Dispute over the Sachsenhausen Memorial: Between the culture of remembrance and the noise of the bus

It is the path that the prisoners had to take to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The visitor buses now drive along here. For some it is a conscious culture of remembrance, for others it is disturbed by bus noise and exhaust fumes.

A gray paved path leads from Hans-von-Dohnanyi-Strasse in the Sachsenhausen district of Oranienburg to the memorial for the former concentration camp – past residential buildings where SS officers lived during the Second World War. This is where the National Socialists drove tens of thousands of prisoners into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp – right through Oranienburg.

“The concentration camps were not located somewhere on wasteland or somewhere on the moon, but were really part of the urban social structure,” explains Axel Drecoll, director of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation. “This shows how closely everyday life and crime were actually intertwined under National Socialism.”

The way of the visitors – the way of the prisoners

More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp by 1945, and the SS murdered thousands in Sachsenhausen. In the fall of 1941 alone, a Soviet prisoner of war was shot in the neck every three minutes on average – in a specially built facility.

“It was visible and you had to relate to it in some way,” says historian Drecoll, who also directs the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. “Because even looking away is a form of behavior.” In order to bring visitors closer to the atrocities today, the path deliberately leads them from the west through Oranienburg to the memorial.

Bus noise and exhaust fumes

Oranienburgers live in the houses of the former SS officers right next to the memorial, who have lived there for decades. Most have gotten used to the fact that up to 700,000 visitors flock here each year, bringing money to the region.

Around a quarter of visitors arrive by bus. There has been resistance to this in neighboring streets for years. “Each bus only needs half an hour after arrival and departure – and that’s not a lot – to let the engine run,” says the spokeswoman for the residents’ initiative “Sachsenhausen Memorial – Commemoration in Harmony with Life”, Waltraut Krienke. “Then have we hear bus noise all day long. It is unbearable and of course the exhaust fumes. If the wind comes from the east, we have the exhaust fumes in the garden.”

Residents want to move bus parking

The residents are demanding that the bus parking lot be relocated, for example to the other side of the memorial – away from the prisoners’ route through the city, past the tax office or on a wasteland. Relatives of the victims of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp therefore accuse the city of wanting to get rid of its historical heritage.

After the Second World War, the Soviet secret service NKVD interned around 60,000 opponents in the camp before it became a national memorial in the GDR in 1961.

Mayor sees legitimate dispute

“The memorial is an integral part of the city of Oranienburg and is very important to us. It is part of our personality and we cultivate a culture of remembrance,” emphasizes the mayor of the city of Oranienburg, Alexander Laesicke.

But it is difficult because the dispute is justified. “There is visitor traffic, which is developing relatively well. Well, there will be more visitors,” says the non-party politician. “But that also means that the residents are increasingly burdened, and that’s why we have to reorganize the routing a bit. But here we are again dealing with historically sensitive places.”

compromise in sight

The main committee of the city of Oranienburg now recommends expanding the existing long-distance bus parking lot a few hundred meters away and only letting visitors out here. The buses should park on the eastern side of the memorial.

Not all residents are convinced, because the buses will continue to drive through the residential area. But a citizens’ initiative supports the compromise. “We can live with that very well, because it’s also relaxing for all visitors,” says Guido Illgen, who grew up in one of the former SS officers’ houses and is involved in the “Initiative Residents Memorial Oranienburg”. It is crucial that the coach traffic “really gets out” of the residential area.

City councilors want to decide on plans

It is important for the relatives of the victims and the memorial that visitors still have to go through the city to enter the former concentration camp. “We want to show how it was possible or under what parameters it was humanly possible for people to integrate such mass crimes as they happened here into their everyday urban life,” explains Drecoll. A stone’s throw away, tens of thousands of people died brutally.

Next Monday, the city councilors in Oranienburg want to decide whether the plans for long-distance buses in Sachsenhausen will be implemented. The relatives of the victims hope that after years of smoldering dispute everyone will follow this path.