", in March 1942, which became part of the Management Group "D" (concentration camps) of the Main Administrative and Economic Directorate of the SS.
An underground resistance committee existed in the camp, which led a branched, well-hidden camp organization, which the Gestapo was unable to uncover. The leader of the underground is General Zotov Alexander Semenovich (see below the memoirs of the prisoners of the "Invisible Front".
On the night of April 20, 26,000 prisoners left Sachsenhausen - this is how this march began. Before we left the camp, we rescued the sick brothers from the infirmary. We got the wagon in which they were taken. There were 230 of us in total from six countries. Among the sick was Brother Arthur Winkler, who did much to expand the Kingdom work in the Netherlands. We Witnesses walked behind everyone and constantly encouraged each other not to stop.
Although about half of the prisoners who participated in the death march either died or were killed along the way, all of the Witnesses survived.
According to the memoirs of Boyko N.E. , a prisoner of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp:
No matter how hard I tried to stay on my feet, I still collapsed. The bag fell nearby, burst, the cement crumbled. The guard, seeing such a picture, jumped up to me with a machine gun, at the end of which there was a bayonet. It would have pierced right through me if I hadn't dodged with the last of my strength. He still got me with a bayonet and pierced my leg above the knee. In a hurry, I ran. The German raised his machine gun. The prisoners screamed aloud, and he did not pull the trigger. And only then I felt that blood was flowing down my leg ...
concentration camp map
Tower "A"
Tower "A" was a distribution control panel for current, which was fed to the grid and barbed wire that surrounded the camp in the form of a large triangle. It also housed the camp commandant's office. In addition, this tower was the checkpoint of the camp. There was a cynical inscription on the gate: "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"). In total, there were nineteen towers in the camp, which shot through the entire camp with their sectors.
Parade ground of checks
The place of roll calls, which were held 3 times a day. In the event of an escape, the prisoners had to stand on it until the escapee was captured. The parade ground was also a place of public executions - there was a gallows on it.
Shoe test track
Nine different track surfaces around the parade ground, as conceived by the Nazis, were necessary for testing shoes. The selected prisoners had to overcome forty kilometers of distance every day at a different pace. In 1944, the Gestapo complicated this test by forcing the prisoners to cover the distance in smaller shoes and with bags weighing ten, and often twenty to twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to such a quality check of shoes for terms ranging from one month to a year. For particularly serious crimes, indefinite punishment was imposed. Such crimes were repeated attempts to escape, escape, invasion of another barracks, sabotage, dissemination of messages by foreign transmitters, incitement to sabotage, pedophilia (Article 176), seduction or coercion of heterosexual men of the main camp into homosexual contacts, homosexual prostitution, committed by mutual agreement homosexual acts of heterosexual men. The same indefinite punishment awaited homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen (Articles 175 and 175a).
"Shoe test" - officer (chrome) boots were subjected to the usual "break-in" for future potential owners. The prisoners endured at most -1 month, because the legs were swollen and were worn to the point of bleeding. On the day it was supposed to carry (?) A pair of boots.
Station "Z"
Station "Z" - a building outside the camp, in which massacres were carried out. It contained a device for firing a shot in the back of the head, a crematorium for four furnaces, and a gas chamber added in 1943. Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration in the camp, went there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims destroyed here.
Ditch for executions
The so-called "shooting gallery", with a shooting rampart, a mortuary and a mechanized gallows. The latter was a mechanism with a box into which the prisoner's legs were inserted, and a loop for his head. It turned out that the victim was not hung, but stretched, after which they practiced shooting.
hospital barracks
Medical experiments were carried out on the territory of Sachsenhausen. The camp provided medical educational establishments Germany anatomical demonstration objects.
prison building
The camp (and Gestapo) prison Zelenbau (German: Zellenbau) was built in 1936 and had a T-shape. Eighty solitary cells held special prisoners. Among them was the first commander of the Army, Regional General Stefan Grot-Rowiecki, who was shot in Sachsenhausen after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. There were also some leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, such as Stepan Bandera, Taras Bulba-Borovets, some of whom were released by the Germans at the end of 1944. Pastor Niemoller was also a prisoner of this prison. It also contained other persons of the clergy (about 600 people in total), statesmen and prominent politicians, senior military officials, as well as figures of the labor movement from Poland, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg and Germany. Currently, only one wing of the prison has survived, in five cells of which there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the times of National Socialism, which tells about the functioning of the prison. In some other cells (of General Grot-Rovetsky), memorial plaques were erected to the prisoners of the camp.
