Photo report from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Sachsenhausen - a concentration camp. History, description. Nazi crimes Sachsenhausen concentration camp how to get from Berlin

The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was located in the small town of Oranienburg near Berlin. Now there is a memorial and a museum dedicated to this tragic page of history. This story will be about him.

The place is definitely very depressing and depressing. The heavy rain that poured all day intensified the gloomy sensations, but thinking how much torment and suffering the prisoners of this death factory had gone through, we simply had no right to complain.

The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936. Due to its close proximity to Berlin and its ideal architectural plan, which was believed to express the ideology of the SS, Sachsenhausen played a special role in the entire concentration camp system.
His influence increased even more when the headquarters of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, the central SS department that controlled the system of all the concentration camps of the Third Reich, was transferred here from Berlin. Here training and retraining of "cadres" for newly created and already created camps took place.
Between 1936 and 1945, more than 250,000 people were imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, more than 100,000 of whom died. Initially, these were political opponents of the Nazi regime, but over time, their ranks began to replenish with more and more members of groups that were inferior, according to the criteria of the National Socialists, in a racial or biological aspect. By 1939, a large number of citizens from occupied European states arrived here. Tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease, cold, medical experimentation, forced labor and abuse. Many fell victim to the systematic extermination operations carried out by the SS. Thousands of other prisoners died on death marches following the camp's evacuation in late April 1945.

However, this is not the end of the history of Sachsenhausen as a camp. In May 1945, the Soviet special services began construction of ten special camps in the occupied The Soviet Union territories. In August 1945, Special Camp N ° 7 of the NKVD was transferred here, which three years later was renamed as Special Camp N ° 1. Almost all buildings were used by it, except for the crematorium and structures where mass executions took place. More than 60,000 people have passed through this camp. At least 12,000 of whom died from harsh prison conditions, starvation and starvation. In 1950 it was closed, but many of the prisoners were transferred to prisons.
In 1961, the Sachsenhausen National Memorial was opened on the territory of the concentration camp, because this is a page of history that cannot be simply turned over and forgotten. Of course, visiting this museum now, we cannot even for a second imagine existence in this terrible place, but having been here, I want to hope that this will never happen again, that people become more human and kinder, and learn something from this lesson of fate.

Due to heavy rain, Oranienburg itself was not seen at all. We went straight to Sachsenhausen. I will number the photos below according to this plan.

The obligatory phrase that was on the gates of almost all concentration camps "Labor liberates."

4. The main entrance to the territory passes through Tower "A". In the camp, all the towers were named alphabetically. Here were the administrative offices of the SS. The tower itself was a symbol of complete submission to the SS power by the prisoners. Its purpose during the NKVD camp did not change much.

5. The entire camp is in the shape of a triangle with Tower "A" at the base. A stone wall stretches along the perimeter, and in front of it is a barbed wire fence under tension.

If a prisoner went behind a sign (even by accident), he could be shot without warning.

Often the prisoners, who were unable to endure the painful existence in the camp, deliberately went to the fence. The area between the stone fence and the wire fence was patrolled. Those who tried to escape were rewarded for killing.

7. In front of Tower "A" there was a parade ground for checks, where prisoners went to the roll call several times a day. This was also a difficult test, which sometimes could last for hours, and in any weather. In the event of an escape, the prisoners could stand here all night until the escape was discovered. Camp newcomers were forced to stand for hours without touching each other. Those who were awaiting punishment stood before the execution of the sentence. Sometimes on bent legs with outstretched arms.

10. There was a gallows at the end of the path, so the parade ground was also a place for public punishment and torture. On the left, a memorial plate is visible in its place.

19. Around the parade ground there was a track for testing shoes, which was a path made of different materials (glass, gravel, cobblestones, etc.). Prisoners walked along it for hours, often with extra weight (sandbags) or in smaller shoes.

Along the perimeter there were 9 watchtowers, on which three guards were on duty.

