Nazi Germany Archives - Walled In Berlin

Posts Tagged ‘Nazi Germany’

Shoe-Testing Unit at Sachsenhausen

Monday, October 18th, 2021

The shoe testing unit was a punishment detail in the former Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp near Berlin, Germany. The facility was operated by the Nazi government between 1936 and 1945. It served as a training ground for other such camps and as a testing ground for “efficient” execution methods. Individuals who refused to work or were found guilty of a variety of “crimes” were sent here or to a similar camp. The shoe-testing unit at Sachsenhausen was set up in 1940, an extermination unit was built in 1942, and a gas chamber was added in 1943. Tens of thousands of internees died as a result of forced labor, hunger, disease, medical experiments or mistreatment, or were victims of systematic extermination by the Nazis.

Punishment Units at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Prisoners assigned to punishment units were assigned to one of three sections: (1) The currency counterfeiting detail, which produced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes, (2) the brickworks, which manufactured building blocks for Hitler’s vision for his model city, Germania, or (3) the shoe testing unit.

Purpose of the Shoe-testing Unit

During World War II, the Nazi government sought a substitute for leather, which was used in the manufacture of soles for military boots. Leather was rationed during the war, and alternatives were needed. That meant that prisoners were forced to test-march the resilience of soles made from various materials, such as rubber and a PVC-type compound. Prisoners assigned to the shoe-testing detail were made to walk an average of 25 miles per day, carrying 25-pound packs on their backs, to increase the stress placed on the soles made from various materials.

Shoe-testing Procedures

According to Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich © 2017, the track was 2,300 feet long and consisted of 58% concrete road, 10% cinder, 12% loose sand, 8% mud (that was kept constantly under water), 4% chips, 4% coarsely graveled paths, and 4% cobbles. The various surfaces were to represent a cross-section of the roads German soldiers might have to walk on during military operations. Every six miles the soles were examined for wear. After a number of refinements, rubber soles were found to be able to withstand 1,800 miles, or a seventy-five-day march. Leather barely survived 600 miles. “Igelit,” a form of PVC, survived for more than 1,200 miles. About 20 people died on the track every day.

Part of the shoe-testing area at former Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2019, www.walled-in-berlin.com

Why would the German shoe industry participate in such experiments?

Part of the shoe-testing area can still be seen today. It is documented that well-known German shoe companies such as Salamander and Leiser, still in existence today, routinely sent their military boot prototypes to the camp for testing. My question when I visited the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg memorial was why would the German shoe industry participate in such atrocious experimentation? The answer is straightforward. Money. The German Reich economics office allowed the production of leather substitute materials only after they had been successfully tested in Sachsenhausen. If a shoe companies wanted to sell its goods, it had to participate in the shoe-testing. Money was and is a powerful motivator anytime and anywhere. As I understand it, Hollywood cancelled the release of a planned documentary on what was happening to the Jews during the same period. However, when the Nazis threatened to confiscate Hollywood’s real estate holdings in Germany and to prohibit Hollywood from showing the totality of its movies in Germany, Hollywood cancelled the release. Showing the documentary would have meant giving up a lucrative market. Money talks.

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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.

Tags: Blitzed, Germany. Norman Ohler, Nazi Germany, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp, shoe-testing
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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

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 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

Tags: Arbeit macht frei, concentration camp, Nazi Germany, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, World War II, Yakov Dzhugashvili
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Is the Milgram Experiment still Relevant Today?

Monday, May 18th, 2020

The Milgram experiment was designed to examine conditions under which ordinary citizens willingly submit to authority. The research was part of a series of experiments on obedience conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University. Specifically, Milgram wanted to find out how much pain people would inflict on others, simply because a person of authority ordered them to do so. In the experiment, an experimental scientist served as the authority figure. Forty men of various backgrounds and ages agreed to participate based on a newspaper ad that advertised a learning study. Respondents were offered a token cash award for their participation.

Structure of the Experiment

Each experiment involved three people and a mock electric shock generator. The three people were:

A bogus Experimenter (an actor in a gray lab coat posing as an experimental scientist to convey authority),
A Teacher (The process was rigged so that all 40 respondents ended up being teachers) and
A Learner (An associate of Dr. Milgram who pretended to be a second participant in the learning study).

The stated object of the Milgram experiment was to examine the relationship between learning and memory. Teachers and bogus Learners participated in pairs of two and drew straws to determine who would be the Teacher and who would be the Learner. Unknown to participants, however, the person responding to the newspaper ad was always made the Teacher.

Procedure of the Milgram Experiment

In the Teacher’s presence, the Experimenter strapped the Learner into a chair and attached electrodes to his arms. Teacher and Experimenter then went into an adjacent room where a mock electric shock generator was located. The device displayed a row of 30 switches, indicating that shocks ranged from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (danger – severe shock). The Experimenter instructed the Teacher to administer an electric shock every time the Learner made a mistake. With each mistake, the Teacher was to increase the intensity of the shock.