Groups of prisoners
According to available information, representatives of sexual minorities, among others, were kept in the camp. In the period from the beginning of the existence of the concentration camp until 1943, 600 carriers of the rose winkel died in the camp. From 1943 homosexuals worked mainly in the camp hospital as doctors or nurses. After the war, most of the surviving gay prisoners were unable to receive compensation from the German government.
Special camp of the NKVD
Former prisoners of war were kept here - Soviet citizens who were waiting for their return to Soviet Union, former members of the Nazi Party, social democrats dissatisfied with the communist system, as well as former German officers Wehrmacht and foreigners. The camp was renamed "Special Camp N° 1". "Special Camp N° 1" - the largest of the three special camps for internment in the Soviet zone of occupation - was closed in
Here were trained and retrained "cadres" for the newly created and already established camps. From August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps was located near the camp, which in March 1942 became part of the Management Group "D" (concentration camps) of the Main Administrative and Economic Directorate of the SS.
An underground resistance committee existed in the camp, which led a branched, well-hidden camp organization, which the Gestapo was unable to uncover.
On the night of April 20, 26,000 prisoners left Sachsenhausen - this is how this march began. Before we left the camp, we rescued the sick brothers from the infirmary. We got the wagon in which they were taken. There were 230 of us in total from six countries. Among the sick was Brother Arthur Winkler, who did much to expand the Kingdom work in the Netherlands. We Witnesses walked behind everyone and constantly encouraged each other not to stop. […] Although about half of the prisoners who participated in the death march either died or were killed along the way, all of the Witnesses survived.
Monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators
concentration camp map
Tower "A"
Tower "A" was a distribution control panel for current, which was fed to the grid and barbed wire that surrounded the camp in the form of a large triangle. It also housed the camp commandant's office. In addition, this tower was the checkpoint of the camp. There was a cynical inscription on the gate: "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"). In total, there were nineteen towers in the camp, which shot through the entire camp with their sectors.
Parade ground of checks
The place of roll calls, which were held 3 times a day. In the event of an escape, the prisoners had to stand on it until the escapee was captured. The parade ground was also a place of public executions - there was a gallows on it.
Shoe test track
Shoe test track
Nine different track surfaces around the parade ground, as conceived by the Nazis, were necessary for testing shoes. The selected prisoners had to overcome forty kilometers of distance every day at a different pace. In 1944, the Gestapo made this test more difficult, forcing the prisoners to overcome the distance in smaller shoes and with bags weighing ten, and often twenty to twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to such a quality check of shoes for terms ranging from one month to a year. For particularly serious crimes, indefinite punishment was imposed. Such crimes were repeated attempts to escape, escape, invasion of another barracks, sabotage, dissemination of messages by foreign transmitters, incitement to sabotage, pedophilia (Article 176), seduction or coercion of heterosexual men of the main camp into homosexual contacts, homosexual prostitution, committed by mutual agreement homosexual acts of heterosexual men. The same indefinite punishment awaited homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen (Articles 175 and 175a).
Station "Z"
Station "Z" - a building outside the camp, in which massacres were carried out. It contained a device for firing a shot in the back of the head, a crematorium for four furnaces, and a gas chamber added in 1943. Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing the registration at the camp, went there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims destroyed here.
Ditch for executions
The so-called "shooting gallery", with a shooting rampart, a mortuary and a mechanized gallows. The latter was a mechanism with a box into which the prisoner's legs were inserted, and a loop for his head. It turned out that the victim was not hung, but stretched, after which they practiced shooting.
hospital barracks
Nine barracks. A place to isolate patients. The “pathology” was also located here, in the three basements of which there were morgues. Medical experiments were carried out on its territory. The camp supplied German medical schools with anatomical demonstration objects.
prison building
Camp (and Gestapo) prison Zelenbau Zellenbau) was built in 1936 and had a T-shape. Eighty solitary cells held special prisoners. Among them was the first commander of the Army, Regional General Stefan Grot-Rowiecki, who was shot in Sachsenhausen after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. There were also some leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, such as Stepan Bandera, Taras Bulba-Borovets, some of whom were released by the Germans at the end of 1944. Pastor Niemoller was also a prisoner of this prison. It also contained other clerics (about 600 people in total), statesmen and prominent political figures, senior military officials, as well as leaders of the labor movement from Poland, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg and Germany. Currently, only one wing of the prison has survived, in five cells of which there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the times of National Socialism, which tells about the functioning of the prison. In some other cells (of General Grot-Rovetsky), memorial plaques were erected to the prisoners of the camp.
