Today we spent four hours walking throughout the remains of the Sachsenhausen Nazi Concentration Camp with a local tour guide.
Established in 1938 just outside of Berlin, Sachsenhausen became the center of the whole concentration camp system that included the more widely recognized Auschwitz and Krakow camps in Poland. Among other things, this camp was a: training center for SS guards, an administration and records center, brickworks, forgery workshop, refurbishment and redistribution facility (mainly the personal property of incoming prisoners). It was the propaganda show place of all work detention camps. Hidden behind that picture of a model camp, brutal atrocities were carried out resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 victims, mostly through starvation, disease, cruelty, torture, medical experimentation on live subjects, infections from injuries left untreated, gas chambers, hangings, suffocation, and firing squad. The bodies were cremated and buried in mass graves or dumped in a nearby canal.
Inmates shared four to a narrow bed in stacked bunks. The barracks had no heat in winter, no cooling in the heat of summer. Prisoners had little food, no coats, gloves, and often no shoes. They were not only Jews but also Roma gypsies, asocials (artists, playwrights, ministers), political adversaries, foreigners, and homosexuals.
After the war, the camp was used as a gulag (prison labor camp) by the Soviets until it closed down in 1950.
Entrance Gate
Grounds, Wall and Towers
Open Torturing Posts
Mass execution wall
Public Gallows
Torture Rack
Partially destroyed Crematory Ovens
Crowded bunks
A sobering reminder of this terrible period in history.