Then the experiment began. The Teacher read the Learner a list of word pairs and asked him to correctly identify the word pair from a list of four choices. On purpose, the bogus Learner gave mainly wrong answers so that the Teacher had to deliver increasingly severe shocks. If the Teacher refused to administer additional shocks because the Learner appeared to be in pain, the Experimenter pressured him to continue because the experiment supposedly required him to do so.

Results of the Milgram Experiment

The studies took place only 16 years following World War II, and Milgram wondered if there might be a link between the cruel actions of ordinary German citizens during the Holocaust and their willingness to submit to authority. Results of Milgrim’s experiment showed that 65% of Teachers continued to give shocks all the way up to the highest voltage. He found that as long as the Teacher believed that the person giving the orders was qualified to do so and would accept full responsibility for the outcome, most Teachers would continue to increase shock levels even when the Learners begged them not to.

The Milgram experiment was designed to examine conditions under which ordinary citizens willingly submit to authority. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Milgram carried out 18 variations of this study by slightly altering the framework and found that obedience levels dropped slightly when Teachers observed others to disobey the orders. However, obedience levels increased when participants felt buffered from the consequences of their actions.

Implications of the Experiments

Are the Milgram experiments still relevant in today’s America? Are Americans as fiercely independent and autonomous as they think they are? Or do they submit to authority more often than they realize? These days, America is deeply divided politically. Do members of each camp decide using their own moral standard? Or do they feel pressured into supporting their party’s agenda and assume that their party leaders will take full responsibility?

Tags: Holocaust, independent thinkers, Milgram Experiment, Nazi Germany, obedience, responsibility, Stanley Milgram, submitting to authority
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Kindertransport Memorial in Berlin

Monday, June 19th, 2017

Kindertransport (children’s transport) is the German name for a rescue mission that began nine months prior to the outbreak of World War II. Through this effort about 10,000 mainly Jewish children were able to escape from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Danzig and the Polish city of Zvaszyn. Many of the children were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust.

Kindertransport Rescue Mission efforts

After the terrible events of Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, the British Parliament granted permission for Kindertransports to enter England. The first transports of 196 children left from the Friedrichstrasse rail station. Over the next ten months, ten thousand children travelled in this way through various railway stations in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, Hamburg, Danzig, Koenigsberg, Vienna and Prague, leaving their families behind.

The first Kindertransport train to England left Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse railway station on 30 November 1938. Most of the children on the train were from a Berlin Jewish orphanage that had been burned by the Nazis during Kristallnacht. Others were from Hamburg. The children arrived in Harwich two days later. They were allowed to take only one small suitcase, no valuables, and no more than ten marks in cash. Some children travelled with nothing more than a numbered tag on the front of their clothing and a tag with their name on the back.

The children arriving in England in a photo on an info board at Friedrichstrasse rail station. J. Elke Ertle, 2017, www.walled-in-berlin.com

The Kindertransports were organized by Jewish communities, Quakers and non-Jewish groups. The Gestapo supervised the children up to the Dutch-German border. Then Dutch volunteers helped them board ferries from Hoek van Holland, Rotterdam, to the British port of Harwich. Once in England, the children were housed in summer camps or taken in by foster families. The Committee for Refugees coordinated the arrangements. Private donations paid for them. The integration of the children into British society was a mixed success. Some children were successfully integrated. Others were exploited as servants or neglected.

While most of the Kindertransports headed to Great Britain, some went to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The transports continued until Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and World War II broke out.

Selection of children for the Kindertransport

Many individuals and organizations in Great Britain and the Netherlands were involved in the Kindertransport rescue mission. In Germany, a network of coordinators worked around the clock to prioritize children at risk. These included children with a parent in a concentration camp, teens threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages and children whose parents were no longer able to sustain them.

Trains to Life – Trains to Death Memorial

Commemorating the Kindertransport, a close to life-size bronze sculpture Trains to Life – Trains to Death is located directly adjacent to Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse station. It depicts four boys and three girls. Five of the children look in one direction, two in the opposite way, reflecting the contrasting fates of the children. While many were deported to concentration camps, some were saved by the Kindertransport.

“Trains to Life – Trains to Death” Memorial by Frank Meisler at Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse railway station. Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2017. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Israeli Architect and sculptor Frank Meisler created the “Trains to Life – Trains to Death” sculpture in 2008 and donated it to the city of Berlin. He himself had travelled with a 1939 children’s transport from Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse to England. He created three other sculptures along the children’s route to safety: The “Kindertransport – the departure” memorial in Danzig, Poland, the “Kindertransport – the arrival” sculpture at Liverpool Street Station in London and the “Channel of Life” memorial at Hoek van Holland, Rotterdam.

Tags: Berlin sight, children's transport, Friedrichstrasse railway station, Gestapo, Holocaust, Jewish children, Kindertransport, Nazi Germany, Quakers, Trains to Life-Trains to Death Memorial
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