Groups of prisoners
According to available information, representatives of sexual minorities, among others, were kept in the camp. In the period from the beginning of the existence of the concentration camp until 1943, 600 carriers of the rose winkel died in the camp. From 1943 homosexuals worked mainly in the camp hospital as doctors or nurses. After the war, most of the surviving gay prisoners could not receive compensation from the German government.
Special camp of the NKVD
Sachsenhausen today
Memorial plaque in honor of over 100 Dutch resistance fighters executed in Sachsenhausen
Notes
Memories of prisoners
- Libster M. In the Crucible of Terror: The Story of a Man Who Passed Through the Fascist Terror. - Per. from English. - M.: Special book, 2007, 250, 192 p.: ill. ISBN 978-5-9797-0003-8
- Max Liebster: Hoffnungsstrahl im Nazisturm. Geschichte eines Holocaustüberlebenden; Esch-sur-Alzette, 2003; ISBN 2-87953-990-0
Links
- Lazar Medovar"Sachsenhausen concentration camp. To the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory and the liberation of the camp. Archived
- "Homosexuals of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp". Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved April 20, 2007.
- on the Jewish Virtual Library part of the
- Sachsenhausen among the Nazi camps (Germany), with list of its subcamps on a site is hosted by JewishGen, Inc.
- Photos and some history of Sachsenhausen by scrapbookpages.com
- Ex-Death Camp tells story of Nazi and Soviet horrors by New York Times
Coordinates : 52°45′57″ N. sh. 13°15′51″ E d. / 52.765833° N sh. 13.264167° E d.
The former Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen is located near Berlin, in fact, in the very center of the former Nazi Germany and the modern German state.
Sachsenhausen was established in 1936 near the city of Oranienburg, where since 1933 there was already a concentration camp - one of the first in Nazi Germany, which contained political opponents of the Nazis - mainly German communists and social democrats. A new camp was built next to the city.
Sachsenhausen became the main one in the network of camps German Reich: guards for other camps were trained here, the inspection and the residence of the central administration of SS concentration camps were located here. In total, under the general name "Sachsenhausen", the SS created 44 camp units.
There were 19 towers in the camp, from which the entire territory was shot through and electric current was supplied to the barbed wire fence. A three-meter stone wall surrounded the camp, forming a large triangle.
A “shoe test track” was laid in the camp, in fact, a sophisticated form of torment: nine different coatings were equipped around the parade ground, and the prisoners had to overcome a forty-kilometer distance every day with heavy bags on their backs.
Prisoners were starved, exhausted with overwork, poisoned by dogs, doused with ice-cold water in the cold, and shot. In the hospital barracks, savage medical experiments were carried out on prisoners: they tested poisons and various drugs on living people, inoculating typhoid and cholera.
There was also a gas chamber here: mainly Soviet prisoners of war were killed in it, the number of its victims is unknown, since no records were kept.
In total, in the Sachsenhausen camp for the nine years of its existence there were about 200 thousand prisoners, in some years up to 60 thousand people were kept in the camp at the same time. The death toll was over 100 thousand people.
The Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen was located near the city of Oranienburg in Germany, relatively close to its capital, Berlin.
Intending to liquidate the prisoners of the camp, the Nazi command sent them in columns to the shore of the Baltic Sea - on the "Death March", but Soviet troops managed to free them.
IN last days During the war, the camp leadership was ordered to destroy the traces of the Nazi crimes: to bring over 33 thousand prisoners ashore in columns of 400 people, load them onto barges, take them out to the open sea and flood them. The "death march" began on April 21, 1945. Hundreds of those who lagged behind were shot. The plan for the mass extermination of prisoners failed: in early May 1945, Soviet troops liberated the columns on the march.
According to other sources, 45,000 prisoners marched on the death march, and 7,000 of them died from exhaustion.
