Which concentration camp?

Sorry I can't help as haven't been to either of those, but - a book that made a huge impression on me when I was in middle school was called "I am Rosemarie". It is about a young girl who gets sent to Bergen Belsen. I highly recommend it if you end up going there.

All of the camps are horrid and had the same end purpose , the differences between them give each a unique character . Best to read up in the near future , and then make your choice . I have visited three - Dachau , Terezin and Mauthausen .

Kathi,

Either one would be a good choice. I suppose which one to choose might depend on which would be easiest to fit into your Itinerary.

Sachsenhausen is easily accessible from Berlin (about an hour by train to Oranienburg) and it's somewhat unique although it was still a concentration camp. There was originally a "wild camp" there prior to the construction of the concentration camp. Sachsenhausen was built in a triangular formation which theoretically would provide better vision for the guards in the towers. I was told by the guide that the theory on that didn't work out as well in practice. One of the most unique aspects of the camp is that it was the site of one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history, Operation Berhnard.

One other unusual aspect is that several of the prisoners from The Great Escape were incarcerated at Sachsenhausen after they were recaptured, including "Wings" Day, the former POW commander of Stalag Luft III. They also escaped from Sachsenhausen but were recaptured. After the war, the Russians converted the camp to a Gulag and continued incarcerating people there.

I took a tour of Sachsenhausen with Original Berlin Walks and I thought that provided a more interesting view of the history and events that took place there.

One significant fact about Bergen-Belsen is that it's the camp where Anne Frank died.

Logistically, it is easy to get to Sachenhausen from Berlin Hbf. Take the regional train from Berlin Hbf with the terminus of Stralsund. That train stops at Oranienburg where the camp is located. Along with Dachau, Sachsenhausen were the first two set up, one outside of Munich, one outside of Berlin.

For Belsen there is a film made by Lt. Alfred Hitchcock of the British 2nd Army showing the horrors the British encountered when they got to Belsen. That film was locked for years at the Imperial War Museum in London. If you've seen the film, you'll know why.

I have been to both of them twice. They do have a different feel to them, since Bergen-Belsen was burned down after it was liberated, while Sachsenhausen has many original buildings due to the Soviets using it after the war. That said, the exhibits at Bergen-Belsen are extremely well done and you can easily spend hours there.

Another place that is seldom mentioned is Ravensbruck. This is also near Berlin, but was a KZ for women. Have also been here twice, and for me it has a completely different feel to it. The women that were here were often Jehovah Witnesses, Socialists, Communitsts, French resistance women, British spies, as well as Swedish, Belgian, and many Polish women. Prostitutes were sent here too. Many of the women guards learned their "skills" here before being sent to places like Auschwitz. Siemens built a large factory here to utilize the labor of these women.

Now you have 3 places to choose from.

If you have time, try and visit both Bergen-Belsen and either Ravensbruck or Sachsenhausen. You might want to put Track 17 on your list too. I have a Trip Report on here somewhere, from a few years ago with all of these places on it. Will see if I can find it.

We will be near BERGEN-BELSEN and SACHSENHAUSEN

Can you be more specific what you mean by "near"? I assume you will be visiting Berlin so you'll certainly be near Sachsenhausen. Will you also be visiting Celle or some other town near Bergen-Belsen? Or is Berlin the nearest you will get?

To be honest, I think you should simply go by that. I feel that each of these camps is a memorial place in its own right, and I would hesitate to recommend one over the other. Even those camps that do not have many authentic relics left can leave a huge impression just by their empty vastness. Also, many of these camps have completely redone their exhibits and museum sections in recent years, and though I haven't seen the more recent ones, I hear those are also very impressive.

So if I were to recommend anything at all it would be to visit the one you will be nearest to anyway.

I am not saying this for practical reasons only. I feel that when you visit a place, it's going to give you a more comprehensive idea of the place, to see the good and the bad by visiting the great sightseeing places and also those darker sides of the same place.

Or should we tour both?

Now that is something I personally could not do, and - as a very personal opinion - would not recommend to anyone.

I feel that visiting one of those places leaves such a deep impression on me that I couldn't just go on and visit another one. I'd feel like I was turning these horrid places into places to tick off on my sightseeing list. I'd leave other camps to visit for later trips, and just let that one experience stand by itself.

If you are going to visit several Shoah memorial sites, I'd recommend adding sites of a completely different character. Berlin of course has the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which should be on everyone's list. There have been huge debates about this memorial before it was built, and when you see pictures of it you may wonder how this can be a memorial, but I assure you you will feel differently when you walk through it.

Not exactly a Shoah memorial but also highly to be recommended: the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Go to the one that best fits your itinerary. They’re horrible, miserable places so trying to rank them as to which gives a better visitor experience is futile.

I feel the need to address the matter of going to more than one KZ. This is not just "ticking" it off a list and frankly, I take offense that anyone would even post such a rude comment.

