'Remembrance has no expiration date' at Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück

[Surya Gayatri]

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was among dignitaries marking 70 years since the liberation of the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp, saying remembrance must endure after survivors pass on.

At the camp north of Berlin, liberated on April 22 and 23 of 1945, Steinmeier alluded to the site itself standing "for the monstrosity of a regime which institutionalized horror." The Social Democrat foreign minister pointed out how the camp - the first to be designed by the Nazis for purpose - was planned "with the best architecture for the completion of barbaric goals."

The triangular design of the facility was supposed to ensure both that the site could be expanded without difficulty, and that the minimum number of guards could patrol the site. Its layout allowed a single machine-gunner a line of sight on the 68 prisoner barracks, arranged in a semi-circular layout in front of Watchtower A.



Nazi efforts to empty the Sachsenhausen camp began in the early hours of April 21, 1945, with the Soviet Red Army and Polish fighters just a few kilometers away from the site. The vast majority of the remaining inmates were marched out of the detention center in groups of around 500 at a time. Only the first groups received modest provisions with which to trek between 20 and 40 kilometers (12.5 and 25 miles) per day. Many either died of exhaustion or were shot on the so-called "death marches." Inmates already in poor health or seriously wounded were left behind.

http://www.dw.de/remembrance-has-no-expiration-date-at-sachsenhausen-ravensbr%C3%BCck/a-18392845

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NEVER FORGET.

This is a very charged historical moment. So many anniversaries coming up--exactly 70 years on from 1945.

VE DAY (May 8th, 1945) will soon be here.