And before that, on April 22, 1945, the advanced units of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Army of the Polish Army (a military formation created in the USSR from citizens of Poland and Soviet Poles), which was under his command, liberated the Sachsenhausen camp, where about 3 thousand prisoners remained, including 1,400 women. On May 1, a mass rally of liberators and liberated people took place in the camp.
In 1961, an international museum for the crimes of fascism was opened in Sachsenhausen. Barracks, watchtowers, the main gate, the floor of the gas chamber, the crematorium furnaces and Station Z, the place of executions, have been preserved in the camp.
Next to the "Industrihof" - the workshops - there is a monument to the political prisoners of Sachsenhausen in the form of a high stele with red triangles applied to it: the same ones were sewn on the clothes of political prisoners of the regime.
In memory of the "Death March" along the entire path traveled by the prisoners in the 1970s. commemorative signs have been placed. Since that time, a commemorative procession has been held annually along the Death March line.
general information
Geographic location: East of Germany.Status: museum.
Administrative location: Upper Havel district, Brandenburg state, Germany.
Date of foundation: July 1936
Currency unit: euro.
Numbers
Total number of divisions: 44.Simultaneous number of prisoners: up to 60,000 people.
Total number of prisoners during the existence of the camp: 200,000 people.
Distance: 30 km north of Berlin.
Climate and weather
Moderate.
January average temperature: -3°C.
July average temperature: +18°С.
Average annual rainfall: 600 mm.
Relative humidity: 70%.
Attractions
■ Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Museum (1961).■ Memorial to the political prisoners of Sachsenhausen (1961).
■ Sculptural composition "Liberation" (1961).
■ A memorial stone in honor of the camp prisoners 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, and victims of Station Z.
■ Mass graves of camp prisoners.
■ Wailing Wall with memorial plaques from the governments and peoples of the countries whose citizens died in the Sachsenhausen camp.
Curious facts
■ With incredible difficulty and risk to their lives, the prisoners managed to smuggle a radio into the camp. The camp authorities knew about this, but never managed to find him: none of the prisoners betrayed the secret.■ Counterfeit money was printed in Sachsenhausen under the Nazi program to undermine the economy of Great Britain and the United States, called "Operation Bernhard". Jewish engravers, already experienced in making counterfeit money, made clichés of dollars and pounds sterling. Almost 140 million pounds were issued alone, and in 1943 it was distributed in Great Britain. The fakes were so different high quality that the Bank of England failed to identify them.
■ The slave labor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners was used in the Industrihof, the industrial sector of the camp, where they repaired aircraft. They also worked in a brick factory outside the camp on the Hohenzollern Canal: it was the largest brick factory
in the world, designed to provide building materials for Adolf Hitler's grandiose plans to rebuild Berlin.
■ In the Sachsenhausen camp, there was an underground resistance committee that ran an extensive, well-hidden camp organization, which the Gestapo was unable to uncover. The organization was led by Soviet prisoners of war.
■ The Sachsenhausen camp housed prisoners driven from 27 European countries.
Sachsenhausen- one of the main concentration camps of the Third Reich. Here was central administration, as well as The educational center for the SS guards of all other camps. The story is ironic: Sachsenhausen was created just at the moment when the Olympic Games calling on all participants for world peace.
One could write that Sachsenhausen is one of the very first concentration camps built by the Germans, but this would not be entirely true: the Germans built their first concentration camp back in 1904 in Namibia. And there, too, there was a genocide that claimed the lives of 75,000 people. And this genocide was also not without the participation of Germany. However, why go far for examples if the UN cannot cope with this today: since the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed almost 100 days of life million(!) man, only 15 years have passed. And somehow it becomes scary at the thought that this genocide could not be the last...
So, Sachsenhausen is the main concentration camp of the Third Reich. 
The very first of the infamous largest concentration camps Nazi Germany there was still Dachau, about which I once wrote. Hitler ordered its construction back in 1933, almost immediately after coming to power. And located near his beloved city of Munich. Dachau was the first concentration camp of the "new type", and therefore was to become exemplary in every sense.