25. Literally two years after the concentration camp was built, the barracks within the "triangle" were already overcrowded. The influx of prisoners did not stop, so in the summer of 1938, by order of the SS, 18 more barracks were built, despite the fact that this contradicted the original architectural plan.

This area was called the "small camp" and most of the Jews settled here until they were transferred to Auschwitz in 1943.

There are only stones on the site of the destroyed barracks.

23. But several have been restored, and they are expositions telling about the life of prisoners in the camp in general and Jews in particular.

Sometimes the number of prisoners living in one barrack reached four hundred. At the same time, they were given only 30 minutes to get up, wash, get a portion of food and go to the roll call. They washed themselves in this room. Eight to ten people stood around such a bowl, from where water gushed like a fountain. Everyone was in a hurry, it was very crowded.

A utility room where mops, brushes and other cleaning items were kept. Sometimes it turned into a torture room, like the bathroom, among other things. The prisoners were closed here, ordered to stand still and not lean on the walls. Sometimes so many people were locked up here that they simply suffocated.

It was allowed to go to the toilet twice a day, in the morning and in the evening after the roll call.

Living quarters for 250 prisoners.

Dining room.

This barrack has been restored and many of its elements have survived from the 1930s. For example, paint on the ceiling. The lightest is the oldest. Most likely preserved from the time of the construction of the barracks. The darkest - since when the memorial was first opened.

Restroom.

The dishes were part of the small number of personal items that the prisoners allowed. Inscriptions - dates and places of the owners' conclusions. Sometimes they exchanged dishes for other items. For example, a Danish prisoner exchanged this bowler hat for cigarettes from a Soviet prisoner.

20. Again within the "triangle". Entrance to the territory of the prison.

The Zelenbau prison was built in 1936. It was used not only as a camp, but also as a prison for the Gestapo.

It was one of the first structures erected on the territory of the camp. It was built by prisoners according to SS sketches.

Special prisoners were held in eighty solitary cells: statesmen and prominent political figures, high military officials, as well as workers' movement leaders from different countries. Among them was Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili.

The building was T-shaped, but currently only one wing has survived.

This architectural form was popular for prisons. All cameras could be observed from one central point. This is the principle applied to the entire Sachsenhausen camp.

In five cells, there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the time of National Socialism, describing the functioning of the prison.

In some other cells there are memorial plaques to the prisoners of the camp.

The prison was surrounded by a wall, so for the prisoners it was some kind of secret place of murder and brutal violence. When Sachsenhausen became a special camp, there was still a prison here.

14. The obelisk was erected in 1961. 18 triangles symbolize the countries from which the concentration camp prisoners were. Political and foreign prisoners were required to wear red triangles on their clothes.

At the foot of the obelisk there is a monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators. Two liberated concentration camp prisoners next to the soldiers of the Red Army.

12, 13. On the right is the former kitchen. On the left is the former prisoners' laundry, and now a cinema, where a documentary about the camp is shown.

The kitchen building was built by the prisoners of the camp in 1936. During the special camp it was used for the same purpose. The quality of food was inversely proportional to the number of prisoners. The more people became, the worse they were fed.

Drawings from the days of the camp remained on the walls.

A cold room in which perishable food was stored.

The original staircase, which is no longer in use. During the reconstruction, the building plan was slightly changed.

16. Moat for executions. We are already outside the "triangle".

15. In the spring of 1942, prisoners were ordered to build a large building that housed a crematorium, morgue, gas chambers and other massacre devices. The prisoners entered the camp through Tower "A", and left it dead through this place called Station "Z". Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration at the camp, went there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.

Monument to the victims.

"And I know one thing - Europe of the future cannot exist without honoring the memory of all those, regardless of their nationalities, who were killed with contempt and hatred, tortured to death, forced to starve, gassed, burned and hanged ..." ( Andrzej Szczyperski, prisoner of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1995)

Commemorative installation in memory of the victims soviet soldierswho were killed in the back of the head, muffling the shots with loud music. For this, a special device was made. Before their death, the prisoners underwent a so-called medical examination so that their height could be measured. More than ten thousand people died in this way.

