By Luqmaan Bamba
Balance of memory. The politics of remembrance. The singularity of nazism.
These were my novel takeaways from this afternoon’s tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg.
On the balance of memory
Our guide noted that this camp imprisoned and killed Jews, but in the early days of the camp the focus was political dissidents, including communists and anti-Nazi activists. Another challenge of remembering came after the camp was liberated, when it fell under Soviet control and they began targeting anti-Soviet dissidents. In the 1960s, when memorialization started, there was tension among survivors. Which victims should be recognized? To whom should the center be dedicated? If multiple victims are recognized, then to what degree and in what fashion should each be memorialized? The layperson thinking about mid-20th-century events doesn’t typically think about how society grapples with its past. Before this tour, I was included among these people.
On the politics of remembrance
One case in point: a police academy on the grounds of sites where the police once collaborated with the Gestapo. The memorial center wanted to narrow its focus to prisoners and manage its priorities and impact. In the 1990s, some of the land surrounding the memorial was handed over to the city, and the local police department decided to build there. A sign facing the camp explains the history of the site. They want to deliberately train officers here so that every day they are reminded of what they shouldn’t be – the dark period in history when law enforcement became the enforcement of terror and torture.
The police building is an example of the complex questions innate to memory culture. Is it better to destroy buildings, or to preserve and contextualize them? Should memorials physically reconstruct history, or do they risk trivializing places and signaling false authenticity? All answers are riddled with paradoxes. One building, for example, serving as a game center for the SS, has been preserved, but both the memorial and the police academy want nothing to do with a site that represents casual recreation amidst the most brutal tragedies.
On the singularity of Nazism
A visit to Sachsenhausen raises questions. How could they do it? How did they rationalize and justify it? For the Nazis, these camps had “value” in that they helped entrench political control and hegemony by imprisoning political opponents, dissidents, and citizens. Slave labor was a solution for German companies, like BMW and Siemens, who were losing workers to the German military.
But the murder of Jews with the aim of extermination raises even harder questions. It is a unique horror.