Other largest and most famous concentration camps began to appear immediately after the other key person Nazi Germany - Heinrich Himmler - received from Hitler the post of head of all German police services. The first of these camps Sachsenhausen- Himmler built it not far from his house, announced it as a managerial one, and began to train SS personnel in it for work in other camps. After Sachsenhausen, concentration camps began to appear like mushrooms after rain: Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Auschwitz/Auschwitz...
Sachsenhausen is north of Berlin, close to the sleepy and boring German town of Oranienburg, terminus S1, or by commuter train. If it were not for the concentration camp located here, then probably no one would have known about the existence of such a city. From the station you need to walk another 20-30 minutes. The territory of the concentration camp is located on the outskirts of Oranienburg, at the end of the street with the symbolic name "street of nations". Along this street, up to the very concentration camp, there are quite a few residential German houses. And someone even lives in them, goes outside every day and sees next to him a fence from a concentration camp... 
At the entrance to the concentration camp itself, a fence was built at intervals. Apparently, there is some symbolism in the fact that this is no longer a place where you can’t leave. Right behind the fence information Center where you can get an audio guide and learn general information, then - a memorial museum and an alley leading directly to the camp. 
Entrance: 
Above the gate is the infamous phrase - "Arbeit macht frei" (work sets you free). This phrase was written on the gates of almost all concentration camps. The exception, perhaps, is Buchenwald, on the gate of which was written "Jedem das Seine" (to each his own / to each according to his merits). Despite the fact that both phrases date back to far pre-Hitler times (the last one goes back to the time of Cicero in general), both statements in the German mind evoke strong associations with concentration camps and massacres, and their use anywhere is still leads to powerful scandals in Germany. 
The territory of the camp has the shape of a triangle. Right at the entrance there was a parade ground of checks, where 3 times a day all the prisoners were called. Here, near the memorial wall, going in an arc, the so-called “shoe test” took place: at different speeds and with different weights, the prisoners had to overcome distances of 40 km daily, moving along the surface strewn with cobblestones, broken glass and etc. Here was the gallows. Executions were carried out in public, in front of everyone gathered on the parade ground. In the distance you can see a monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators. 
Along the fence, along the perimeter of the entire territory of the camp, stretches barbed wire through which the current was passed. The tower in the photo is a checkpoint, it is also the tower of the camp commandant's office. 
When crossing the zone outside the plate - shooting without warning. 
From all sides, the camp is surrounded by towers, which shot through the entire camp with their sectors.
Here previously there were residential barracks, behind them - a kitchen and a laundry room for prisoners. Now, as in Dachau, only a few museum barracks remain on the territory of Sachsenhausen, and those have been partially restored. In place of the rest - just huge plates with numbers and "commemorative stones" on top. 
Residential barracks for Jewish prisoners. A few years ago there was an attempt to set fire to the barracks by anti-Semites, since then - a genuine wooden barracks is located inside a modern building. 
Inside - rooms that recreate the conditions of those times. Bedroom: 
Dining room: 
Toilet: 
Bathroom: from the bowls that stand in the center of the room, water flowed in all directions in a fountain. The prisoners stood around this bowl and washed themselves in this way. 
In the buildings of the former prisoners' kitchen there is a camp museum: 
Anti-Semitic leaflets of the Hitler era (the inscription "subhuman"): 
Scoreboard, where there is a listing of the dead in Sachsenhausen. The design idea is a bit reminiscent of the children's memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. 
Multimedia room with a sea of detailed information: 
There was also a prison on the territory of the camp. From the very beginning, the Nazis in every possible way emphasized the purpose of the camp as an educational labor colony, and not as a prison. Therefore, those who did not comply with the rules established in the camp and were guilty of something were imprisoned in "special regime" prisons. In addition to the guilty, there were also "special" prisoners here: political figures, captured military leaders, etc. Among the "special" prisoners of Sachsenhausen was Stalin's son, Yakov Dzhugashvili. Here he died. 
A separate part of the camp was set aside for the so-called "place for isolation of the sick" - hospital barracks. Since there were categorically insufficient labor resources in the camp, and the camp was considered precisely a “work camp”, and not a “death camp”, like, say, Auschwitz, the SS men recognized the need to return the sick to the ranks, prevent and eliminate epidemics. Therefore, prisoners-physicians of non-Jewish origin were admitted to the medical service.
Here, in this part of the camp, there was a “pathology”, in the basements of which there were morgues. Medical experiments were carried out on its territory. Sachsenhausen supplied medical schools in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects. 
