And Outside The Rain Fell...

Life seems good. Europe, brilliant. Berlin again, awesome. Getting a free tram in Leipzig, super.

Early morning deep sleep in the train, breakfast on the platform, a walk to the metro, connecting train transits in under a minute, and idyllic walks in villages so small, they wouldn't be larger than a street in India. German Shepherds and Alsatians, staring out at curious visitors(and as Tards and I observed, barking at Patwa), trees in multiple colours, leaves everywhere, little houses with their chimneys bellowing out smoke, little gardens with huge kennels overlooking the houses, zero traffic and long boulevards.

Scenic, eh?

Not so much for the 200,000 people who once lived here.

Starvation, subzeros, Gas chambers, Extermination camps, overfilled bunkers, torturous labour camps, burial grounds, the putrid smell of death everywhere, execution trenches and mass graves, Station Z, Turreted gun towers, an Iron Gustav who burst into orgies of violence at will, humiliation, disease and the cold. Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was pure hell then.

Located very close to Berlin, the Imperial Capital, at Oranienburg, this first meticulously "planned" concentration camp was a key site in the persecution of political oppositions initially, slowly evolving into genocidal crypts where the Nazis exterminated those they considered to be racially inferior. Over time, as the war ended, the camp continued to be used for the same purposes as it did earlier, this time the Soviet Special Camp for the undesirables.

It was difficult not to imagine all the deaths and suffering thousands went through on the same grounds that I now stood, shivering in the mid October cold. December was already unimaginable, even with clothing that was manufactured for sub freezing temperatures. How prisoners here survived the cold then in little more than a cloth wrapped around their bodies was frightfully unimaginable.

Sachsenhausen eventually involved into this mighty "model" concentration camp on which later camps were modelled, with its famous invested triangle structure to achieve its objectives. The SS played out its propaganda here with little mercy, killing at will, sadistically torturing the many thousands of inhabitants. Merciless. As I walked along alone in the camp, listening along on the audio guide, the stories of the survivors sent chills down my spine. The cold and the rain notwithstanding, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for the hardships many thousands before me had gone through here. What made men like this, one thought that echoed through my mind time and again. The brutality of the war, made immemorial through hundreds of movies, was far far more inhuman in real life, from so close and from the centre of it all.

There's little to describe what I saw and felt, All I feel is this is one place everyone needs visiting someday, and spending time at it.

Out of here, we went on a shopping spree at LIDL, now armed with chocolate spreads, grape jam, ketchup, chilli sauce, garlic paste, cheese, bread, cakes, waffle chocolates and milk. We realized it was Diwali, and a feast was due. Cold, but hell, yummy. Train journeys, many laughs, a one hour dinner in a cosy cabin in a fabulously extravagant train, we ate sandwiches with "cheers" and "Happy Diwali's" going through and through as we satisfied our taste buds. Damn. It almost felt sinful. I missed being back home, back at Ahmedabad, but barring that, this was closest to where it came.

Now sleeping all stretched in a cabin, a German opposite me who seems to be enjoying the beer and listening to heavy metal in a high volume. Life is great. And peace to those who were once at Sachsenhausen.