Here, “personnel” were trained and retrained for newly created and already established camps. Since August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the “Concentration Camp Inspectorate” was located near the camp, which in March 1942 became part of Management Group “D” ( concentration camps) Main Administrative and Economic Directorate of the SS.
There was an underground resistance committee in the camp, which led an extensive, well-covered camp organization, which the Gestapo failed to uncover.
On the night of April 20, 26,000 prisoners left Sachsenhausen - this is how the march began. Before leaving the camp, we rescued the sick brothers from the infirmary. We got a cart on which they were transported. In total there were 230 of us from six countries. Among the sick was Brother Arthur Winkler, who did much to expand the work of the Kingdom in the Netherlands. We Witnesses walked behind everyone else 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 Witnesses survived.
Monument to Soviet Soldiers-Liberators
Concentration camp map
Tower "A"
Tower “A” was a distribution panel for controlling the current, which was supplied to the grid and barbed wire, encircling the camp in the form of a large triangle. It also housed the camp commandant's office. In addition, this tower served as a camp checkpoint. On the gate there was a cynical inscription: “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”). In total, the camp had nineteen towers, which, with their sectors, shot through the entire camp.
Parade area of checks
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 for public executions - there was a gallows on it.
Shoe testing track
Shoe testing track
Nine different surfaces of the track around the parade ground, according to the Nazis, were needed to test the shoes. The selected prisoners had to cover forty-kilometer distances at different paces every day. In 1944, the Gestapo made this test more difficult, forcing prisoners to cover the distance in smaller shoes and with bags weighing ten, and often twenty-twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to undergo a similar shoe quality check for periods ranging from one month to a year. For especially serious crimes, indefinite punishment was imposed. Such crimes included repeated attempts to escape, escape, intrusion into another barracks, sabotage, dissemination of messages from 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 consent homosexual acts of heterosexual men. The same indefinite punishment awaited homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen (Articles 175 and 175a).
Station "Z"
Station “Z” is a building outside the camp where the massacres took place. It contained a device for firing a shot to the back of the head, a crematorium with four ovens and a gas chamber added in 1943. Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration at the camp, they went there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.
Ditch for executions
The so-called "shooting range", with a shooting range, a morgue 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 hanged, but stretched, after which they practiced shooting.
Hospital barracks
Nine barracks. Place for isolation of patients. The “pathology” was also located here, in the three basements of which there were morgues. On its territory were held medical experiments. The camp supplied medical educational establishments Germany with anatomical demonstration objects.
Prison building
Camp (and Gestapo) prison Zelenbau (German) Zellenbau) was built in 1936 and had a T-shape. Eighty solitary confinement cells housed special prisoners. Among them was the first commander of the Army, Regional General Stefan Groth-Rowecki, who was shot in Sachsenhausen after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. Some leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement were also located here, such as Stepan Bandera, Taras Bulba-Borovets, some of whom were released by the Germans at the end of 1944. Pastor Niemöller was also a prisoner of this prison. It also contained other clergy (about 600 people in total), government officials and prominent politicians, senior military officials, as well as workers' movement figures from Poland, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg and Germany. Currently, only one wing of the prison has survived, in five cells there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the times of National Socialism, telling about the functioning of the prison. In some other cells (General Grot-Rowecki) there are memorial plaques to the camp prisoners.
Groups of prisoners
According to available information, representatives of sexual minorities, among others, were kept in the camp. Between the beginning of the concentration camp and 1943, 600 Rose Winkel bearers died in the camp. Since 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.