Corpses were rolled up this staircase to the morgue: 
Immediately outside the territory of the hospital barracks are mass graves of concentration camp prisoners: 
At the end of April 1945, the so-called "death march" began from Sachsenhausen, as well as from other concentration camps. The SS men planned to transfer the prisoners to the shores of the Baltic Sea, load them onto barges, take them out to the open sea and flood them. The sickest and most infirm, who were at that time in the hospital barracks, remained in the camp. Even after liberation, mass deaths continued due to spreading disease and starvation. The surviving prisoners of the camp buried their comrades in mass graves of 50 people. 
Memorial plaques from different countries now hang near the places of mass graves: 
A separate place in the camp was given to the so-called station "Z" ("last station" by the letter of the Latin alphabet). This is a place located outside the territory of the camp, in which massacres were carried out. He was carried out over the fence, because, according to the Nazis, the spectacle of the massacre should not interfere with the everyday work of the prisoners. Sachsenhausen was not in the full sense of the word a "death camp", like, for example, Auschwitz. The crematorium and gas chamber were built here only towards the end of the war. Prior to this, large groups to be destroyed were transported from here to the same Auschwitz. But it was in Sachsenhausen that some of the first and most sophisticated medical experiments over living people.
Near station "Z" there was a trench for mass executions. Here the technique of mass murder from firearms was practiced: during the execution, the SS tried to kill with one bullet as much as possible more people. There was also a crematorium, and even later a gas chamber was added. Below is a trench for execution. 
Near the trench and crematorium: 
Monument to the dead: 
After the end of the war, Sachsenhausen served as a Soviet camp for displaced persons and prisoners of war for another five years. It was the so-called special camp №7. It occupied 15% of the territory of the former concentration camp, and everyone was sitting here: former SS men, Wehrmacht officers, heads of German companies, anti-communists, criminals and people who accidentally fell under the disgrace of the NKVD, accused of crimes against the Soviet regime. There were old people, women and children. The museum of this part of history has been opened today. During the years of the existence of the GDR, this part of the history of Sachsenhausen, of course, was hidden. 
Involuntarily you start to compare. During the period of its existence, about 200 thousand people passed through the Nazi camp, half of them died. A significant part of the dead was shot or gassed. The numbers of "special camp No. 7" are also impressive: 60,000 prisoners, of which 12,000 died. Basically, from hunger, diseases and epidemics. But there were also shootings.
Next to the museum building there are barracks that have been preserved since those times. Inside the barracks there are bare walls with stands describing the life of prisoners. Inscriptions are visible on the bricks in some places, many in Russian. In a small brick building, in the cold and hunger, about thirty people huddled on boards. The barracks are located right a stone's throw from station "Z", so at night the prisoners could well hear how their fellow campers were being shot... 
Next to the barracks stands with a description of the biographical information of some of the prisoners. Ivan Nikolaevich Babushkin is a traitor to the Motherland... In 1950, Sachsenhausen was liquidated as a camp, some of the prisoners were sent to Siberia, and some were transferred to East German prisons. 
Meanwhile, life goes on... 
It continues right outside the walls of Sachsenhausen. Quite a hundred - one hundred and fifty meters from the walls of the camp there are quite good private houses. I wouldn't be surprised if their residents sometimes visit each other across the camp, if that's the case... 
And there, beyond the gates, freedom begins ... 
In a small park, right outside the gates of the concentration camp itself, there are monuments to all the dead. Monuments from governments, organizations, foundations and individuals from various countries. 
From the government of Russia - a monumental black obelisk. The inscription reads: "remember each of the sons and daughters of the Motherland tortured in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp." 
I do not want to place accents. History has done this for us. But one question involuntarily arises: why does it happen that Germany can admit its guilt for the fascist period, and we, in the case of Soviet times, do we still prefer to live by the principle "you shouldn't wash dirty linen in public"? Why have memorials dedicated to the prisons and concentration camps of the Gestapo, SS, NKVD and Stasi been opened here for a long time, and why is there only one memorial complex of this kind throughout Russia - the Museum of the History of Political Repressions in Perm, and even that with the money of the West? .. Why Germany does not want to forget the past, even the most shameful and difficult one?
