First day
After about two hours our train stopped. “Hinaus!” yelled armed to the teeth the policeman who was opening doors to our cages. We scrambled out with difficulty since our legs became restless from the inability to stretch out in the train compartments for so long. The station’s main building loomed an inscription “Fűrstenberg, Mecklenburg .” Two women were standing on a platform in snow, in grey uniforms with ‘Totenkopf ‘on forage caps with police dogs on leash. They ordered us to form ranks of five and walked us to-and-fro on the platform.
I took a breath, filled my lungs with fresh country air, and looked for the first time at the flat and sad Mecklenburg landscape. A prison truck, which had taken the first group, returned for us shortly. After uploading, our journey took about ten minutes; then, we were ordered to get off and form ranks of five. We were standing on a vast square or courtyard surrounded by low, wooden barracks of gray-green colour. All buildings looked alike, but one, where we were waiting nearby, was more prominent, taller and made of bricks. On the square, women were walking by, wearing drab uniformed clothes like the buildings’ vision. They wore grey, dark blue striped overcoats covering striped dresses. On heads, they wore brown scarves tied up under chins.
At the first moment, the most striking thing was the great horror of all the surroundings – hideous proportions of the colourless barracks. Beyond the courtyard, I saw a street along which long rows of the same barracks were visible on both sides. The strange structures looked like the women’s outfits. At the early January’s dusk, in the background of dirty snow covering the earth, it made a sad impression contradicting all that was ever beautiful.
Rollcall
The skies became pinkish on the right. “So, it is East, over there was my country,” – I thought to myself. We were still standing. I started looking around. On the left, between two blocks, I saw a stretch of the high wall, and on it and above it, the long rows (there were 26 of them) of barb wires. Spaced whitish porcelain insulators betrayed high voltage current getting through the barb wires. Beyond the wall lurked a piece of “landscape”; pale yellowish sandy precipice and on it a couple of skinny pine trees. Yet, we were still standing. It was getting cold, but it did not bother me.
Different thoughts started nagging me, or rather nagging thoughts were getting more on intensity. “Bach… Dürer… Hölderlin… Beethoven, all of them lived and created and indeed they were Germans. The World of culture without them would not be the same….” I was thinking about German science to which I owe so much…yet now the same German people – by their existence – disgrace humanity to which they belong. Who will be accountable in the future for things which take place here? Still, nobody would ever be able to say that what happened here was just because few criminals were in power.
They are not few; they are legions… legions… how many of them were needed to invent, set up and manage just one Ravensbrűck camp…Yet, we all know that Ravensbrück belonged to “better” and smaller concentration camps, and how many Krűgers, men and women run this one place, not mentioning those millions of passive Germans who being indifferent, not only enable but support those invisible to them crimes.
One day they say that “they didn’t know,” and it will be partially true. “They do not know” because they do not want to know. They believe blindly in victory from which they enjoy spoils ruthlessly and without limits. So, they prefer not to know by what means their victory will be achieved. Here, lay causes of Germany’s moral catastrophe. The World’s attitude should not be governed by feelings of revenge or hatred. The reason for nationalism must not be considered here, but protecting humanity against such catastrophes must prevail, so Christian civilization will not perish.