Buildings that housed workshops in which prisoners were forced to work.

17. Pathological department.

Here, on the prisoners of Sachsenhausen, medical experiments were carried out, testing of new types of poisons, toxic substances, including gases, drugs against burns, typhus, and other injuries and diseases.

Experiments on the impact on people chemical substances were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. So, for the murders of prisoners, the SS decided to use poisonous gases with which they destroyed garden pests. But they did not know the lethal dose for people, and in order to determine it, they experimented on people driven into the basement, changing the dose and watching when death came.

Sachsenhausen supplied educational medical institutions in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects. It was in Sachsenhausen that some of the first and most sophisticated medical experiments on living people were carried out.

There were morgues in the basements of the pathology department.

18. Hospital barracks. The doctors were more like observers here. Prisoners-doctors of non-Jewish origin were allowed to treat patients.

With this our visit to Sachsenhausen ended. The rain did not stop and I wanted to catch the next train to Berlin. I'm sure we didn't see much. The museum of the NKVD special camp was examined very superficially, and the sea of \u200b\u200binformation presented is absolutely impossible to read and view. It is probably best to explore the memorial with a guide, but the audio guide is also quite interesting and informative. Being in Berlin is definitely worth coming here.

One of the places that a must-see in Germany is the Sachsenhausen Camp Museum ( Sachsenhausen) not farfrom Berlin. One of the very first concentration camps of the Third Reich. By the way, it was here that, according to one version, the eldest son of Joseph Stalin died.

…Berlin is the capital of Germany, a large and beautiful city, not as expensive as most European capitals. There are convenient transport links and a large selection of museums and attractions. As we know from history, Europe has changed twice in the last century, and both times - because of the events in Berlin. The second world War and Hitler, and in 1989 the breakthrough of the Berlin Wall - all the sensations of this era can be felt on ourselves when we come to Berlin.

There are many monuments in Europe, bunkers, museums and memorials dedicated to the Holocaust and its victims. One of these places is the Sachsenhausen Camp Museum, 30 km from Berlin. It is believed that this place is a "lite version" (Poland), which was called a death camp. But the atrocities that were practiced at Sachsenhausen were the same. Many terrible places were destroyed, for example, the crematorium, this is one of the reasons why we cannot feel in full reality, however, and what we have seen is more than enough.

At the main entrance the cynical inscription "Arbeit Mach Frei". The camp is shaped like a triangle. Right at the entrance there is a parade ground of checks, where roll calls of all prisoners were held 3 times a day. Near the memorial wall there is a track for "testing shoes": prisoners had to travel up to 40 km, often with bags of 25 kg. We had to move on a surface strewn with boulders, broken glass, etc.

The camp contained up to 60 thousand people, including prisoners of war. Among them was Stalin's eldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili. According to one version, he died here in 1943 - he threw himself on the wire and was shot by a sentry as if trying to escape. According to another version, he committed suicide.

Station Z - Main Memorialmuseum. Z is the last letter of the alphabet, that is, the end. Mass executions of prisoners took place here. The executions were carried out in public, in front of all those gathered on the parade ground. The buildings of residential barracks have also been preserved. In winter, there is ice on the floor in them, you can imagine how people lived there, or rather, people existed.

Inside is alsoa museum with a large number of photographs, historical documents about life in a concentration camp. You won't feel well after visiting Sachsenhausen, but this is a must visit.

How to get to Sachsenhausen

From the central railway train station in Berlin go to Oranienburg station (direction Brandenburg) on \u200b\u200bS-Bahn (commuter train). The journey takes 45 minutes.

After arriving in Oranienburg (final stop) take the bus to Sachsenhausen (3 km) or walk about 20 minutes. The entrance to the museum is free. An audio guide can be borrowed for a fee. If you need a guide, then you need to gather a group of at least 15 people and pay 1 euro, excursions in almost all languages.

On the gates of the camp there is an inscription "Arbeit macht frei" - "Labor makes free".

The museum in the camp was opened in 1961.

