This morning the marketing group joined three other classes on a field trip to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum near the city of Oranienburg.  Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp from 1936 to 1945 and then became a Soviet Special Camp. 

GDR National Memorial Liberation by Rene Graetz

According to the audio tour Sachsenhausen was the first concentration camp to have a planned architectural design meant to create the ideal camp.

It was chilling to walk through the camp and see the reminders of the level of cruelty human beings are capable of inflicting on one another.  

Memorials to the six mass graves

Along the west wall

Inscription at the Place of Remembrance (Station Z)

Tower E at the north point of the triangular camp

The one glimmer of life in the entire audio tour was the story of the string quartet that secretly practiced in the pathology building and even performed for fellow prisoners in the delousing chamber.   The quartet consisted of two violins, viola and cello (Bohumír Cervinka, 1^st violin; Karel Štancl, 2^nd violin; Jan Skorpik, viola; and Eberhard Schmidt, cello).  The piece mentioned in the audio tour is Antonin Dvořák’s string quartet in F major. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxtAHpYIXdU

The rest of this afternoon I need to find something joyful to distract me from this morning’s experience.