Posts Tagged ‘concentration camp’

Former Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg Concentration Camp

Monday, September 20th, 2021

 

The former Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp, now a memorial site, is located about 20 miles north of Berlin, on the edge of the small town of Oranienburg https://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/oranienburg-city-of-unexploded-bombs/

Between 1936 and 1945, more than 200,000 detainees, both men and women, passed through its gate. The prisoners were mainly political opponents, but also Soviets, Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, alcoholics, drug addicts and citizens of occupied European countries. Many of the inmates lost their lives in the camp. I visited that camp, now a museum, in 2019 and felt deeply ashamed when I saw the pictures and the evidence of what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings whom they see as inferior. To me, the implications go beyond Nazi Germany.

Layout of the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg camp

Sachsenhausen was intended to set the standard for other concentration camps, both in design and in the treatment of prisoners. The main gates to Sachsenhausen bear the infamous slogan “Arbeit macht Frei “ (work makes you free). Located behind that gate was a parade field where prisoners reported for morning and evening roll call. Barrack huts radiated in four arches around the parade ground. The site was triangular in shape so that a single guard could oversee all of the barracks from the main tower, and a single machine gun could cover the prisoners. The perimeter of the compound consisted of a 10-foot-high stone wall on the outside and an electric fence on the inside, which was patrolled by guards with dogs.

Front Gate to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp with "Arbeit macht frei" slogan. photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2019. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Front Gate to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp with “Arbeit macht frei” slogan. photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2019. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Purpose of the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg camp

Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg served as a forced labor camp as well as a training center for Hitler’s Schutzstaffel officers (protection squadron). In the beginning, the camp was used to perfect the most efficient execution method for use in Nazi death camps. Later, small-scale methods progressed into large-scale deaths in gas chambers. Some of the prisoners worked in close by brickworks to produce building blocks for Hitler’s vision for his model city, Germania. https://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/germania-hitlers-utopian-quest/ Others worked in a currency counterfeiting unit that produced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes with the plan to drop them over London to disrupt the British economy. Still others tested the resilience of soles for the German shoe industry. Inmates were also to aid in the war effort by producing parts for industrial giants like AEG, Siemens and Heinkel.

Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp - Main building with Tower A. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2019 www.walled-in-berlin.com

Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp – Main building with Tower A. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2019 www.walled-in-berlin.com

Sachsenhausen following World War II

Since it was located within the Soviet Occupation Zone, the Soviets took over Sachsenhausen in 1945 and initially continued to use it as a concentration camp. Then it served the East German Volkspolizei (People’s Police)  for a while, and in 1961, while still in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg camp became a national memorial. After German reunification, https://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/german-reunification/ the former concentration camp became a museum site and has been open to the public since 2015.

Most prominent prisoner in Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg

Joseph Stalin’s oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured in 1941 and was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen. Stalin treated him like any other Soviet soldier and did not give him a cushy job at Headquarters but rather put him on the front line of the war. When the Nazis captured him, they intended to exploit him for propaganda purposes or to use him for a prisoner swap. Both plans failed because Yakov did not cooperate. In 1943, he threw himself at the camp’s electric barbed wire fence and was shot dead by a guard.

https://www.rbth.com/history/332880-why-didnt-stalin-rescue-his-son

 

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.

 

 

Else Ury- Life and Ghastly Death

Monday, January 8th, 2018

Else Ury, author of the famous Nesthaekchen series, http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/nesthaekchen-popular-childrens-books/ was the daughter of a prosperous Jewish tobacco merchant and grew up in a bourgeois household during the German Empire. The family lived in an upper-class neighborhood in the Kantstrasse in Charlottenburg, just around the corner from where I grew up. Although, by the time my family rented one of those flats, they had long been divided into three or four small working-class apartments. In many ways, the Nesthaekchen series echoes Ms. Ury’s life in the Kantstrasse, where she penned the books. Despite having attended a prestigious high school, she did not pursue higher education because it wasn’t customary then for women to go after advanced degrees. Else Ury never married, became a tremendously successful writer of children’s books and lived with her parents until their deaths.

Else Ury during the Nazi years

When the Nazi party came into power, Else Ury’s writing career came to a sudden end. In 1935, she was barred from the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Literature Chamber) and  forced to cease publishing because she could not prove Aryan heritage. Other members of her family had already been barred from practicing their professions. By 1939, Else Ury’s life in Germany had become untenable. Stripped of their possessions, Else and her mother were forced to leave their beautiful home and relocate to a Judenhaus (a ghetto house where Jews were awaiting deportation). Her mother passed away one year later. In 1943, Else Ury was deported to Auschwitz and gassed the day she arrived.

Else Ury and her most troublesome Nesthaekchen volume

During Else Ury’s lifetime, Nesthaekchen und der Weltkrieg (Nesthaekchen and the World War), the fourth volume of the series, was the most popular. The book refers to World War I. Following World War II, the Allied Control Board, in charge of determining which books were suitable for publishing, viewed her narratives as glorifications for Germany’s role in World War I and placed the book on the censorship list. The publisher subsequently pulled the volume from circulation, and it wasn’t reworked and republished for many years.

Else Ury Remembered

Until 1992, the general public knew little of Else Ury’s fate. That changed abruptly when Marianne Brentzel, another German author, reconstructed Ms. Ury’s life through photographs and letters. The work bore the shocking title, Nesthaekchen kommt ins KZ (Nesthaekchen is sent to the concentration camp). https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article112708668/Als-Deutsche-Nesthaekchens-Mutter-ermordeten.html In 2007, Brentzel published a biography of Else Ury entitled, Mir kann doch nichts geschehen (Nothing can happen to me). Now, the public became keenly aware of the fate of its once favorite author. Since then, a memorial plaque has been affixed to the façade of the apartment building in Kantstrasse 30 where Else Ury penned the series. In 1998, a shopping arcade was dedicated to her. The colonnade is located beneath the Stadtbahn – Berlin’s elevated train – between Bleibtreustrasse and Knesebeckstrasse, close to where Ury was raised. A Stolperstein (stumpling stone) http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/berlins-stolpersteine/ was installed in front of the former “Judenhaus,” in Solingerstrasse 10 to which Ury and her mother had been relocated in 1939. And the well-known memorial and educational site, Haus der Wannsee Konferenz, http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/berlins-house-wannsee-conference/ hosted an exhibition that featured the life of Else Ury and included the suitcase she took to Auschwitz.

 

Memorial plaque affixed to the facade of Kantstrasse 30 in Berlin, where Else Ury penned Nesthaekchen. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2017. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Memorial plaque affixed to the facade of Kantstrasse 30 in Berlin, where Else Ury penned Nesthaekchen. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2017. www.walled-in-berlin.com

My recollections of the Nesthaekchen Series

I never knew that Else Ury was Jewish or that she had been gassed in Auschwitz until my eye fell on the memorial plaque on a visit to Berlin. That was in 2017. The Nesthaekchen books were my all-time favorite reading during my early teens. What made the series so special to me was the fact that Nesthaekchen’s childhood played out in my own neighborhood. I fully expected to see her walk down my street one day. Although I wasn’t born until after World War II and did not grow up among the privileged, I completely identified with Annemarie Braun and envisioned my life to play out exactly like hers when I grew up. To my delight I learned that reprints of the series are still available.

 

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.