There was ice on the floor in the residential barracks in winter.

Station Z is a structure outside the camp where the massacres took place.

The track around the parade ground where the prisoners tested their shoes.

Ruins of the crematorium. About 100 thousand prisoners died on the territory of the camp.

Sachsenhausen is a Nazi concentration camp located near the city of Oranienburg in Germany. Created in July 1936. Number of prisoners in different years reached 60,000 people. On the territory of Sachsenhausen, over 100,000 prisoners died in various ways. Here training and retraining of "personnel" for the newly created and already created camps took place. Near the camp was located the "Inspection of Concentration Camps" - later "Departmental Group D" of the economic and administrative departments of the SS and "Residence of the Central Administration of Concentration Camps". In the camp there was an underground resistance committee that led a ramified, well-conspired camp organization, which the Gestapo could not disclose.

On April 21, 1945, in accordance with the given order, the death march began. It was supposed to transfer over 30 thousand prisoners in columns of 500 people to the shores of the Baltic Sea, load on barges, take them out to the open sea and flood them. The people lagging behind and exhausted on the march were shot. So, in the forest near Belov in Mecklenburg, several hundred prisoners were shot. However, the planned mass extermination of the prisoners did not succeed - in early May 1945, Soviet troops liberated the columns on the march.

oranienburg, a suburb of Berlin. Signpost to the former death factory - KC (concentration camp) Sachsenhausen.

Pre-war house next to the Sachsenhausen CC. People lived among the flowers, knowing that in 100 meters from them, in the factory of death, thousands of prisoners perish. In 200 meters from this house there are more than 100,000 dead in huge ditch graves. The exact figure is unknown. Most of The archive was burned during the advance of the Red Army.

The road along which tens of thousands of prisoners of different nationalities and from different countries have passed. Only a few survived. In the distance you can see the entrance to the Memorial "KC Sachsehausen".

Steles in front of the entrance to the KC Memorial.

The main gate of the Sachsenhausen CC. From the balcony of this gate, the SS officers looked at the prisoners standing for hours in any weather on the appellate platform.

The inscription on the gate - Labor makes you free.

Wall of Tears. In front of her are the mass graves of Sachsenhausen prisoners. On the wall are memorial plaques from the countries whose citizens died in this terrible Death Factory.

Memorial plaque on the Wailing Wall of Ukraine in memory of the citizens of the country who died in the Sachsenhausen CC.

Memorial plaque of Belarus in memory of the citizens of the country who died in the Sachsenhausen CC.

A memorial plaque on the Wailing Wall of the Austrian Republic in memory of the country's citizens who died in the Sachsenhausen CC.

Camp gate and adjacent wall.

The lives of many people ended on this wire. They threw themselves on her in despair and were killed by electric shock and guards from the towers.

Thousands of prisoners passed this road, never to return. In the distance there is a monument to the prisoners of the Sachsenhausen CC. Burned by the Nazis during the retreat, the barracks are outlined to the right and left of the road.

Prisoner card No. 5928 KC Sachsenhausen Pavel Dmitrievich Tolkach who was captured on June 23, 1941 in the Lithuanian SSR, a soldier of the 401st infantry regiment, born in Belarus, Minsk region, village Musichi. Died in the camp on February 26, 1943.

The card of the captured Kozlovsky Joseph Yakovlevich, engineer of the 3rd rank, born on 1.6.1906, from Moscow.

Engineer 3rd rank Kozlovsky Iosif Yakovlevich commander of a sapper battalion. He died in the camp on February 2, 1944, when a group of officers was taken to execution: they attacked the convoy, killed one SS man. All died.

Captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army in the Sachsenhausen Exhibition Center, November 1941. Here they are, missing.

Captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army in the Sachsenhausen CC, August 1941

Officers and soldiers of the Red Army in the Sachsenhausen Exhibition Center. October 1941

Department of Pathology (Pathological Anatomy). Doctors from the SS worked here to "study" the effects of hunger and hard work on human health. CC Sachsenhausen was an "experimental" camp.

