About 35km north of Berlin, Sachsenhausen was built by prisoners and opened in 1936 as a prototype for other camps. By 1945, some 200,000 people passed through its sinister gates, most of them political opponents, gypsies, Jews and POWs. By 1945, tens of thousands had died here from hunger, exhaustion, illness, exposure, medical experiments and executions. A tour of the memorial site with its remaining buildings and exhibits will leave no one untouched.
Unless you’re on a guided tour, pick up a leaflet (€0.50) or, better yet, an audioguide (€3, including leaflet) at the visitor centre to get a better grasp of this huge site. Avoid visiting on a Monday when all indoor exhibits are closed.
The approach to the camp takes you past photographs taken just before the camp's liberation in April 1945. Just beyond the perimeter, the Neues Museum (New Museum) has exhibits on Sachsenhausen's precursor, the nearby Oranienburg concentration camp, and on the history of the memorial site.
Proceed to Tower A , the entrance gate, cynically labelled, as at Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Sets You Free). Beyond here is the roll-call area, with barracks and other buildings fanning out beyond. Off to the right, two restored barracks illustrate the abysmal living conditions prisoners endured. Barrack 38 has an exhibit on Jewish inmates, while Barrack 39 graphically portrays daily life at the camp. The prison, where famous inmates included Hitler's would-be assassin Georg Elser and the minister Martin Niemöller, is next door. Exhibits in the infirmary barracks on the other side of the roll-call area illustrate the camp's poor medical care and the horrific medical experiments performed on prisoners.
Towards the centre, the Prisoners' Kitchen chronicles key moments in the camp's history. Exhibits include instruments of torture, the original gallows that stood in the roll-call area and, in the cellar, heart-wrenching artwork scratched into the wall by prisoners.
The most sickening displays, though, are about the extermination area called Station Z , which was separated from the rest of the grounds and consisted of an execution trench, a crematorium and a gas chamber. The most notorious mass executions took place In autumn 1941 when over 10,000 Soviet POWs were executed here in the course of four weeks.
In April 1945, the Nazis evacuated the camp in advance of the Red Army. Thousands of prisoners succumbed during this so-called 'death march', whose victims are commemorated by a plaque as you approach the camp (at the corner of Strasse der Einheit and Strasse der Nationen).
After the war, the Soviets held some 60,000 German POWs in what was now Speziallager No 7 (Special Camp No 7); about 12,000 died of malnutrition and disease before it was dissolved in 1950. There are exhibits about this period in a new building and two original camp barracks in the far right corner of the grounds.
After 1950, Soviet and East German military used the grounds for another decade until the camp became a memorial site in 1961.
Note that no food is available at the memorial site, although a vending machine in the Neues Museum dispenses hot drinks. There are cafes, bakeries and small markets outside Oranienburg train station.
