Today was “Dönerstag,” the 28th of August. In the morning, after breakfast, we had to prepare our lunch boxes. At 7:30 we started with a morning routine led by Julian as the gamemaster. We were divided into three groups and got punished whenever the ball dropped to the floor. The punishment was that each member of the team had to do five squats.

At eight o’clock our only workshop of the day started. The main topic was the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). There are 17 of them, chosen by the UN. The JCI Community supports these goals and currently runs programs to help achieve them. In the end, we thought about projects that could help achieve these goals and made a short video introducing them.

After the workshop we got on the bus and took an hour-long drive to Oranienburg. Personally, I found the bus trip very funny.

In Oranienburg we met the current mayor. He talked about the situation in his city, for example the economic growth happening there. He also explained why Louise-Henriette was such an important figure in their history. She brought a lot of culture and development to the city, which had been badly damaged before her time and after the Thirty Years’ War.

Oranienburg was destroyed again after the Second World War because it had been very important for the economy of the NSDAP. A large aircraft company called Heinkelwerke was located there. From 1990 until today about 250 bombs have been found in the ground, and they believe there are still about the same number left. However, they are not as dangerous as one might think.

After the meeting with the mayor we went back to the bus and drove to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. On the way there we all read an information text about the Second World War.

When we arrived, the German ambassador and the Japanese ambassador were separated so that each group could listen to a guide speaking their own first language. This was meant to help us understand the topic better. Our guide first led us to a forest with many memorial stones for different groups of victims from this specific camp. After that we went to the “Appellplatz,” where the prisoners had to spend many hours in the morning and afternoon standing still. If they didn’t follow the rules, they were brutally punished. Afterwards, some of us visited an exhibition about the terrible experiments doctors performed on inmates. The rest went with the guide to the Jewish barracks. He explained that they had been built for only 150 people but sometimes up to 400 people lived in one at a time. The toilets were all in one room.

Next, we visited a trail where prisoners were forced to test shoes. They had to walk up to 40 km a day with backpacks weighing 20 kg. The purpose of this experiment was to test different materials for shoes.

Later we visited the places where people died in gas chambers and were later burned in ovens. But in this concentration camp most people actually died because of the bad circumstances and the hard labor.

After leaving the concentration camp we went to the garden of the “Oranienburger Schlossgarten” and had a guided tour by a woman dressed up as a princess inspired by Louise-Henriette. She told us about this remarkable woman and showed us the oldest fridge in Brandenburg. Unfortunately, the tour had to finish early because of the rain. Sadly, it rained almost the whole day. On the way back we convinced our supervisors to order kebab, which was nice because we could eat it on the bus back to the Martas. Most of us skipped dinner, and at 8 o’clock we started working on our presentation

written by Nala