KIRSTEN: I could not help but imagine

This past Sunday we took a sobering trip to Weimar, which is the Kulturhauptstadt (culture capital) of Germany. But instead of seeing everything the city had to offer, we hopped on a bus, rode up to the middle of the forest to Buchenwald, a concentration camp located on the Ettersberg. Getting on the train this day, we knew it would not be spent in our usual, happy manner. Once we got off the train in Weimar, we got onto a bus that took us up the mountain to where the camp was located. Walking into the camp had an eerie feeling, the birds were singing, the grass was so green and there was a beautiful view of the city below. It was so hard to believe that once this place was full of death and sickness, but yet had such beautiful scenery.

Because the barracks had been so poorly built and filled with disease, there weren’t any that we were there, but the foundations of where the barracks had been were there. It was weird to be standing and walking where I knew so many people had been forced to work, were killed or died of starvation or sickness. One of the places in the camp that hit hard was the Children’s Block 66.

But the place that was the most nauseating and moving was the crematorium. The tall chimney coming from the building quickly told us what it was as we walked through the gate for the first time. It was the last building that I went into, and for good reason too, but it was the most horrific spot in the camp.

Walking in and seeing the ovens, I almost wanted to turn around, walk out and see nothing more of it. As we walked out of the room with the ovens, we found the way down into the corpse cellar, where there were forty-two (I think) hooks located near the ceiling. These hooks were used to strangle over one thousand prisoners in the camp.

After leaving the crematorium, I decided that I could not stand to be inside the camp anymore and decided to go the Kino in which we would be able to see a short film about the camp. As we walked through the gate the first time, I did not notice the saying that was on the gate, and took a picture as I was trying to walk out. A man that was a couple feet ahead of me shut the gate and explained to someone near him that he wanted a picture. As he did this, I could not help but imagine I was a prisoner in the camp, seeing that gate close, knowing that I may never come out of there, as well as what the survivors could have possibly been thinking as they walked out of the gate, and left the place that would forever be a horrific part of their lives.