NKVD special camp
Sachsenhausen today
Memorial plaque honoring the more than 100 Dutch resistance fighters executed in Sachsenhausen
Notes
Memoirs of prisoners
- Liebster M. In the crucible of horror: the story of a man who went through fascist terror. - Per. from English - M.: Special book, 2007, 250g, 192 pp.: 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"Concentration camp Sachsenhausen. To the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory and 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 (English)
- Sachsenhausen among the Nazi camps (Germany), with list of its subcamps on a site is hosted by JewishGen, Inc (English)
- Photos and some history of Sachsenhausen by scrapbookpages.com (English)
- Ex-Death Camp tells story of Nazi and Soviet horrors by New York Times (English)
Coordinates: 52°45′57″ n. w. 13°15′51″ E. d. / 52.765833° N. w. 13.264167° E. d.
This post is not painted in bright colors on the Berlin landscapes. We will talk about (German: Sachsenhausen). Today I visited there again and again felt what it means to be a concentration camp. Anger and sadness overwhelm me, because everything that I saw there was created by human hands to destroy their own kind. Created thoroughly, with skill, with confidence in the task...
... The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936 by the hands of prisoners of other camps - Esterwegen, Lichtenburg and Columbia (German: Esterwegen, Lichtenburg, Berlin-Columbia). The order for construction was given personally by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, and the architectural project was led by Bernhard Kuiper. He created a geometrically verified design, which was later called "geometry of total terror".
The ancient town of Oranienburg (German: Oranienburg) is located near Berlin. At first it's just a town. Cute, well-groomed, unhurried in a German way, provincial... However, if you make your way from the station, then from the so familiar, “prosperous Germany” you end up... in another place. It is separated from the world by a fence with entrance holes. “Memorial” says a large inscription on this fence.
Coming out of information center and after walking a hundred meters, you see left hand entrance with a small clock tower. The clock has stopped... It is quite rare to see a standing clock in Germany - a symbol of stopped time. Next is a neat light green gate. You approach the gate and see the inscription that has frightened you since childhood: “Arbeit macht frei”... Blinded, you realize where you have come.
The first thing that catches your eye is the monument to the victims of madness. He is silent about the fate of thousands and thousands of those who said goodbye to life on this territory, which came from the pen of a perfectionist psychopath. In the remaining few buildings you are overwhelmed by the names, stories, and tragedies of the people whose path led them to Sachsenhausen. Fates, destinies, destinies... names, surnames, dates of deaths, so rarely going beyond the mid-forties...
The silence around rings louder than any alarm. The voices of visitors drown in it, as if the earth itself resists the everyday bustle. And then a crematorium, an execution ditch, pathological rooms and barracks for the sick... In righteous anger you flare up: “Why do I need all this?! Why should I know this? The answer to this is a great and simple phrase carved in a hall built back in the GDR: “Don’t forget and don’t let it be forgotten!” Lowering your head, you leave the complex seemingly the same as you were, but still matured for an eternity.
Photo: Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten
In 2001, the Museum of the History of Soviet Special Camp No. 7 was opened on the territory of the Sachsenhausen memorial. It was intended for internees in occupied Germany. Almost all the premises of the camp - wooden barracks, the camp prison, utility rooms - began to serve their function again after the liberation of Germany from Nazism. From 1945 to 1950, during denazification, from 12,000 to 16,000 thousand prisoners per year were kept here in unbearable conditions. In total, during the entire post-war period, about 60,000 prisoners were kept in the camp. 12,000 people died here from disease, hunger and unbearable conditions.
Not far from Berlin, in the city of Oranienburg, is the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where about 100,000 people died. This terrible place is one of the symbols of Hitler’s machine for exterminating people. Now it is open to visitors every day from early morning.
Official site .
