Leaving Fürstenburg, the Berlin to Copenhagen cycle route takes you right past the Ravensbrück memorial centre. Ravensbrück was a women’s concentration camp during World War II, where the Nazi’s detained a total of about 130,000 women from 20 countries for “crimes” ranging from political disobedience (e.g. a teacher refusing to hang a picture of Hitler in her classroom), anti-social behaviour (e.g. prostitutes or any women considered useless by the Nazi’s), Gypsies and anyone of Jewish faith. Around 50,000 women were murdered in the camp – either through starvation/malnourishment, being worked to death or were gassed or shot.

The memorial contained a confronting plethora of information on who was detained and what occurred at the concentration camp during the Nazi era. They also had preserved clothing and artefacts from during the camps operation, and drawings by prisoners of life in the camp during the time (cramped, putrid conditions).

For us, while the memorial site was exceptionally well put together, what was more powerful was the abandoned site of the Ubermark youth detention centre (and later an emergency extermination camp) just down the road. Here, the paths are overgrown, and no buildings remain. A volunteer group has worked to uncover the foundations of the buildings, and has marked them out with rocks covered in red paint. The most chilling element was one simple placard that talked about what had occurred after the war. Quite senior participants in the camp were never prosecuted, with one being allowed to serve as a senior consulting paediatrician despite taking part in genetic experiments and participating in the Nazi euthanasia plan and another, who had been responsible for creating the concentration camp going on to become a highly admired personality of West-German society. The placard also documented instances of anti-Semitic vandalism that occurred in 2003, and discussed the fact that many individuals who had been incarcerated for “deviant” behaviours (mainly homosexuals) had never received compensation from the German Government. The placard finished with “Never forgive – never forget – never again”.

While the Ravensbrück memorial was all about a particular point in time, the Ubermark site was a stark reminder of how easily the mistakes of the past can be forgotten and with a series of seemingly innocuous slips over time, repeated. As we stood there, on the overgrown slabs of cement, we couldn’t help but think of the refugees coming into Australia by boat, and the efforts being put in by our Government to dehumanise them.