Husb and I spent a few days in Berlin this earlier this week and spent some time visiting the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on the outskirts of the city. It was moving and chilling; I was shocked to discover that it was surrounded by a nice, middle-class housing estate. People turned a blind eye to the horror that was built in their midst. In these troubled times, with terror attacks by fundamentalists and calls for retaliation from extremists, we need to remember more than ever what can happen when intolerance gets out of hand.
It wasn’t easy to sketch as we were moving more or less constantly as part of a guided tour (well worth paying for), but I managed some speed sketches and a few digital photos. There was a thunderstorm while we were there, the looming sky suited the place.
Your drawing is so atmospheric Rosie. A great sense of ghosts and intolerable tragedy. You are right, we must remember.
You’re right. We took our young nephews – they asked to go. They study it in school and it became real for them. It was difficult to find something to draw, so much of it was so ordinary so I had to try and draw from my feelings rather than render an accurate architectural drawing.
I can think that in some ways it would be difficult to see such a place under sunny skies, but that, I suppose is the tragedy, that these events happened, despite the sunny skies and in the middle of a comfortable existence.
That’s right. It was the ordinariness of it that was so shocking