Gallery of archival photographs
We got there by train from Lichtenberg station, about 20 minutes by train. Then it’s a 15-minute walk around the city. It’s very easy to find your way there - there are signs everywhere to the camp and the castle, although we never got to the castle.
 |
| The inscription on the gate in Sachsausen "Work sets you free" |
Phrase "Arbeit mach frei" was placed as a slogan at the entrance of many Nazi concentration camps, either as a mockery or to give false hope. Despite the fact that the use of inscriptions of this type above the entrances to various institutions was common in Germany, this particular slogan was placed on the orders of SS General Theodor Eicke, head of the German concentration camp system, second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp.
 |
| Tower A - 1936 |
 |
| Banshnya A - 2014 |
In 1933, immediately after Hitler came to power, one of the first early concentration camps was founded in Oranienburg. After the arson of the Reichstag on February 28, 1933, democratic rights were abolished; now it was allowed to arrest without trial, for an unlimited period, persons called enemies of the nation and state. Representatives state power They imprisoned political and ideological opponents in camps. One of these was the camp in Oranienburg.
In 1936, the Second Olympic Games were held in Berlin under the slogans "Oh Sport, you are Progress", "Oh Sport, you are the World" and at the same time, 30 km from it, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is being built and inhabited. This camp was the only one that arose from scratch, that is, nothing was rebuilt for it. Heinrich Himmler ordered the chief SS architect Cooper to come up with a model camp. Cooper's idea was that the entire camp could be observed from one point. From the main observation tower - Tower A, the lines of barracks diverged in a semicircle, like the rays of the sun. And if you look at the camp from above, it will be a picture of a sunrise, and the machine gun mounted on the tower easily shot through all the lines.
 |
| View from Tower A |
The Nazis did not classify Sachsenhausen as a death camp, like Auschwitz, for example, but hundreds of thousands of prisoners died here from hunger, cold, overwork, disease, medical experiments, or were killed by fascist executioners.
In the first years of the camp's existence, mainly German political prisoners were kept here. But as Nazism grew in the country, the number of prisoners constantly increased and, if in 1937 there were 2,500 people, then after "Kristallnacht" On November 10, 1938, the number tripled due to newly arrived Jews. Ultimately, Sachsenhausen became a place for imprisoning Jews, gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals, and countless priests. And since 1939, the camp was replenished with prisoners from the occupied territories, including great amount Soviet soldiers. Among the significant figures, the son of J.V. Stalin, Yakov Dzhugashvili, as well as General Karbyshev, was imprisoned here. However, at present, thanks to declassified archival documents, it was possible to identify many inconsistencies in the fate of Yakov, so, apparently, he was really killed in battle, and in captivity he completely impersonated him another man.
In September-November 1941, transports with Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive in Sachsenhausen one after another. Half-dead people sat and stood in the freight car, huddled closely together; Among them were those who died on the way. Arrivals were sent to "industrial" the yard where they were shot under the howl of powerful radios. Often prisoners were forced to sing Russian folk songs in chorus.
At the same time, in the fall of 1941, an unprecedented action of mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was carried out in Sachsenhausen - the one-time execution of 18,000 soldiers and officers brought from eastern front. They were killed one by one with shots to the back of the head. This, which had no analogues in military history, the cynical murder of prisoners of war the SS called "Russian action". The heroes of this action, the SS men, were rewarded with a vacation in Sorrento.
Concentration camp prisoners worked for long grueling hours, living conditions were terrible, prisoners worked in military factories, construction work. One of the unique activities was the well-established production of counterfeit money - Operation "Bernhard": the best artists and counterfeiters were collected from all the concentration camps, who were in Sachsenhausen counterfeited American, British and Soviet money, thereby undermining the economies of these countries.
Sachsenhausen was equipped with mobile and stationary crematoria, gas chambers, gallows, and other instruments of death. The blockführers, led by the camp commandant, competed to improve these weapons. Everything that the thousands of prisoners of war brought to Sachsenhausen saw, according to the SS men, should have aroused fear in them.
