Hello dear reader,

Do you remember my Instagram Stories and pictures from Berlin? Yes, exactly, somewhere in August this year, I visited this city filled with history. On top of that, I went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, 30 minutes outside Berlin, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May 1945.

By now, you are probably wondering what the correlation between the title and that trip is. This is my first visit to a concentration camp, and I want to one day be brave enough to go to Auschwitz, but knowing the horrors of humanity and after visiting Sachsenhausen camp, I am a bit reluctant, at least for now.

I know I have chosen to go to the concentration camp, and I did it of my own free will compared to all those people 80 years ago. Even though I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, I wanted to see with my own eyes, to learn more about the European history and to pay respects to all those people that didn’t leave that horrible place alive.

While walking the same entrance as the prisoners, reading all the information displayed, I couldn’t stop feeling incredibly sad and depressed. I kept thinking about all those that had to walk around these walls marching to their death, and I imagined the horror feeling the children had to have, not knowing what will happen or the fear around them once they were taken away from their parents.

I remembered all the history classes I took and how terrible everything seemed back then, but seeing with my own eyes was just unbelievable.

This Was All Too Much

While I was almost in tears, I couldn’t help but notice people happily taking smiley selfies in front of the morgue, where hundreds and thousands lost their lives.

On top of this, I saw a wall full of names, and initially, I thought it must be from the people imprisoned here, and I headed there to have a closer look to see if I can see any familiar names. But, I was so wrong, only after I read carefully, I got to realize that there was solely written by people that passed by probably during the last year and thought to “vandalize” the place. How can people be so disrespectful? I wondered. What would you gain from writing your name on a wall in what it used to be a concentration camp? I was infuriated, I wanted to say something, do something, but I had no power.

I remembered than all those times I was in a palace or castle, and because of the fragile materials in the room, people were always asked not to use flash, but that didn’t stop most of them. I know it’s not the same thing, but in the end, it’s the way you show respect for those that worked hard and died in horrible conditions, just for you and me and all the others visiting those places to be able to see, learn and know better.

At this point for me, it’s just sad that people seemed to really be missing the point like they don’t realize why that place is opened to the public. In the end, it looks like we are only aiming for that selfie everywhere we go, to make a proof of our travels, and this is a fact, that was told to me by a girl in front of Berlin Wall when I couldn’t stop myself to ask out loud: “what the point of having a selfie in front of the Wall?”

What I want to say as a conclusion is that being respectful, especially in places where a lot of significant things had happened in the past, shouldn’t even be imposed, but should simply be a normal and natural way of human behavior.