Have you ever seen Sachsenhausen (concentration camp)? What is he like? Who created it? You will find answers to these and other questions in the article. Sachsenhausen is a Nazi concentration camp. It is located in Germany, near the city of Oranienburg. In 1945, on April 22, he was liberated by Soviet troops. Until 1950, this institution was the NKVD transit camp for displaced persons.
History
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) was founded in 1936, in July. Over the years, the number of prisoners contained in it reached 60,000. On the territory of this death factory, more than 100,000 prisoners died in a variety of ways.
Here, “cadres” for the already created and newly created camps were trained and retrained. Since August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the “Inspection of concentration camps” was located near Sachsenhausen, which in March 1942 became part of the Steering Group D (concentration camp) of the Main Economic and Administrative Body of the SS.
Sachsenhausen is a concentration camp in which an underground counteraction committee was created to coordinate an extensive, perfectly conspiratorial organization of prisoners. The Gestapo could not find her. The underground was led by General Alexander Semenovich Zotov.
In 1945, on April 21, an order was issued to begin the death march. The Nazis planned more than 30 thousand prisoners in columns of 500 people to throw into the Riviera of the Baltic Sea and place on barges. They wanted to take these vessels away from the coast and flood. Exhausted and lagging people were shot on the march. So, in Mecklenburg, in the forest near Belov, several hundred prisoners were killed. However, the planned mass extermination of prisoners was not possible, as the Soviet troops arrived to help. They in early May 1945 freed people on the march.
G.N. van der Bel (prisoner Sachsenhausen under number 38190) wrote that 26,000 prisoners left the camp on April 20 at night. That is how this march began. Of course, at first they found a wagon and drove patients from the hospital to it.
About half of the prisoners participating in the death march were either killed on the way or died. But the witnesses survived. The advanced units of the Soviet troops in 1945, April 22, entered Sachsenhausen itself (concentration camp), where at that time there were approximately 3,000 prisoners.
Tower A
So, we continue to consider Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Tower "A" - what is it? This is an electric control panel that distributes the current supplied to the barbed wire and mesh, stretched around the camp in the form of a large triangle. The commandant’s office and checkpoint of Sachsenhausen were also located in the tower. The cynical phrase Arbeit macht frei (“Work makes you free”) was inscribed on the gate. In total, the concentration camp had nineteen towers from which its territory was shot.
Checkpoint
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) was very scary. History indicates that there was a parade ground of checks in this establishment. It was called three times a day. If an escape occurred in the camp, the prisoners were forced to stand on the parade ground until the fugitive was captured. Public executions were also held at this place - there was a gallows.
Station Z
What did Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) look like? Photos of this institution can be found in any thematic publications. They can be considered station Z - a building located outside the territory of the concentration camp. It was in him that massacres were carried out.
In this building was placed a device with which the executioner shot at the back of his head, a gas chamber attached in 1943, and a crematorium consisting of four furnaces. Sometimes transport with people went there directly, bypassing registration in a concentration camp. That is why no one can establish the exact number of people ruined here.
Shoe test
Around the parade ground was placed a track of nine different coatings, which the Nazis made to test shoes. Daily selected prisoners on it covered forty-kilometer distances at different speeds. This test in 1944, SS men complicated. They forced people to wear smaller shoes and carry bags weighing ten, and sometimes twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to such a quality check of shoes for periods of one month to a year. If a person committed a particularly serious crime, he was assigned an indefinite punishment.
Such atrocities included sabotage, escape, repeated attempt to escape, visiting another hut, incitement to sabotage, popularization of messages from foreign transmitters, pedophilia (Article 176), homosexual prostitution, seduction or coercion of heterosexual men of the main concentration camp to homosexual contacts, homosexual acts committed by mutual agreement of heterosexual men. Homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen received immediate indefinite punishment (arts. 175 and 175a).
Hospital hut
Sachsenhausen - a concentration camp, the medical experiments in which were terrifying. This facility provided medical institutes in Germany with demonstration anatomical objects.
Moat for executions
What else is famous for Sachsenhausen (concentration camp)? The list of prisoners is long. This death factory was equipped with a so-called shooting gallery, with a morgue, a mechanized gallows and a shooting rampart. The gallows was equipped with a loop for the head of the prisoner and a box in which his legs were placed. In fact, the victim was pulled, not hung. The Gestapo used it as a target, practicing shooting.
Prison building
The camp prison and the Gestapo Zelenbau were erected in 1936. They had a T-shape. Special prisoners were held in eighty solitary confinement cells. Among them was General Grot-Rovetsky Stefan - the first commander of the Home Army. He was shot in a concentration camp after the start of the Warsaw Uprising.
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) absorbed a lot of people. Bandera Stepan, Taras Bulba-Borovets and some other leaders of the nationalist movement of Ukraine were also imprisoned. The Germans released some of them at the end of 1944.
Here pastor Nemeller also languished in captivity. Other priests (about 600 souls), senior military officials, various political figures, as well as labor movement members from France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the USSR, and Luxembourg were also kept in this casemate.