Today, on the territory of the camp there are real barracks in which prisoners lived, including a hospital barrack where experiments were carried out on people. The SS men practiced studying the effects of poisons and toxic substances on the human body. There is also a track left for testing shoes. Prisoners, so-called tramplers, had to walk along a road strewn with stones with a heavy bag over their shoulders until their shoes wore out. The effects of the drug were also studied on them "Pervitin", thanks to to whom The German military and high command could not sleep for days on end, and did not feel any fear or pain.
 |
| Beds in barracks 38 |
 |
| Barak 38 |
 |
| Barak 38 |
The selfless actions of captured Soviet doctors who ended up in Sachsenhausen saved the lives of thousands of prisoners. They sheltered the sick in the infirmary, issued exemptions from hard work, diagnosed imaginary illnesses, the treatment of which required a long time. An experienced doctor Varnachev saved those who were exposed to "medical experiments". His colleague Dr. Brazhnikov, who spoke fluent German, was first a doctor in a barracks for the weak, many of whom owe their lives to him, and later the chief physician "Jewish" branch "Liberose", where he operated on sick Jews, despite the fact that this was prohibited by the SS.
At risk for own life The doctor Efim Gun treated the sick, saving them from ending up in a barracks for the weakened, from where they were then sent to the crematorium. As a Jew, he did not have the right to work as a doctor - he was a navvy. He provided assistance to the sick in the barracks in the evenings or at night. Efim met the war as a military doctor of the 3rd rank, the head of a front-line hospital. Having been surrounded, he refused to fly away with the division commander and remained with the wounded. The Nazis tortured him and tortured him, and then sent him to Sachsenhausen. On May 1, 1945, the Nazis killed him.
Death marches
By the end of the war, realizing that they would have to answer for everything they had done during the 12 years of the Third Reich, the Nazis began to destroy traces of their crimes.On April 21, 1945, the operation began "Death March". The Nazis planned to transfer over 30 thousand. prisoners to the Baltic coast, loaded onto barges, taken out to the open sea and scuttled. Those prisoners whom they did not have time to kill, they evacuated deep into the country, it was decided to take them away from the front line. Exhausted people walked hundreds of kilometers, almost without food or rest - the prisoners nicknamed this road "Death March".
 |
| Such memorial stones stand along the entire route of the Death March |
NKVD camp
In August 1945, three months after the end of the war and the liberation of Europe from National Socialism, the NKVD founded Special Camp No. 7 here. Most of the buildings - with the exception of the crematorium and the site mass shootings- used for the same purpose. Now these included those who belonged to the middle and lower echelons of the Nazi party nomenklatura, persons convicted by a Soviet military tribunal, but along with them - politically undesirable figures for the new leadership, and in addition, very young people and old people accused of having connections with Nazi regime, but in fact not involved in anything... Former prisoners of war were also kept here - Soviet citizens who were waiting to be returned to Soviet Union, former members of the Nazi Party, social democrats, dissatisfied with the socialist-communist social systemSince 1948, Sachsenhausen became Special Camp No. 1 - the largest NKVD camp in the zone of Soviet occupation of Germany. Until the closure of the camp in March 1950, a total of about 60 thousand people were held here, of whom at least 12 thousand died from hunger and disease. Former prisoners of war were kept here - Soviet citizens who were waiting to be returned to the Soviet Union, former members of the Nazi Party, Social Democrats dissatisfied with the socialist-communist social system, as well as former German officers Wehrmacht and foreigners.
Today there is also a museum on its territory dedicated to these events.
“Concentration camps. Road to hell"- six-episode documentary Fyodor Stukov about Nazi concentration camps. The film depicts the entire history of the Nazi camps.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was located in the small town of Oranienburg near Berlin. Now there is a memorial and museum dedicated to this tragic page of history. This story will be about him.
The place is definitely very depressing and oppressive. The heavy rain that poured all day intensified the gloomy feelings, but after thinking about how much torment and suffering the prisoners of this death factory endured, we simply had no right to complain.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936. Due to its close location 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 department of the SS that managed the system of all concentration camps of the Third Reich, was transferred here from Berlin. Here, “personnel” were trained and retrained for newly created and already established camps.
