A Little Town Called Oranienburg
Even in the most somber of places, the flowers bloom and the bees buzz.
Spending a portion of summer abroad is a treat I like to gift myself yearly. This year, 2019, I decided to visit the capital of Germany, the vibrant city of Berlin. I have always had a fascination for this country’s culture and history and wanted to see for myself how a key participant in multiple world wars could stand so powerfully and gracefully today. To briefly describe this city, there is radical self-expression, a convergence of archaic and modern architecture, an unmanageable variety of beers and what most caught my attention: excruciatingly painful glimpses of history wherever you go. Despite the 1001+ activities to do in the city, a feeling of incompletion lingered in me given that my curiosity for this area of the world mainly narrows down to the happenings of World War II. To further submerge in the topic, I decided to take the “S” train towards the north of Berlin to a small town called Oranienburg, home of the former Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp.
Welcome to Oranienburg — a picturesque German town and home of former Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp. (Note: it did not actually say this anywhere, that’s just what I pictured the welcome sign would say if there was one.)
As I exited the train at the last stop of the railway, the cool-dry breeze slapped me in the face and welcomed me to the most picturesque town I have visited so far; an eerie situation given the reason I was there. Oranienburg has a single bus and train stop, a McDonald’s, multiple lanes of pastel colored town houses and lots and lots of bicycles and flowers. Almost no one speaks English and people are too busy minding their own business to look at you twice. An ideal town if you ask me. The ten-minute bus ride from the train station to Sachsenhausen was oddly visually appealing. When I stepped out of the bus, however, the energy of the place made a 180-degree flip and somberness walked in.
Silence. Perturbing, thick silence surrounded the place. I arrived filled with curiosity, angst and thirst for first-hand learning about one of the topics, as I already mentioned, that has always interested me the most. I was checking something major off of my bucket list. And then reality hit. This was not about me, or a list or German history. This was an emotional experience that triggered in me a quest for answers pertaining to the delusional reasoning of the human mind and how events like the Holocaust were allowed to happen in the first place, but we will go back to that later.
Two fenced doors with the words Arbeit macht frei, a German phrase meaning “work sets you free,” welcomed us at the entrance of the camp. The realization that I was voluntarily entering through the same doors that hundreds of thousands of men and women were forced through only to be tortured and executed a mere few decades back made my stomach curl. The place could pass as a track field with a couple houses scattered around. Plenty of trees surrounded the perimeter and beautiful lilacs swayed near them. Even in the most somber of places, the flowers bloom and the bees buzz.
The insides of the houses depict the grotesque acts that were committed in them. From beatings to burnings to hangings. There were incredibly small rooms with no sunlight that housed one too many prisoners. There were signs explaining each and every corner of the camp and its happenings. Most of the prisoners there were Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah Witnesses, political prisoners and Jews. For the first time in my life, I smelled death. Not a rotting smell but a pungent, heavy smell of nothing loitered around every inch of Sachsenhausen. This place is not a newfound tourist destination; it is a memorial site. Regardless of what religion you practice or have grown up in (I personally grew up in a conservative Catholic household,) this place will make you reassess several aspects of your life. I cannot remember how long I spent there but I know it was much longer than anticipated. All I know is that my mother said we spent too much time there and that I could have spent more.
…
As I left the camp, I found myself filled with anger. Pure rage, confusion, and disappointment took over me. This experience put me in direct contact with the deepest layer of my own humanity. After years of working on how to separate emotion from research, this shattered it all. All of these emotions were felt towards the human race. How did we reach such level of narcissism that allowed for the Holocaust to happen? Under what reasoning is it justifiable for a race to consider itself superior than another? Mind-blowing, really. (This is the quest for answers I mentioned earlier, by the way.) The capability to inflict pain on others purposely and limitlessly is unique to our species. Humans are merely half a speck in world history yet the damage done to Earth in our total lifespan as a species is astronomical. We ruin things, we mess with the natural order and we are entitled. We are careless of each other, we are careless of other species, environments and ideas. For whatever reason it may be, we seem to follow self-destructive patterns.
We are given free will the moment we are born. We are given the privilege of choice: good vs. evil. The latter is easier than the first, but the first is extraordinarily more rewarding than the latter. We are given the choice to do as we please with our lives and yet there are people who choose to do evil and meddle in other people’s issues. The disposition humans have for cruelty is incomparable. Why? Because resorting to evil (selfishness, egocentrism etc.) is easy. Going out of your way to help others requires a minimum amount of effort that some are simply not willing to put in.
The people of Oranienburg as a whole have chosen good. They choose to paint their walls light pink, to decorate their gardens with bright yellow flowers and to minimize their carbon dioxide emissions by riding their bikes to run local errands. A place that once served as the outskirts of a human oven has been doing their best to humbly rebuild from the shambles. And they have done it. Had I not been there with a map and a purpose I would have never guessed the gruesome history the place holds.
I choose to try my best and to spread that ideology. I choose tranquility, continuous learning, tolerance and compassion. I choose peace of mind and individuality. I choose to mind my own damn business and let others be. I welcome those who share this ideal and I choose to stray away from those who don’t. What do you choose? We are entitled to nothing and were put on this earth to create. To create a life for ourselves and to utilize our free will to the best of our ability. We have a life made out of clay and we are free to mold it to our liking. Other people’s clay is not for us to play with. Do as you may, do as you please. Live and let live.
Thank you, Oranienburg. You were a pleasantly unpleasant surprise.
