In all honesty I had no idea on what I should have expected for today. All that I knew was that we would be going on an excursion to Ravensbruck, the site of a concentration camp for women and children during the Holocaust. For most of us, this was our first time entering and physically being on the grounds of a former concentration camp. I think that it is safe to say that we all knew that it would be a pretty heavy and draining day.
Once arriving at Ravensbruck I was personally surprised to see that so little of the camp remained from that of its original form 70 years ago. This resulted in massive amounts of empty space around the camp, which made me personally feel very small and alone. There were many old buildings with paint peeling off, faded floors and walls that gave a very eerie and unsettling aura. The most chilling part of today’s experience was entering the crematorium at Ravensbruck. As soon as I entered this building I felt sick to my stomach and a lump formed in my throat. There were three ovens inside the crematorium with two chimneys. It felt so wrong to be in a room where the Nazis had burned the bodies of prisoners. Inside the crematorium people had left flowers, peace symbols and other small memorials as signs of respect for the victims of the camp. Once I had left this building I walked out to see a beautiful lake and gardens full of flowers; a stark contrast to what we had all just witnessed.
The peaceful surroundings made it even harder for me to wrap my head around the horrors that had occurred. Directly across the lake sits a quaint German town, whose residents claimed at the time to not know about the inhumane acts going on at the camp. For this reason it is our responsibility as the next generation to bear witness to these horrors so the stories of survivors will never be forgotten. Hopefully, once we all return back home to Canada we will take action in our own lives, so then we can prevent tragic events like the Holocaust from ever happening again.
~ Hannah K.
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| The view from the prisoners' entrance to Ravensbruck. |
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| Indentations in the ground represent the barracks that were there 70 years ago. |
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| This haunting sculpture is part of a series memorializing different victim groups at Ravensbruck. |
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| "Burdened Woman" This massive sculpture looks out over the lake separating the camp from a small town. |
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