Breendonk - The Hell Of Belgium

I visited the Breendonk concentration camp today I actually had not given any thought as to how I may feel about seeing this place before hand.  The tour takes approximately two hours to complete with a tour guide and if you are an individual they will provide you with an audio guide for witch you determine the pace of you tour through the facilities.  During this tour you will be educated with a part of history from World War II were many victims were faced with the horror of Nazism.  The guide tells you and shows many things to include; the heroes, the tormentors, their victims, labor place, torture room, prisoner cells, and the execution spot.

Belgium has not been spared the horror of Nazism and its concentration camps. The fortress of Breendonk is a moving and striking example of Nazism. It is one of the best conserved camps in Europe. Between September 1940 and September 1944, around 3500 prisoners passed through Breendonk. The building of the fort was undertaken in 1909. The fort is part of a defense belt of fortifications built ten miles away from the city of Antwerpen.

The Memorial seeks to embrace others in a quest for openness. It reaches out first of all to those who, in one way or another, have fought for freedom, have stood up to oppression, have suffered, victims of racism and blind fanaticism: war veterans, Resistance fighters, prisoners of war, the concentration camp prisoners, Jewish Resistance fighters and victims of the Shoah. And well beyond, it reaches out to all those who, driven by the same ideal of democracy, find in Breendonk the justification behind their cause.

This was my first and last visit to a concentration camp. It wasn’t until I reached the torture room were I started to feel uncomfortable and a feeling of sadness started to flow through my body and mind.  Before I visited Breendonk today I had intentions of visiting the concentration camp in Berlin along with the Wall but after today I will only take a look at the Wall.  If you have not visited a concentration camp I recommend it at least once. The readings of history books do not even come close to actually viewing a piece of history in person and it gives you a chance to truly educate yourself on events that effect our world.   

One of many tour guide stories from survivors’:
Do you know the true meaning of hunger, the tour guide asked?  One day at Breendonk an artist was captured and was out in the labor place sketching for the Nazis and was about to throw a piece of bread away.  A prisoner was witness to this and called out to artist and said please oh please throw the bread to me when the guards are not looking.  The artist then replied and said but you are surrounded by shit and the bread is sure to land in it. The prisoner said its ok honest just throw it the next chance you get.  The artist did and the piece of bread landed in the shit just as he thought it would and the prisoner jumped on it and ate the shit covered bread.  At that moment the artist thought that surely that the prisoner must have not been all there.  Three weeks had pasted since that day and the artist then understood the true meaning of hunger and would have done the same.

This is truly a tragic part of history and one can only hope that nothing like this will ever happen again.  My visit today to Breendonk has given me a new insight on life, live life to its fullest and never take anything for granted.  One can never be to sure what will happen in the future you do not have to wait for something tragic in order to live your life, start today.