take a tube and connect it to the exhaust pipe and to a hole in the back of the airtight truck, and a third Nazi would drive around for approximately 45 minutes.  At the end of the war when the drivers were interviewed they really truly said "Oh no no no, I am not a murderer, I am a truck driver" even though they were completely aware of what was going on in the back of their truck.

Bottom right: people sometimes light candles for the victims, or leave rocks as is the Jewish tradition.  One person left a painted ceramic butterfly.  It looks like it was made by a child.  Perhaps the surviving great great grandchild of a victim?  Despite the sadness in that, it is a fitting reminder that the Nazis did not succeed in snuffing out all of the life they tried to destroy.