Section (room for autopsy) of the pathology department.

Here, new methods of exterminating people were practiced. In addition to destruction by work, executions, executions, for which there was a shooting range in the camp, so-called medical experiments were carried out over the prisoners of Sachsenhausen. Survival experiments on twins. New drugs were tested on prisoners. Tests were carried out on the maximum permissible load on the body, for example, cold, heat, dehydration. The Sachsenhausen camp doctor who conducted these experiments was subsequently sentenced to death.

The staircase along which the corpses were lowered into the corpse storage of the Pathology Department. The last journey of thousands of prisoners.

One of the three large corpse stores of the Pathology Department. Since 1939, experiments on living people were carried out in Sachsenhausen - liquid poisonous substances were tested on prisoners, they were rubbed into the skin. The results of the experiments were reported personally to Himmler. The prisoners first became blind, and then died in terrible agony ...

Information to the photo from the site and museum of the Sachsenhausen CC camp.

Prepared by Gennady Chernakov.

Good afternoon, dear readers! The Sachsenhausen concentration camp is known as one of the most brutal places of the fascist regime. All those whom the Third Reich considered "unwanted elements" got here. The NKVD transit prison for displaced persons is the name of this place since 1945. Today Sachsenhausen - Memorial Complex... We will tell you how this eerie place was created, and who was here from 1936 to 1945.

During the Third Reich from 1936 to 1945, more than 100,000 people died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

From 1945 to 1950 the camp came under the control of the NKVD. For 5 years, 12,000 people died in it.

The story will not be psychologically simple, but you need to know about such places. And real travel related to the history of the country cannot do without them.

There should never be such places again. Such museums are a clear warning to all of us.

Places you don't want to return to

There are many places in the world that cause delight and admiration. Moments of such a journey are fondly sifting through our memory. I want to return there! But, some places store a completely different energy. Perhaps you want to forget about them. But this should not be done in any case.

The former Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then the NKVD prison is one such place and a terrible museum.

To come here you need to gather courage. This is not a pleasure walk at all, but those who have come to Berlin should visit here.

This inscription on the gate, cast in metal, meets us at the entrance to the territory of the memorial.

Beautiful words, high meaning. But in the fanatic's perverted brain, they acquire a completely blasphemous subtext.

“Arbeit macht frei” - read by the prisoners. And the iron gates of one of the most scary camps the deaths of the 20th century were forever closed behind them.

You might think that this is a reeducation colony, that the daily hard work in the camp will somehow change the prisoner, and as a result he will be released. But, in fact, the work in Sachsenhausen freed few people.

• In the concentration camp, the prisoners were engaged in the repair of aircraft.
• They worked at the world's largest brick factory (outside the camp, on the Hohenzollern Canal), providing building materials for growing Germany.
• The prisoners were tested for the strength and reliability of their shoes.
• In Sachsenhausen, there was a workshop for the production of counterfeit banknotes. The goal is to undermine the economies of Great Britain and the United States.

This operation was called "Operation Bernhard".

The Czech writer Adolf Burger, a former prisoner of Sachsenhausen who worked in a counterfeit banknote workshop, wrote a book about this, The Devil's Workshop. In 2006 Austrian-German came out feature Film "The Counterfeiters" based on his book.

Adolph Burger rewrote the script 3 times and made sure that the events of the film did not distort reality. In 2007, the picture was nominated for an Oscar.

Here is a quote from it:

Sachsenhausen's workshop produced counterfeit banknotes worth 132 million pounds. This was 4 times the UK financial reserves. Due to the fact that the prisoners were able to delay the process of producing the dollar, the release of this currency did not receive such a scale.

Bernhard's enterprise is the largest money-fraud operation in history.

The emergence of the camp

1936 year. Berlin is the host city for the Olympic Games. The city and the whole of Germany are in joyful excitement.

Athletes, reporters, spectators and politicians from around the world are expected.

After the First World War, such events are designed to unite people, make it possible to forget about the years of military horror.

