With the onset of the Cold War, the DDR inherited the largely abandoned camp. Although parts of the camp continued to be used for military purposes and the town encroached upon its outposts, the integrity of the camp proper was maintained as a memorial. At the center of the area where the prisoner barracks lay, a giant memorial tower was erected. It is this tower and the associated remains of the concentration camp that reflect to a great extent East Germany's vergangenheitsbewältigung. Particularly characteristic of East Germany's view of the past is the emphasis on the interpretation of the camp's purpose as another chapter in the saga of worldwide class struggle. Connected with this trend is a larger deemphasis of what constitutes the heart of the Holocaust, the murder of Jews and Gypsies, and an emphasis on the traumas of other groups, notably the communists and resistance fighters. In general, the camp for the most part mirrors a deliberate policy on the part of the East Germans to ignore the Nazi past in favour of the socialist future.
The most commanding feature of the camp to the modern visitor is the looming tower in the camp center. The architecture of the tower, entirely solid from foot to top, resembles the block style of Soviet architecture. At the top of tower, each of its façades bears a series of orange triangles. Inside these triangles are letters standing for the several countries from whence came the prisoners of the camps. This type of decoration is featured because the inscription of national letters inside coloured triangles was the method used as for the identification of a prisoner's status while the camp was still in operation. The tower itself can be clearly seen from any point in the camp, but significantly it cannot be seen outside the gates beyond the first few houses which surround it. It memorializes, therefore, for those who have already come to remember.
Superficially, this monument memorializes all prisoners of different nationalities and seems to deal effectively with the true victims of the camp. The significance of the tower and its inscribed triangles, however, is lost on the visitor unless he or she already knows what they represent, for there are no explanatory inscriptions directly associated with the tower. This absence suggests that while memorializing the victims of the camp is important, it is not that important to explain what the memorial means on a symbolic level. Decontextualizing the triangle symbols from their past connotations could allow for a separation between this past and the present. The lack of explanatory remarks tends to cut short any discussion of what the memorial means in terms of Germany's role and responsibility in the camp's initial period of use.
Another aspect of the tower remarkable by its absence is the symbol of the Jewish prisoners, the star of David. While most prisoners were marked with a coloured triangle, Jewish prisoners displayed a unique and distinct star on their uniforms. Yet no comparable star appears on the height of the camp's memorial. True, Jews never made up a large part of the camp's prisoners, but Station Z, the gas chamber, was built with them in mind. Not all of Nazi concentration camps were death camps, that is, camps dedicated at least in part to the outright extermination of Jews and/or Gypsies. Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg distinguishes itself in this regard, and one would expect to find some evidence of these deaths in the camp memorial.
The fact that there is no indication of the Jewish star on the memorial indicates not so much a latent anti-Semitism, but more evidence of East Germany's focus on the class struggle myth coupled with the anti-Israel political alignment brought on by being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. What mattered to the East German theorists from the beginning was the enthronement of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. "The Third Reich, in their view, was simply monopoly capitalism run rampant. Racist undertones were acknowledged, but not elevated to a primary cause" (Scharf 1990: 95). Indeed, East German thinkers tended to conflate the deaths of the Jews with the overall horrors of "monopoly capitalism run rampant." One such thinker, Johannes R. Becher was "one of the rare communist speakers who expressly mentioned the persecution of the Jews as part of the burden of the past" (Trommler 1990: 87). At Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, the desire to emphasize this view is evident in the portrayal of the camp during DDR times, according to the modern museum at the site. The new exhibit devotes itself to the subject of the DDR's communist interpretation and historical bias in relation to the camp.
Despite the DDR's commitment to the large tower memorial, in the end the camp did not serve as a focus for memory, identity building, or vergangenheitsbewältigung. Various parts of the camp were built over or outright destroyed. The main barracks of the prisoners were torn down and today are marked by simple stones in the place of where they once stood. In addition, walls, gates, watch towers, and other features have been subject to decay through lack of interest in their maintenance. Storage buildings, with the commands of their former Nazi commanders emblazoned cryptically on the façade, lie empty with an odd assortment of architectural pieces within and broken glass outside. This phenomenon suggests that the DDR and its united successor state find the steps taken to be sufficient in vergangenheitsbewältigung. The monument and the integrity of the central camp are enough; there is no further need to explain, to illustrate, or to preserve the past. In this sense, the DDR clearly attempted to draw the line between the Nazi past and the communist future.
But what of the camp under the united government? The new German government has effectively made only the changes that the DDR could not have made due to political or ideological reasons. The associated museum explains the camp according to western historians' views and sheds light on the bias of the DDR's presentation. In addition, the area open for visitors has expanded to include an area for the mass burial of prisoners who died under the Soviet occupation: the victims of Stalinism. Aside from plans to rebuild the barracks inexplicably destroyed by Neo-Nazis, the new government has made no plans to elaborate on the largely mute buildings decaying in the camp yard. The government is able to elaborate on the victim status of the Germans, but as for Germany's victims, their evidence is left to decay.
Historians throughout Germany protested against the meager resources devoted to setting the record straight at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, the eastern German concentration camp sites where the communists presented their own distorted version of history. The historians' cries have been largely in vain; there is plenty of money available to document Soviet crimes against the German public in the aftermath of the war, but little to remember the victims of the Nazis. (Fisher 1995: 41-42)In a sense, the changes perpetuate the East German practice of creating distance from the past through lack of interest in the site. On the other hand, these changes also reflect West Germany's mode of dealing with the past already seen in the Berlin memorials discussed above.
Next: United Berlin: Showcase of a Nation
