Sachsenhausen concentration camp

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Arbeit Macht Frei gate

Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and April 1945. It was named after the Sachsenhausen quarter, part of the town of Oranienburg. The camp is sometimes referred to as Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. From August 1945 until the spring of 1950 it was a Soviet special camp.

Sachsenhausen under the Nazis

The camp was established in 1936. It was located at the edge of Berlin, which gave it a special position among the German concentration camps: the administrative centre of all concentration camps was located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen became a training centre for SS officers (who would often be sent to oversee other camps afterwards). Executions took place at Sachsenhausen, especially those of Russian prisoners of war, either by firing squad or in the gas chamber constructed in 1943. While some Jews were executed at Sachsenhausen and many died there, the Jewish inmates of the camp were relocated to Auschwitz in 1942. Sachsenhausen was not designed as a death camp - instead, the systematic mass murder of Jews was conducted primarily in camps to the east.

On the front entrance gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei [German: "Work Makes You Free"]. About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Some 100,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition or pneumonia from the freezing cold. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal medical experimentation. Amongst those executed were the commandos from Operation Musketoon and Grand Prix motor racing champion, William Grover-Williams. The wife and children of Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, members of the Wittelsbach family, were held in the camp from October, 1944 to April, 1945, before being transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. Reverend Martin Niemöller, a critic of the Nazis and author of the poem First they came..., was also a prisoner at the camp. Herschel Grynszpan, who inadvertedly caused the Nazis to wage their Kristallnacht pogrom, is thought to have been an inmate for a time as well.

Sachsenhausen was the site of the largest counterfeiting operation ever. The Nazis forced Jewish artisans to produce forged American and British currency. Over one billion dollars in fake cash was recovered. The Germans were unable to put their plan into action. This fake currency is considered very valuable by collectors.

Many women were among the inmates of Sachsenhausen and its subcamps. According to SS files, more than 2000 women lived in Sachsenhausen, guarded by female SS staff (Aufseherin). Camp records show that there was one male SS soldier for every ten inmates and for every ten male SS there was a woman SS. Several subcamps for women were established in Berlin, including in Neukolln.

Prisoners, 19 Dec 1938

With the advance of the Allied forces in the spring of 1945, Sachsenhausen was prepared for evacuation. On April 20-21, the camp's SS staff ordered 33,000 inmates on a forced march westward. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive this death march; those who collapsed en route were shot by the SS. On April 22, 1945, the camp's remaining 3000 inmates, including 1,400 women were liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

Soviet special camp

In August 1945 the Soviet Special Camp No. 7[Soviet Special Camp No. 7] [Brandenburg Memorial Foundation] was moved to the area of the former protective custody camp. Most of the buildings, with the exception of the crematoria and extermination facilities, were still used for the same purposes. Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, as were political undesirables, arbitrarily arrested prisoners and inmates sentenced by the Soviet Military Tribunal. By 1948, Sachsenhausen, now renamed Special Camp No. 1, was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. By the closing of the camp in the spring of 1950, there had been approximately 60,000 people imprisoned there, at least 12,000 of whom died of malnutrition and disease.

The Sachsenhausen camp today

At present, the site of the Sachsenhausen camp is open to the public. Several buildings and structures survive or have been reconstructed, including guard towers, the camp entrance, crematory ovens and the camp barracks. A museum featuring artefacts and "subversive" artwork has been constructed at the site. A large memorial obelisk was erected in the camp after the war by the USSR.

Related article

• List of subcamps of Sachsenhausen

References

• Falk Pingel, Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, New York: Macmillan, 1990, vol. 4, p.1321-1322. Photo
• [General information on the Sachsenhausen concentration camp] web site of the [Brandenburg Memorial Foundation: Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen]

Further reading

• Finn, Gerhard: Sachsenhausen 1936-1950 : Geschichte eines Lagers. Bad Münstereifel: Westkreuz-Verlag, 1988. ISBN 3-922131-60-3
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• Ian J. Sanders [Photos of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp]. A selection of photos from this URL are available in a book, “The Ghosts of Berlin - Images of a Divided City” by Sanders.
• [History of the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg camp] on the Jewish Virtual Library part of the [American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise]
• [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]

Footnotes