All of these places are very different and for anyone who studies history intently or who may have had family members there, they are meaningful places. Visiting more than one does not detract from ones visited earlier.

It is unfair to make judgements about why people are going to a KZ.

I have been to several KZ, 2-3 times and each time I go, I learn something new, I see something I hadn't seen before, I spend more time in exhibits I hadn't had time for before. Each visit is meaningful and I come away with increased sorrow as well as knowledge.
These are not petty visits, they aren't visits to castles or a tourist attraction and I can't imagine anyone thinking they are on that same level of tourist engagement.

This is not just "ticking" it off a list and frankly, I take offense
that anyone would even post such a rude comment.

@Ms Jo: I don't see anything in the least rude about my comment, and if we are talking about taking offense here, I might very well take offense at your calling my comment rude.

I strongly emphasized that this was a very personal feeling, and that this was how I would feel doing that. So what is rude about saying that? Are you saying that I do not have the right to feel the way I do?

I did not comment on anyone else's posts on this, much less "make judgements about why people are going to a KZ".

I was simply replying to the OPs question "Or should we tour both?" by saying how I feel about it. And I do believe that my feeling about this is as legitimate as yours.

And how you can even insinuate that I might think of these visits as "petty visits" like "visits to castles or a tourist attraction" is beyond me. I believe it was quite clear from my post that I am saying exactly the opposite. Why else would I have emphasized that even one of those visits leaves such a strong impression that for me, there is no room for two such visits during one trip?

Wow, thank you all for your input, it was just what I was looking for. I didn’t want to see both if they were the same thing but in different areas. But it sounds like not only did their purposes vary, but what is left of the original site varies as well. I feel that this extremely important piece of history, as horrific as it was, is a must see, not only as a sign of respect to those lost, but to really grasp what occurred that can not be felt from a book. I’m choosing both.

Kathi, If you want to place both camps tentatively in your agenda, you can always remove one. You might find, after visiting one, that just might be enough for this trip as Anna indicates. No schedule is written in stone and until you visit such a place and feel your own emotions, you cannot decide what is best for you. You don't mention how long you will be in Germany so it can't be determined if you will have time to see anything else. I believe Anna's suggestion of other equally important sites is relevant for perhaps a deeper knowledge, and her comments are not rude.

Also in Berlin is the Neue Synagogue, which is especially interesting because the Nazi crowd on Kristallnacht was held back by a local police officer, and its destruction was eventually accidental, by Allied bombing. Not as shocking or poignant, but (as pointed out in the play, "I am My Own Wife") is the little museum in Mahlsdorf founded by a transgender individual who survived both the Nazi and Stasi eras: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_von_Mahlsdorf .

If you are at a camp on a weekday, be sure to note the school busses and students on official trips to the purpose-build education centers on the properties.

Sachsenhausen has a history I didn't know until I visited. When the Soviets "liberated" the camp, they in fact did not liberate the camp. It transferred from a Nazi concentration camp to a Soviet concentration camp. The only liberation involved non Jewish Soviets. The hell hole that was Sachsenhausen CONTINUED to operate under Soviet torture until 1949.

I am not recommending one death camp over another. After seeing Sachsenhausen, I could never travel to another camp.

I have been to Dachau (when I was 8 years old) and Mauthausen when I was 61.

My parents took us there to help us understand history. I was 8, other kids 7, 5, 3, and 1.

In 2011, when visiting Europe with my children (25, 21, 21), we visited Mauthausen, and again this is the lesson of history. It was not a vacation moment to have a party. It was a moment to respectfully honor the dead, and to remember them, as they deserve our remembrance and our honor.

I did not go out of morbid curiosity. I was and remain a normal person. Seeing the camp taught me a little along the "banality of evil" notion - evil took place (I understood death at that age, but not as well as later in life), and we saw the structures, but not the intent or the actions.

I believe that it can be a positive experience to visit a camp. What is not remembered can be repeated, and we do not want that. In Europe, as in every country and continent, there are multiple locations of mass murder, so the camps are not unique. They are the most recent place where the evil ideas of race murder were put into practice.

I don't really agree with some who say that the camps are horrible places. They are places where horrible things took place, true. But the places are not the reason for the horrible events. It is important to remember the persons who did the events, and those who suffered.

Mention was made above of the post-war Soviet use of Sachenhausen. A little less well known is the fact that, post-war, some of the camps were also used as DP camps to house the millions of Germanic people expelled from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary.

"Banality of evil"...that's Hannah Arendt's concept and words. Keep in mind that anything she wrote, ie her books, be it her book "Totalitarianism" or "Anti-Semitism " and articles, are good, scholarly, lucid, competent.

Banality of evil"...that's Hannah Arendt's concept and words.

Absolutely. The camps are the essence of this idea. They take evil, mass death of hated groups, and turn it into a machine process, where the end of mass death can be accomplished by a systematic and well-designed process. This is an important lesson to learn. When death can be accomplished on a mass scale by a cheap process, you can kill a lot of people, and this is the lesson of the camps.