You make beautiful things out of the dust, You make beautiful things out of us.

8/31

 Sachsemsenhausen

Going to the concentration camp was an interesting experience. I had all these expectations going in… that it would be so overwhelming and heartbreaking, everything that you hear about in the movies and seems to make sense in reaction to such a tramatic event. But the reality was that it was thought provoking more than anything else.

Barracks where the prisoners lived. 

SS tower in front of the role call lines. 

Gabe lecturing a bunch of students who are clinging onto every word he says... when is the last time you saw that happen? :)

Entrance to the camp.

After having class in one of the room that was located in the central planning station of the SS, we went into the camp of the Nazis. Gabe lined us up at the front under the guard tower and explained that the camp was strategically designed for the SS to be able to have maximum control, with minimal officers. So every place in the camp was in sight of one of three towers, in a triangle around the perimeter. We were side by side and staring in front as Gabe explained that every prisoner had a number, and in the morning, and in the evening, they would line up and count off. They could be there anywhere from an hour to 18, and if someone had run away, it was likely that another prisoner would be dead by the time the runner was found because of the cold and their fragile health. And I say found because no one permanently escaped Sachsemsenhausen over the entire war.

Space in-between where the barracks that held the prisoners that were being held in solitary confinement, next to where they hanged prisoners on a regular basis. 

We moved over to the Barracks where Gabe told us the stories that shaped the experience for me as thought provoking. He told us the stories of the SS soldiers who were brainwashed into the Nazi mentality. They were told the prisoner’s were another speices… not just of another culture. That they were inferior. That the first World War had been lost as a result of their betrayl, and that in order for Germany to survive for future generations, they needed to be controlled and disposed of.

It’s sick, but its real. They didn’t necessarily know what they were doing on a large scale. They were being told that the security and fate of their families and nation were dependent on this role.

It doesn’t make what they did disappear, but isn’t that the same story we tell our soldiers? Isn’t the murder and violence that we contribute to because we believe our ideals to be superior. We don’t like that Islam keeps such strict control on their women, that their faith is prioritized over our ideals, and that they are all out to get us. We make ourselves the good guys because were defending what we believe to be good.

Nazi’s were not good. Their agenda, message, and goals were not good. But if I was in Germany, as a teenager, a few decades ago, would I have known the difference?

Lock inclosing the prisoners who had their own cell. Today, there are memorials for many of the victims who once lived there in each of the cells. 

Gabe also shared with us the stories of redemption in the camp. The stories of joy of the prisoners and the manner in which they created families and came alongside one another. The teacher that continued to school a barrack of young men, the plays and comedy shows that the prisoners would put on, the comfort that they sought in one another. Their situation was aweful; but their attitudes were able to escape that on so many occasions and they found JOY in this horrific place. It was actually the story of the Holocaust that lead him to faith. He's 36, and grew up with a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. After being confirmed in the Church of England at 14, he dismissed the church as his mother's faith and set out to his intellectual aspirations, which lead him to fall in love with WWII and the story of the Holocaust. He had a self-described obsession with it and moved to Berlin at 24 to learn absolutely everything he could about the story and talk to anyone he could find about their experience. And, after interviewing survivors, SS members, and everyone else he could track down, he was led to Christ through the story of the Holocaust. Every road he tried to take to lead him somewhere intellectually brought him back to faith. 

He told another story of a man who had served as an officer of the SS. In the aftermath of the war, he became a Christian, and his was one of the stories that brought Gabe back to Christianity. Gabe realized that the brainwashing by the Nazi's was possible because of the voids left from a lack of faith. It was, in so many ways the religion of a people who were trying to fill a void that was never going to be filled by anything but Christ.