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 be replenished with more and more members of groups that were inferior, according to National Socialist criteria, in racial or biological aspects. By 1939 it arrived a large number of citizens from occupied European states. Tens of thousands of people died from starvation, disease, cold, medical experimentation, forced labor and abuse. Many were victims of systematic extermination operations carried out by the SS. Thousands of other prisoners died in death marches following the evacuation of the camp in late April 1945.
However, this is not the end of the history of Sachsenhausen as a camp. In May 1945, Soviet intelligence services began construction of ten special camps in the territories occupied by the Soviet Union. In August 1945, Special Camp No. 7 of the NKVD was transferred here, which three years later was renamed Special Camp No. 1. Almost all buildings were used by it, except for the crematorium and buildings where mass executions took place. More than 60,000 people passed through this camp. At least 12,000 of whom died from harsh prison conditions, starvation and exhaustion. It was closed in 1950, but many 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 simply be 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 would like to hope that this will never happen again, that people will become more humane and kinder, and learn something from this lesson of fate.
Due to heavy rain, it was not possible to see Oranienburg itself at all. We headed 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 was “Work sets you free.”
4. The main entrance to the territory passes through Tower "A". In the camp, all the towers were named alphabetically. The SS administrative offices were located here. The tower itself was a symbol of the prisoners’ complete submission to the SS power. Its purpose did not change much during the NKVD camp.
5. The entire camp is shaped like a triangle with Tower "A" at the base. There is a stone wall along the perimeter, and in front of it is an electrified barbed wire fence.
If a prisoner walked behind the sign (even by accident), he could be shot without warning.
Often prisoners who were unable to withstand the painful existence in the camp specifically 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 checkpoint where prisoners went to roll call several times a day. This was also not an easy ordeal, which could sometimes last for hours, in any weather. In the event of an escape, the prisoners could stand here all night until the fugitive was discovered. Newcomers to the camp were forced to stand for hours without touching each other. Those who expected punishment stood until the sentence was carried out. Sometimes on bent legs with outstretched arms.
10. At the end of the path there was a gallows, so the parade ground was also a place of public punishment and torture. A memorial plaque is visible in its place on the left.
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 on it for hours, often with extra weight (sandbags) or in smaller shoes.
There were 9 watchtowers along the perimeter, manned by three guards.
25. Literally two years after the concentration camp was built, the barracks within the “triangle” were already overcrowded. The supply 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 was where most of the Jews were settled until they were transported to Auschwitz in 1943.
In place of the destroyed barracks there are only stones.
23. But several were restored, and they housed exhibitions telling about the life of camp prisoners in general and Jews in particular.
Sometimes the number of prisoners living in one barrack reached up to four hundred. At the same time, they were given only 30 minutes to get up, wash, get a portion of food and go to roll call. They washed in this room. From eight to ten people stood around such a bowl from which water flowed like a fountain. Everyone was in a hurry, it was very crowded.
A utility room where mops, brushes and other cleaning items were stored. Sometimes it turned into a torture room, just like the bathroom, for that matter. The prisoners were locked here, ordered to stand still and not lean on the walls. Sometimes so many people were locked here that they simply suffocated.
They were allowed to go to the toilet twice a day, in the morning and in the evening after roll call.
Living quarters for 250 prisoners.
Dining room.
This barrack has been restored and many elements in it have been preserved from the 30s. For example, paint on the ceiling. The lightest is the oldest. Most likely preserved from the time the barracks were built. The darkest is from when the memorial was first opened.
Restroom.
The dishes were part of the small number of personal belongings prisoners were allowed. Inscriptions - dates and places of conclusions of the owners. 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 prison territory.
Celenbau Prison was built in 1936. It was used not only as a camp, but also as a Gestapo prison.
It was one of the first structures erected on the territory of the camp. It was built by prisoners according to SS sketches.
Eighty solitary confinement cells housed special prisoners: government and prominent political figures, senior military officials, as well as leaders of the labor movement from different countries. Among them was Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili.
