Something new

A few years ago I visited Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz 1 and 2. We arrived in Germany one morning and continued the busride towards the camp. The camp of Bergen-Belsen we were told was originally a Stalag, or prisoner of war camp, until 1943 when it was turned into a concentration camp.
The area itself was covered by memorials to the countless people who lost their lives in the camp. Despite the staggering amounts of people who lost their lives in the camp, it was not actually a "Death camp" like Sobibor, Treblinka and the camp I was going to see later on. As we arrived and stepped out of the bus I noticed the cold and gusty weather, quite suitable for the location I thought considering its history.

Where the camp stood there is a museum and memorials today, no trace of what was once here can be seen, apart from a few suspicious land formations where the camp used to be. When the camp was liberated it was the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in modern history according to the British who liberated it. Roughly 55000 prisoners in various stages of emancipation and decay, walking, laying, sitting and eating in filth, most wearing only flimsy rags, some naked.
The bodies of prisoners that had died, some only hours and minutes before the liberation lay around the whole camp, some of them stacked in piles and others lay across the grounds where the poor soul had fallen.

After being allowed time to walk around the exhibit and take a look at the pictures taken at the time of liberation and the humanitarian aid to the British. Reading the testimonies about what went on there, which I'd mostly read before. It was a new experience to be this close to where it all happened though. It was a bit surreal as the sun came up and a rainbow stretched across what had once been the apellplatz where so many people had stood and wondered if that day would be their last, if an SS man would just pull them out of line and have them murdered, for no other reason than that they could.

When the camp was liberated by British and Canadian troops most inmates were so starved that they couldn't eat the regular rations the troops had as their digestive systems couldn't handle the heavy food after long term starvation. The result being that they died due to the heavy food and overconsumption of nutrients. They then tried skimmed milk, which was better then finally famine mixture.

A guide showed my group into the little cinema in the museum and we got to see the famous video from the camp. Including bodies being buried and tanks with mounted flamethrowers incinerating the camp. The 50 or so people sat there in complete silence as the movie played, and as the lights came on I looked across the faces of my classmates, the few other people there and the guides.

My eyes got stuck on this little Chinese girl in my class, the arms of one of her friends wrapped around her as tears slowly ran down her face. She shivered in her arms, the image of something fragile and I felt this strange feeling of emptiness, because I felt nothing. Was it that due to my interest in the subject of concentration camps? was it that I had seen this footage before? Could it be that a lifetime of violent games and TV had desensitized me? Or was it that I'm just cold?

To be continued.