Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Established in April of 1936, Sachsenhausen was not a death camp, although thousands died due to illness, cold, starvation, and abuse, while many more were executed. When the Soviets began approaching the camp in1945, the guards forced over 30,000 prisoners on death marches in an attempt to escape them, leaving only 3,000 prisoners to be liberated by the Soviets.
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Forced MusicForced music-making was one of the most mentally and physically abusive acts against prisoners in Sachsenhausen. They were often forced to sing before, during, and after harsh physical labor, which was actually life threatening due to the extreme conditions they were under. It was an intimidating, frightening, humiliating, and degrading exercise of mental force against the Jews, not to mention the extreme physical effort on the weakened prisoners. Eberhard Schmidt, a surviver from Sachsenhausen, reported that "The SS made singing, like everything else they did, a mockery, a torment for the prisoners ...Anyone who did not know the song was beaten. Anyone who sang too softly was beaten. Anyone who sang too loud was beaten. The SS men lashed out wildly...The SS men always found a reason ... when in the evening we had to drag our dead and murdered comrades back into the camp, we had to sing. Hour after hour we had to, whether in the burning sun, freezing cold, or in snow or rain storms, on the roll call plaza we had to stand and sing of ... the girl with the dark brown eyes, the forest or the wood grouse. Meanwhile the dead and dying comrades lay next to us on a ripped up wool blanket or on the frozen or soggy ground."
There was also a dreadful assignment called "singing horses", where men were tied to wagons, forced to pull them around the camp while singing at the top of there lungs. |