The building was T-shaped, but currently only one wing remains.
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 National Socialist era, telling about the functioning of the prison.
Some other cells have memorial plaques to camp prisoners.
The prison was surrounded by a wall, so for the prisoners it was some kind of secret place of murders and brutal violence. When Sachsenhausen became a Special Camp there was still a prison here.
14. The obelisk was erected in 1961. The 18 triangles symbolize the countries from which the concentration camp prisoners came. Political and foreign prisoners were required to wear red triangles on their clothing.
At the foot of the obelisk there is a monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators. Two liberated concentration camp prisoners next to Red Army soldiers.
12, 13. On the right is the former kitchen. On the left is the former prisoners' laundry, now a cinema where a documentary film about the camp is shown.
The kitchen building was built by camp prisoners 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 there were, the worse they were fed.
There are drawings on the walls from the time of the camp.
A cold room in which perishable foods were stored.
The original staircase is no longer in use. During reconstruction, the building plan was slightly changed.
16. Ditch for executions. We are already outside the triangle.
15. In the spring of 1942, prisoners were ordered to build a large building that contained a crematorium, morgue, gas chambers and other mass murder devices. 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, were sent there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.
Monument to the dead.
"And I know one thing - the Europe of the future cannot exist without honoring the memory of all those, regardless of their nationalities, who at that time were killed with contempt and hatred, tortured to death, forced to starve, gassed, burned and hanged..." ( Andrzej Szczypiorski, prisoner of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1995)
Memorial installation in memory of the victims Soviet soldiers, who were killed in the back of the head, drowning out the shots with loud music. A special device was made for this. Before death, prisoners underwent a so-called medical examination so that their height could be measured. More than ten thousand people died this way.
Buildings that housed workshops in which prisoners were forced to work.
17. Pathological department.
Here, medical experiments were carried out on prisoners of Sachsenhausen, testing new types of poisons, toxic substances, including gases, drugs against burns, typhus, and other injuries and diseases.
Experiments on the effects of chemicals on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. So, to kill prisoners, the SS decided to use poisonous gases, which were used to destroy garden pests. But they did not know the lethal dose for people, and in order to determine it, they experimented on people herded into the basement, changing the dose and observing when death would occur.
Sachsenhausen supplied medical educational 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 here were more like observers. Prisoner doctors of non-Jewish origin were allowed to treat patients.
This ended our visit to Sachsenhausen. The rain did not stop and I wanted to catch the next train to Berlin. I'm sure there's a lot we didn't see. The museum of the NKVD special camp was examined very superficially, and the sea of information presented is absolutely impossible to read and view. It's probably best to explore the memorial with a guide, but the audio guide is also quite interesting and informative. If you're in Berlin, it's definitely worth coming here.
Until 1950, it existed as an NKVD transit camp for displaced persons.
Encyclopedic YouTube
1 / 2
✪ Sachsenhausen concentration camp: history, camp life and cruel orders
✪ Auschwitz death camp. Poland. Part 1
Subtitles
Story
Here, “personnel” were trained and retrained for newly created and already established camps. Since August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the “Inspection 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.
There was an underground resistance committee in the camp, which led an extensive, well-covered camp organization, which the Gestapo failed to uncover. The leader of the underground is General Zotov Alexander Semenovich (see below the memoirs of prisoners “The Invisible Front”.
On the night of April 20, 26,000 prisoners left Sachsenhausen - this is how the march began. Before leaving the camp, we rescued the sick brothers from the infirmary. We got a cart on which they were transported. In total there were 230 of us from six countries. Among the sick was Brother Arthur Winkler, who did much to expand the work of the Kingdom in the Netherlands. We Witnesses walked behind everyone else 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 Witnesses survived.
