Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

While touring the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, I met a new friend from Singapore. Later that evening, we met up again and had the opportunity to discuss life in our respective countries. I know a lot of expats like living in Singapore for its cleanliness, warmth and good food; I also asked whether the surveillance cameras bothered people. He said if you’re not doing anything wrong, then people don’t need to worry. But that all depends on who’s watching.

When the Nazis came to power, they suspended civil rights, jailed and set up special courts for political opponents, turned their country into a one-party state, created the Gestapo, built concentration camps, dissolved trade unions, burned so-called subversive books in huge public bonfires (including works by American writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Jack London). They accomplished all this within weeks—not years—without the help of surveillance cameras or GPS or much of the technology we use today. Heaven help us if Google falls into the wrong hands.

A house we passed on the way to the camp. I don’t think I realized that the concentration camps weren’t in the middle of nowhere, but in people’s back yards. There were thousands of them.