It’s funny—not in the laughable sense, but in a painfully ironic understanding of the word—the way my classmates used to complain about history class. They found its contents boring, wondering why we bother dwelling on the past. Walking through the Sachsenhausen Memorial, I couldn’t help but ponder the quote attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.
Sachsenhausen Memorial is located just outside Berlin—a trip which took about an hour and a half by bus. The site, now dedicated to commemorating its victims and educating visitors on Germany’s harrowing past, was once a concentration camp in which 200,000 people were imprisoned. Recognizable by its triangular design, the camp was built to exert authoritarian control from the beginning.
I think the element of the tour that rattled me the most was the familiarity of its contents. Geographically, Sachsenhausen stood in close proximity to civilian life. Members of the town directly benefitted from the free labor of imprisoned people. They were given clear indications of the brutalities taking place. But it was in their best interest to do nothing.
Recently, the Miami Herald reported that two-thirds of those imprisoned in “Alligator Alcatraz” have vanished from ICE records; hundreds of individuals cannot be found by their families. Yet, where is the outrage? The panic? More than half of US voters prioritized their personal interests over the wellbeing of entire groups of people. Facism doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It slowly encroaches onto our lives each time we choose to ignore reality; each time we defend hatred in the name of convenience.
During the tour, our guide emphasized the importance of elevating the stories of Holocaust victims, but also of holding the perpetrators accountable. Jewish people, Roma people, queer people, racial minorities, and disabled people did not simply pass away. They were murdered by Nazis. And the civilians who sat back and did nothing—they weren’t innocent either. We must acknowledge the source of atrocities in order to avoid reproducing history. And we also must recognize the complicity of the silent in feeding the monster.
I was struck by the way knowledge is suppressed and hierarchies mirrored in our modern understanding of history. Often when we think of the Holocaust, we forget that its victims were diverse. For instance, I was not aware of the category ‘asocial’, which encompassed a broad range of victims, including people struggling with substance abuse, the houseless, and pacifists.
Further, I learned that hierarchies existed even within concentration camps, meaning that some people may have had less opportunities to share their experiences given their heightened risk of death. I was thus reminded of the need to capture the full range of lived experiences when documenting historical events, especially in my own research-related pursuits. Our tour concluded around 7pm. Sitting on the bus, watching the slow onset of the night, it was difficult to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the darkness—more in the figurative sense than anything. I struggle to fathom the human capacity for such horrific evil. Yet, at the same time, I find it easier to grasp how the events of the Holocaust unfolded than ever before. As a child, I was unable to comprehend how hatred could have taken hold so firmly within a nation. Now, however, I watch as an eerily similar disdain for human life grips my extended family, former friends, classmates, and neighbors. I feel frozen in shock as they scapegoat immigrants, queer people, and racial minorities for their everyday problems. I always wondered what I would have done if I found myself in 1930s/40s Germany. Would I have resisted or would I have stood idly by as the world collapsed? And now suddenly here I am.