Sachsenhausen is located 35 km north of Berlin. Functioning since 1936, the camp became a preparatory center for "guard detachments" used to monitor the newly formed concentration camps. A certain "hierarchy" was used among the prisoners of Sachsenhausen: at the top were criminals (rapists and murderers), then communists (red triangles), homosexuals (pink triangles) and at the very bottom Jews (yellow triangles).
Article: Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen was located near Oranienburg, Germany (Oranienburg, Germany). There were mostly political prisoners there, from 1936 until the fall of the Third Reich in May 1945. After the Second World War, when Oranienburg fell into the Zone of Soviet occupation, Sachsenhausen was used until 1950 as a special camp of the 7th NKVD. Currently, the remaining buildings and the territory of the camp, which have received the status of a museum, are available for visits.
Sachsenhausen is located 35 km north of Berlin. Functioning since 1936, the camp became a preparatory center for "guard detachments" used to monitor the newly formed concentration camps. A certain "hierarchy" was used among the prisoners of Sachsenhausen: at the top were criminals (rapists and murderers), then communists (red triangles), homosexuals (pink triangles) and at the very bottom Jews (yellow triangles).
The task force of Sachsenhausen prisoners was used for heavy bricklaying work in line with Albert Speer's vision for the rebuilding of Berlin. In general, Sachsenhausen was not originally a death camp, and systematic killings were carried out in camps to the east. In 1942 big number Jews were moved to Auschwitz. However, the construction of a gas chamber and ovens on the orders of Sachsenhausen commandant Anton Kaindl in March 1943 provoked the start of massacres in this camp.
The main gate of Sachsenhausen, or Guard Tower "A", was equipped with an 8-millimeter machine gun "Maxim". On the gate hung the infamous slogan "Work sets you free" ("Arbeit Macht Frei"). Between 1936 and 1945, approximately 200,000 people passed through the camp. On the huge triangular checkpoint (Apelplatz), thousands of prisoners lined up for the morning and evening roll call. The camp barracks of detention zone number I, which had a semicircular configuration, fanned out towards the base of the parade ground. At a standardly located barrack, its central part was intended for washing, and a room with toilet bowls and a right and left wing were also provided, where prisoners slept in terrible cramped quarters.
In Sachsenhausen there was a hospital barracks where the sick were isolated and medical experiments were performed. The camp also had a kitchen and laundry facilities. In 1938, Sachsenhausen was expanded; to the northeast of the entrance gate, an additional so-called. "small camp" In 1941, another additional area, the Sonder camp, was used for special prisoners who, at the behest of the Nazi regime, were to be isolated.
The movement of prisoners was patrolled by guards and dogs. Sachsenhausen was surrounded by an electric fence, and there was also a so-called. "death lane", the transition for which meant for the prisoner immediate execution by the guard without warning. There was a whole system of rewards, including additional leave, for those who managed to kill prisoners who intentionally or accidentally wandered into the death zone.
In Sachsenhausen, the Nazis provided a track for testing shoes. The prisoners sentenced to this torture had to overcome distances of 40 km every day from a month to a year around the parade ground with different special coatings in order to test the strength of shoes. Since 1944, prisoners were additionally loaded with a weight of up to 25 kg. Moreover, for especially serious violations, including homosexuality, torture with shoes was appointed indefinitely.
It is known that from the moment Sachsenhausen was founded until 1943, about 600 representatives of sexual minorities died within the walls of the camp. Since 1943, the majority of prisoners with pink triangles have been doctors or nurses in a hospital attached to the camp. At the end of World War II, almost all the surviving gay prisoners were deprived of compensation from the German government.
About 30 thousand inhabitants of Sachsenhausen died from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, pneumonia, etc. Many were executed, including on a terrible mechanized gallows, and someone died from brutal medical experiments. On April 21, 1945, the planned death march began, but the mass extermination of prisoners did not take place. In early May, the columns on the march were liberated by Soviet troops.
In August 1945, Sachsenhausen turned into a special camp of the 7th NKVD, which contained Nazi criminals. By 1948, the camp was renamed Special Camp 1 and began to be used for internees in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany. During its existence, until 1950, about 60 thousand people passed through it.
As of 2012, Sachsenhausen functions as a museum. Several of the camp's buildings remain, and some other buildings, including the guard towers, the camp entrance, the crematorium ovens, and the barracks, have been restored.
