Work Makes You Free.
These are the words inscribed on the gate entering the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. However, as the 30,000 prisoners who died of exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease in the camp realized, the only path to that freedom was "through the chimney."
Our visit to the memorial site of the former concentration camp was both moving and educational. We saw the barracks in which too many people crammed in to sleep, the death strip where if a prisoner stepped inside any guard could freely shoot him, the track on which prisoners were forced to run through sand, gravel, and mud for 25-40 kilometers per day in order to test the durability of Nazi boots, the infirmary where brutal experiments and dissections were conducted on prisoners, including children, the execution trench where prisoners were shot or hung, and the crematorium where thousands of human remains were burned.
The movie The Counterfeiters is based on the true story of the counterfeiting operation that took place inside of Sachsenhausen. Artisan prisoners were forced to replicate both the British pound and the American dollar knowing that when they finished their job they would be executed. The Nazis planned to use this fake currency to collapse the British and American economies.
Today, the camp has been turned into a memorial so that the people who were tortured and killed there may be remembered. And although children too young to understand its history may now laugh and play there, Sachsenhausen maintains an aura of sadness, respect, and regret. Only now are its victims truly free.
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