A harrowing morning at Sachenshausen

This morning we took a tram, then a regional train and finally a bus to leave the city of Berlin to go to Oranienburg, a small town about 30km from the city centre,

Just on the edge of Oranienburg was the site of Sachsenhausen, which was planned as the “ideal” concentration camp in 1936 as a model for other camps, as well as for training SS guards.

As it happens, we were visiting on the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation on 22 and 23 April 1945 by Soviet and Polish troops.

Most prisoners arrived by train into Oranienburg or Sachenhausen stations, before being marched under guard to the camp, entering under Tower A.

Over 200,000 people were held at Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945, including a mix of political prisoners, those considered racially or biologically inferior by the Nazi regime, so-called “antisocials” career criminals and Allied prisoners of war. The PoWs were mostly Soviet and Polish soldiers with a few British and other nationalities. Some 10,000 Soviet soldiers were systematically murdered in 1941 in a new “neck- shot” facility, where a prisoner was taken as if to be measured against a wall, for a guard to shoot them in the back of the head through a disguised opening next to the measuring stick.

The camp put inmates to work initially in the industrial yard, shoe testing on a track of different surfaces and building different structures on and near the camp. Others worked in food preparation or in the infirmary or the mortuary and crematoria. From 1938, a huge brickworks was built and then resourced by forced labour from the camp, and, after the war began, various armament factories were built at satellite camps close by.

Many prisoners died of malnutrition and disease, medical experimentation as well as planned murder campaigns by the SS. Various methods of execution were tested and developed here, including gassing vans and a purpose-built extermination unit, known as Station Z (the use of “Z” grimly signifying the fate of the prisoners taken there).

By early 1945, over 70,000 prisoners were held in Sachenhausen and the satellite camps, of which 24,000 were in the main camp. In April 1945, as the Allied forces moved closer, those who could walk were forcibly marched north west for 40km a day for several days, on minimal rations and. It shelter each night. Thousands were shot as they fell out of the marching column. Others considered too dangerous or sick to be evacuated were murdered. Another 3,000 were left behind in the infirmary, who were liberated when the Soviet and Polish forces reached the camp. Some 300 were in such a poor condition that they died after the liberation without leaving the camp.

In contrast to the horrific conditions in the camp, the guards and officers lived in barracks with neatly kept flower borders and the most senior with their families.

A number of the guards and officers were tried after 1945 for the murder abuse against the inmates.

After 1945, the site became a prison camp ran by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB) for a further 5 years. Some 30,000 prisoners were held in “preventative” custody, including middle and low ranking Nazi officials, SS and Gestapo members held without trial for years. There were also another 16,000 who had been convicted by Soviet Military Tribunals and 7,000 German prisoners of war and 6,000 Soviet solders who had committed offences. Conditions in the Soviet Special Camp were almost as terrible as under the Nazis.

Finally the site became a memorial in 1961, initially run by the DDR authorities, before becoming the present museum and memorial in 1993.Les mer