While in Berlin, I venture out of the city and visit another concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. This time, despite being prepared for what to expect and what to feel, the experience was still equally chilling and disturbing. The camp, which was used for mostly political prisoners, had a similar structure and daily routine to that in Dachau, but the simple idea that this concentration camp model was repeated and spread throughout Germany and Eastern Europe is powerfully frightening in itself. The systematic nature of the Nazi regime in everything they accomplished from their rise to power to their execution of their enemies makes me think of them as more robotic than human.
As I have been visiting these many cities, my pace is usually quick and my energy high, but I find that when I stepped through the gates of these two concentration camps, my pace slowed considerably as I struggled to comprehend everything that had occurred on the ground below my feet only 70 years ago.
Andrew, your pictures are fantastic. Are you editing them, cropping, color, etc, or are you just that amazing?!! Today while eating lunch at PneumRx I read your post and changed my desktop to be your pic of the field with the cloudy blue sky and the white old building off to the right, I think its the Hotel Diderot in Chinon. Such lovely pictures!! Thanks for sharing them!
Hi Roxanne… great to hear from you! Unfortunately, I am not able to edit my photos on the road. my computer isn’t strong enough to handle anything that isn’t a browser or word processor. i think my secret is just taking 100x the photos that i actually share.