Menu toggle
Navigation

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

Mediathek Sorted

Media library
  • 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

Why do people come here? What are they looking for? What do they take away with them? Perhaps a lasting impression? Theoretical knowledge? Deep-rooted experiences? Perhaps a feeling of guilt? A feeling of injustice? But what guilt or what injustice are we referring to here if they were not involved in the past horrors of this place? Do they then take anything lasting with them at all? We just do not know... And still they come here. The visitor statistics are impressive, as are the ratings on the travel portals. On Google Maps the average rating is 4.6 out of 5 stars, on Trip Advisor 4.8 out of 5, with the number of reviews stretching into the thousands. Added to this are hundreds of comments, but they do not provide any answers either. They always show the same phrases repeated like a mantra: a moving, deeply moving, painful experience... So it is a hard emotional experience.

These difficult feelings are probably the result of being confronted with the objects in the exhibition and with the explanations provided by the exhibition guides, whose competence and profound knowledge are underlined by the visitors, who then seamlessly move on to the practical information about suitable clothing and footwear, umbrellas and provisions. Their conclusion is generally one of sympathy for the place which is well worth a visit, or more precisely, which you simply have to have seen. But why? To experience some part of the difficult processing? No, it is alien to me to ignore experiences and emotions but … in the space which was captured objectively by the photographer, it is not quite so obvious. As I already mentioned, the observer needs a certain amount of prior knowledge and a lot of imagination. But sometimes he comes to the following banal conclusion: “This place shows how thin the layer of civilisation is that covers the primitive basic instincts of mankind”. This does sound a little better but the sceptic in me still has doubts: Is this supposed to be the conclusion that we are to draw about this place? What would the consequences of this then be? Defence of civilisation? It then begs the question what we actually want to defend? With what means? Against whom? Definitely against the world of basic instincts. And where is this world supposed to be? In us or in others? And if it is in others, what criterion of otherness is supposed to apply here? After all, even the Nazis defended civilisation, in the way that they understood it, and they defended it before those they considered to be a danger to them by using whatever means they considered necessary. Today there is consensus that in all these three points, they started with false assumptions, then got caught up in internal contradictions and threw themselves into crime. So just where do the boundaries of acceptable new interpretations lie? And how are we supposed to know that our new insights would be less wrong and would not lead us into crime or to abuse at least? And last but not least: Does the memory of the camp experiences that we create have any influence on the metonymy of a totalitarian system with all its consequences?

For me, the memory I write about is a dynamic complex made up of perceptions of the past whose role it is to organise current and past experience into something living and significant. I also write about the constructed memory because the perceptions of the past, which are based on sources and reports that are filtered and interpreted based on knowledge acquired at an earlier date, and the human’s value system that deals with these are not authentic and, what’s more, are unable to be authentic. Sachsenhausen extermination camp as a typical source of historical understanding can, without doubt, provoke various interpretations and defer to alternative forms of remembrance which allow various conclusions, positions and sensibilities. With a lack of reliable data, at this juncture I can only outline the possible motives schematically.

Primarily we have the tribal memory which is organised around collective reified categories which are, in turn, broken down into simple oppositions and logics of symbolic identities.