In preparation for the Games, the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp opens in the small town of Oranienburg (30 km from Berlin) to the north of Berlin. But, so far, few people know about this.

Heinrich Himmler became the "ideological inspiration" of the project. With the "light hand" of this under-man, many such terrible places were discovered.

Very quickly, Nazi camps began to appear throughout Germany and in the territories under its control: near Berlin, a specialized women's camp "Ravensbrück", near Weimar "Buchenwald", "Auschwitz" (on the territory of modern Poland).

At first, Sachsenhausen was used as a training base for the SS. The best personnel were “forged” here: guards, warders, jailers.

The base of the Third Reich was also located here, which was engaged in the management of all concentration camps.

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Memorial

Nobody speaks loudly here, they rarely take pictures. And what to photograph - a single huge exhibit from the Second World War?

The memorial consists of several buildings and a large parade ground.

These are earth, concrete and stone. Everything keeps memories of 100 thousand prisoners who died here from 1936 to 1945.

The figures are approximate. The Nazis kept them secret, but the score went to tens and hundreds.

The task of the camp was simple - to gather those who were disagreeable from the point of view of the philosophy of the Third Reich, to give them the opportunity to work to "atone" for their crimes. Then - these people disappeared forever.

Museums on the territory of the memorial

• The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Museum.
• Monument to the memory of political prisoners of Sachsenhausen (1961).
• Sculptural composition "Liberation" (1961).
• Memorial stone in honor of the prisoners of the camp who died during the "Death March".
• Death March Museum.
• Holocaust Museum.
• Museum of the Roma Genocide.
• Monuments to Jehovah's Witnesses who died in the camp, 19 residents of Luxembourg, British intelligence officers, victims of "Station Z".
• Mass graves of camp prisoners.
• The Wailing Wall with memorial plaques from the governments and peoples of the countries whose citizens died in the Sachsenhausen camp.
• Museum "Soviet special camp" (Opened in December 2001).

Who was sent to the camp

Who are they - "unwanted elements", which the Nazis prepared a direct road to the death camp?

These are different people. In fascist Germany, the question was approached "fairly".

To avoid confusion and it was possible to immediately understand who the prisoner was, the party leadership developed a special identification system for winckels.

Winckel - a triangle of a certain color, sewn on prisoners' clothes

• red - political prisoners;
• yellow - Jews;
• green - criminals;
• brown - gypsies;
• black - socially undesirable elements;
• purple - persecuted on a religious basis (Jehovah's Witnesses ended up in camps with a purple triangle);
• blue - illegal emigrants;
• pink - homosexuals (men only).

The camp was ready to accept everyone. By the way, only men wore the pink patch. Male homosexuality was considered a particularly dangerous phenomenon in the Third Reich.

This group of criminals included not only gays, but also pedophiles. And also men in prostitution and heterosexual men seen in relationships with gays.

Women who were caught in homosexual relationships did not pose a threat to society. They looked at them "through fingers". If women actively defended their rights, they were also placed in a camp. But with a black patch as a socially undesirable element.

On the territory of the death camp

We enter through neat green gates with the slogan "labor liberates".

• The first building is Tower A.

There was a distribution point and a power plant.

There were 19 towers in total, they were located in such a way that the territory was clearly visible by the guards.

At the distribution point, a person was recorded, given a uniform and a patch.

• Platz Checks

Here, three times a day, prisoners were gathered for roll call.

If someone did not come or ran, this fact was easily and quickly tracked.

The prisoners stood on the parade ground until the absent one was found.

There was also a gallows and a place for public executions.

• A large open space is a trail for a detachment of shoe shredders.

When attempting to escape or sabotage, a person was sentenced to go through the route. They got into the detachment for different periods depending on the severity of the offense.

In shoes 1.5 - 2 sizes smaller than a prisoner's foot, with a backpack weighing 10 to 20 kilograms, people had to run a distance of 40 kilometers, checking the quality of the shoes and thus wearing out boots for soldiers. The track was a circle with a different kind of coating: concrete slabs, asphalt, earth, gravel, sand.

