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Moments of what we call history and moments of what we call memory

Marian Stefanowski, Tower “A” – Entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 14 November 2019

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  • Tower “A” – Entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp - Marian Stefanowski, Tower “A” – Entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 14 November 2019
  • Panorama of the concentration camp - Marian Stefanowski, Panorama of the concentration camp, View from the entrance, Tower “A”. Left: Muster ground I, Right: Muster ground II, 12 August 2018.
  • Muster ground I - Marian Stefanowski, Muster ground I, 12 August 2018
  • Area with outlines of barracks - Marian Stefanowski, Area with outlines of barracks, 14 November 2019
  • Area with outlines of barracks - Marian Stefanowski, Area with outlines of barracks, 14 November 2019
  • Barracks 39 and 38 – Concentration Camp Museum - Marian Stefanowski, Barracks 39 and 38 – Concentration Camp Museum, 14 November 2019
  • Barrack 38 – Dormitory for 250 prisoners - Marian Stefanowski, Barrack 38 – Dormitory for 250 prisoners, 14 November 2019
  • Barrack 38 – Washroom - Marian Stefanowski, Barrack 38 – Washroom, 12 August 2018
  • Barrack 38 – “Toilets” - Marian Stefanowski, Barrack 38 – “Toilets”, 12 August 2018
  • Electric fence - Marin Stefanowski, Electric fence, 14 November 2019
  • Execution trenches - Marian Stefanowski, Execution trenches – commemorative plaque – to the first mass murder of 33 Poles on 9 November 1940, 14 November 2019
  • Execution trenches - Marian Stefanowski, Execution trenches – looking towards the crematorium, 12 August 2018
  • Crematorium – bronze sculpture by Waldemar Grzimek - Marin Stefanowski, Crematorium – bronze sculpture by Waldemar Grzimek, 14 November 2019
  • Remains of the crematorium - Marian Stefanowski, Remains of the crematorium after the explosions 1952 and 1953, 12 August 2018
  • Concentration camp grounds looking towards the infirmaries - Marian Stefanowski, Concentration camp grounds looking towards the infirmaries, 12 August 2018
  • Medicine and crime - Marian Stefanowski, Medicine and crime. The sick bay at Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936-1945, 12 August 2018
  • Medicine and crime - Marian Stefanowski, Medicine and crime. The sick bay at Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936-1945 – pathology, 12 August 2018
  • Cell construction - Marian Stefanowski,  Cell construction – a mysterious place of gruesome abuse and murder, 4 November 2019
  • Cell construction - Marian Stefanowski,  Cell construction – a mysterious place of gruesome abuse and murder, 14 November 2019
  • Memorial to the memory of the Polish General Stefan Rowecki “GROT” - Marian Stefanowski, Memorial to the memory of the Polish General Stefan Rowecki “GROT”, murdered 1944, 14 November 2019
  • One of the places housing the ashes of those murdered in the concentration camp - Marian Stefanowski, One of the places housing the ashes of those murdered in the concentration camp, 14 November 2019
  • Burial ground with the ashes of those murdered in the concentration camp - Marian Stefanowski, Burial ground with the ashes of those murdered in the concentration camp; commemorative plaques for the 183 Polish professors arrested in Kraków on 6 November 1939 and dragged to the concentration camp, 14 November 2019
  • Commemorative plaques - Marian Stefanowski, Commemorative plaques for the 183 Polish professors arrested in Kraków on 6 November 1939 and dragged to the concentration camp, 12/08/2018
  • Watch tower "E" - Marian Stefanowski, Watch tower "E", next to which is the entrance to the special camp / Zone II, 14 November 2019
  • Concentration camp special camp/Zone II - Marian Stefanowski, Concentration camp special camp/Zone II, 1945-1950 Soviet special camp No. 7, 14 November 2019
  • Central memorial to the murdered prisoners - Marin Stefanowski, Central memorial to the murdered prisoners, 14 November 2019
  • Mass grave for the concentration camp victims - Marian Stefanowski, Mass grave for the concentration camp victims, 12 August 2018
Entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Marian Stefanowski, Tower “A” – Entrance to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 14 November 2019

Who were they? What motivated them to commit their acts? What did they want to achieve? With what value system did they intend to rationalise their acts? Such a memory, which does not excuse anything but just does not want to accept moral judgements that are as plausible as they are simple, and instead endeavours to see in the perpetrators people like us who are subjected to the same psycho-social mechanisms, can provoke internal resistance. However, it does offer the opportunity to understand the events and thus to give us a kind of awareness, that is, in a sense a cognitive and moral filter which allows us to truly recognise the dangers in our own, familiar and all too obvious world. This conviction results from the fact that, in order for a system of repression to develop, which manifests itself in the opposition of victim and perpetrator, the attitude and the acts of the perpetrator is of uppermost, yes even of constitutive significance. Usually, the victim does not choose his role himself: The victim is chosen. Therefore, the fact that the framework of the situation is determined by another, dramatically restricts the victim’s freedom of action. I am not even thinking here of the camp sadists who simply enjoyed the violence they asserted. They are the last link in a long chain. I am much more interested in the chronologically and above all logically earlier phase: What systematic ideas relating to the organisation of a society, what views of humanity, what conceptual frameworks were able to cause this issue? What justifications, what rationalisations, what defence mechanisms? Don’t some people still find concepts to protect society from dangers to its cultural, ethnic and religious cohesion or to its identity constructs ostensibly rational?!  Doesn’t the same apply to demands to intervene in a corrective manner when antisocial elements breach general norms and standards? Or resocialise the edges of society however they are defined? And what about repressive measures as an educational method at every level of society? And what is the situation with hierarchies and with discipline as undisputed values and links for human groups? Can the instrumentalisation of third parties be discounted as a human resource for enforcing values which favour a group?  Or the subordination of the right of the individual to a self-determined life, starting with the defining of permitted life choices right up to the literal right to survive that should be dependent upon the fulfilment of arbitrarily defined criteria? All these clichéd concepts, these banal manifestations of everyday dominance and violence can be defended to a certain extent. Or at any rate they find people to defend them. They do not have to end in totalitarian horror, but they can do. And what is more, they are the humus upon which the horror is developed. So where is the line?