Concentration camp map
Tower "A"
Tower “A” was a distribution panel for controlling the current, which was supplied to the mesh 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 served as a camp checkpoint. There was a cynical inscription on the gate: “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”). In total, the camp had nineteen towers, which, with their sectors, shot through the entire camp.
Parade area of checks
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 for public executions - there was a gallows on it.
Shoe testing track
Nine different surfaces of the track around the parade ground, according to the Nazis, were needed to test the shoes. The selected prisoners had to cover forty-kilometer distances at different paces every day. In 1944, the Gestapo made this test more difficult, forcing prisoners to cover the distance in smaller shoes and with bags weighing ten, and often twenty-twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to undergo a similar shoe quality check for periods ranging from one month to a year. For especially serious crimes, indefinite punishment was imposed. Such crimes included repeated attempts to escape, escape, intrusion into another barracks, sabotage, dissemination of messages from 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 consent homosexual acts of heterosexual men. The same indefinite punishment awaited homosexuals arriving in Sachsenhausen (Articles 175 and 175a).
“Shoe test” - officer (chrome) boots were subjected to ordinary “breaking in” for future potential owners. The prisoners endured it for at most - 1 month, because their legs were swollen and abraded until they bled. On the day it was supposed to carry (?) pairs of boots.
Station "Z"
Station “Z” is a building outside the camp where the massacres took place. It contained a device for firing a shot to the back of the head, a crematorium with four ovens and a gas chamber added in 1943. Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration at the camp, were sent there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.
Ditch for executions
The so-called "shooting range", with a shooting range, a morgue 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 hanged, but stretched, after which they practiced shooting.
Hospital barracks
Medical experiments were carried out on the territory of Sachsenhausen. The camp supplied medical schools in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects.
Prison building
The camp (and Gestapo) prison Zelenbau (German: Zellenbau) was built in 1936 and was T-shaped. Eighty solitary confinement cells housed special prisoners. Among them is the first commander of the Home Army, General Stefan Grot-Rowecki, who was shot in Sachsenhausen after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. Some leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, such as Stepan Bandera and Taras Bulba-Borovets, were also located here, some of whom were released by the Germans at the end of 1944. Pastor Niemöller was also a prisoner of this prison. It also contained other clergy (about 600 people in total), statesmen and prominent political figures, senior military officials, as well as workers' movement figures from Poland, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg and Germany. Currently, only one wing of the prison has survived, in five cells there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the times of National Socialism, telling about the functioning of the prison. In some other cells (General Grot-Rowecki) there are memorial plaques to the camp prisoners.
Groups of prisoners
According to available information, representatives of sexual minorities, among others, were kept in the camp. Between the beginning of the concentration camp and 1943, 600 carriers of pink Winkel died in the camp. Since 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.
NKVD special camp
Former prisoners of war were kept here - Soviet citizens who were waiting to be returned to the Soviet Union, former members of the Nazi Party, Social Democrats dissatisfied with the socialist-communist social system, as well as former German Wehrmacht officers and foreigners. The camp was renamed “Special Camp No. 1”. “Special camp No. 1” - the largest of the three special camps for internees in the Soviet zone of occupation - was closed in 1950.
Sachsenhausen today
In 1956, the government of the GDR established a national memorial on the territory of the camp, which was inaugurated on April 23, 1961. The plan was to dismantle most of the original buildings and install an obelisk, statue and meeting place in accordance with the views of the then government. The role of political resistance has been overemphasized and singled out compared to other groups.
Currently, the site of Sachsenhausen is open to the public as a museum and memorial. Several buildings and structures have survived or been reconstructed: watchtowers, concentration camp gates, crematorium ovens and camp barracks (on the Jewish part).
In 1992, a memorial plaque was unveiled in memory of the homosexuals who died in the concentration camp. In 1998, the museum opened an exhibition dedicated to Jehovah's Witnesses - concentration camp prisoners. In August 2001, an exhibition dedicated to the NKVD special camp opened.