The check could last 1 week, a month, or even indefinitely.

• Square - Platz Z

This is the scariest place in the camp.

The parade ground and barracks were intended for only one purpose - mass murder.

There was a car firing a shot in the back of the head and gas chambers. The shooting by car was carried out on the parade ground.

It is difficult to find out the exact death toll. Sometimes the car with the prisoners was driven directly to Plaza Z, bypassing the distribution point A.

The bodies were immediately collected and sent to the crematorium.

There is also a moat for executions.

The guards and wardens jokingly called him "shooting gallery."

The fact is that a mechanical gallows was located here. After the execution, the body of a killed or wounded person was sent to the gallows. It was used as a training target.

• Inconspicuous gray building - Hospital

Although, no one was treated here.

Like most death camps, Sachsenhausen conducted experiments and medical experiments on prisoners.

In addition, Sachsenhausen supplied visual aids to German medical universities.

• Prison

Death March and Liberation

On April 21, 1945, the administration of the concentration camp received an order to remove all prisoners from the barracks, build them and send them on.

This operation was called the Death March.

Germany's defeat in the war was already evident. The Reich leadership was awaiting trial. The authorities decided to get rid of all evidence of atrocities.

During the Death March, some of the prisoners were to die on the way. The other part would be shot in the woods. The rest could have reached the sea. But at the end, death awaited everyone.

Soviet troops liberated the camp and intercepted a convoy of prisoners. All could not be saved. But thousands of prisoners have a chance to live.

A number of transformations went through, now the fascist concentration camp has become a special camp number 7.

The power has changed, but the essence remains the same. Enemies were brought here again, but of the Soviet regime. Now SS men, Wehrmacht officers, Social Democrats were dying here and awaiting redirection.

As a transit prison, Sachsenhausen existed for 5 years until it was closed in 1950.

According to official data, during its existence from 1945 to 1950, 12 thousand people died here.

More than 100 Dutch resistance fighters died in the camp

Notable prisoners of Sachsenhausen

In addition to nameless prisoners, famous people also got into the camp distributor building:

• Stepan Bandera - leader of the nationalist movement in Ukraine;
• Yakov Dzhugashvili is the son of Joseph Stalin. Gunned down;
• General Karbyshev;
• Horn, Lambert - German communist;
• Erdman, Lothar - Social Democrat, journalist and activist;
• Lademann, Max - German revolutionary, communist;
• Becker, Jurek - writer. I ended up here in my childhood with my mother.

Let's finish the story about this terrible place with facts.

Facts

• The Sachsenhausen camp housed prisoners from 27 European countries.
• The total number of units in the camp is 44.
• There were up to 60,000 prisoners in the camp at the same time.
• The total number of prisoners during the existence of the camp is 200,000 people
• In the Sachsenhausen camp, an underground resistance committee was created and actively operated, which was never disclosed.
• There was a working radio in the camp, which the prisoner secretly, in some incredible way, managed to carry.

Memorial opening hours

• In the summer:
  March 15 to October 14
  The museum is open every day, seven days a week from 8-30 to 18-00
• In winter:
  From October 15 to March 14
  The museum is open every day from 8-30 to 16-30

Ticket price

• Entrance to the territory is free

Excursion

If a group of 15 people or more gathers, you can contact the administration of the museum and they will conduct a live tour for you. Or you can agree in advance with tour guide from Berlin. He will take you to the place from your hotel, conduct a detailed excursion and return.

How to get to the museum

From Berlin

By train. There is an S-Bahn from Berlin Central vocal to Oranienburg. Go by train for 25-45 minutes (the time depends on the change you are traveling or by direct train) to the terminal station "Oranienburg".

Right at the terminal station, you need to change to a bus to Sachsenhausen (the stop is called that).

You can walk. It will take you 20-30 minutes.

The station has a direction sign for Sachsenhausen.

Memorial address: Straße der Nationen 22, Oranienburg

Official site: www.stiftung-bg.de

Sachsenhausen on the map

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