Today, the only wing of the prison has remained intact, in five chambers of which there is a permanent exhibition of the national socialist period. She talks about the activities of this death factory. In some other cells (General Grot-Rovetsky), memorial plaques are installed for concentration camp inmates.
Special Camp NKVD
In 1945, in August, the “Special Camp No. 7” of the NKVD was transferred to Sachsenhausen. Former prisoners of war were placed here. They were Soviet citizens who were awaiting return to the USSR, social democrats, dissatisfied with the communist-socialist social system, former members of the Nazi party, as well as former German Wehrmacht officers and foreigners. In 1948, this object was renamed to "Special Camp No. 1". As a result, the largest of the three special camps appeared, which contained internees in the Soviet zone of occupation. It was closed in 1950.
This institution lasted only 5 years. But during this period it managed to receive 60 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, of which about 12 thousand souls died from exhaustion and hunger during imprisonment.
Prisoner Groups
Today it is difficult for people to remember Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). The list of prisoners is huge. Now we will talk about groups of prisoners. According to some reports, carriers of the pink triangle were among the others in Sachsenhausen. In the period from the creation of the concentration camp to 1943, 600 representatives of sex minorities were killed in it. Since 1943, homosexuals have mainly worked as nurses and doctors in the camp hospital. After the war ended, many of the surviving gay prisoners did not provide compensation.
Sachsenhausen today
The Government of the GDR in 1956 established a national memorial on the territory of the concentration camp, which was inaugurated in 1961, on April 23. The then government planned to dismantle the lion's share of the original buildings and establish a statue, an obelisk, create a place for meetings. The role of political confrontation was too emphasized and stood out in comparison with other groups.
Today Sachsenhausen is a museum and memorial. Its territory is open to the public. Several structures and buildings have been preserved or reconstructed: the gates of a concentration camp, watchtowers, camp huts (on the Jewish part) and the crematorium oven.
In memory of the homosexuals who died in the camp in 1992, a memorial plaque was opened. In 1998, an exhibition appeared in the museum, which was dedicated to Jehovah's Witnesses - prisoners of Sachsenhausen.
Famous Prisoners
You can tell a lot more about Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Lists of his prisoners are still being studied. The most famous prisoners of this death factory were:
- The son of I.V. Stalin is Dzhugashvili Yakov. He was shot dead by sentries in 1943, on April 14, with a demonstrative attempt to escape.
- Stepan Bandera is the leader of Ukrainian nationalists. Released by the German government.
- Yaroslav Stetsko is the leader of Ukrainian nationalists. Released by the German leadership.
- Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev - captive general of the Red Army. He was transferred to Mauthausen, where he died.
- Lambert Horn is a communist, German public and political figure. Died of leukemia.
- Fritz Thyssen is a major industrialist in Germany, a politician, the head of a steel corporation. It was transferred to Buchenwald.
- Alexander Semenovich Zotov - the general who led the underground camp.
- Jurek Becker - a German writer and screenwriter, was in the camp a little, along with his mother.
- Max Lademann - German public and political figure, communist, revolutionary.
- Lothar Erdman - Social Democrat, German journalist.
Concentration camp commandants
Sachsenhausen's commandants were Karl Otto Koch (July 1936 - July 1937), Hans Helvig (August 1937 - 1938), German Baranowski (1938 - September 1939), Walter Eisfeld (September 1939 - March 1940), Hans Loritz (April 1940 - August 1942), Anton Kindl (August 31, 1942 - April 22, 1945).
Road to Sachsenhausen
Many are interested in looking at Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). How to get to this death camp? From Berlin Central Station, head towards Brandenburg to the Oranienburg station by suburban train (S-Bahn). The journey lasts 45 minutes.
After you arrive in Oranienburg (final stop), you need to walk 3 km to Sachsenhausen (the walk will take 20 minutes) or get to it by bus. Entrance to the museum is free. You can purchase an audio guide here. If you need a guide, then you need to assemble a group (at least 15 people). Each must pay 1 euro. Here tours are conducted in all languages.
From Russia to Berlin, many fly by plane. You can find information on cheap flights to Germany. You can also get to Berlin from Moscow from the Belorussky Train Station by train, which runs a couple of times a week. Travel time is from 26 to 29 hours.
Some information
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) brought a lot of grief to people. Stalin could not rescue his son from him. Blockführer, led by the commandant of the concentration camp, competed in perfecting the instruments of death. According to the SS plan, crematoriums and gallows were to cause fear among thousands of prisoners of war delivered to Sachsenhausen. The photographs presented at the exhibition and the explanations to them show something else: there was no fear or horror on the faces of the prisoners going to execution.
It is known that in appearance the Germans did not know how to distinguish between Soviet people - for them they were all on one face. To identify the Jews, the Nazis forced the prisoners to strip naked to find the circumcised. If circumcised, then a Jew. Prisoners were also made to scream the word "corn." If a man burred, he was instantly shot.
As in other death camps, sophisticated methods of torture were developed in Sachsenhausen. For a small offense, a man was brutally beaten with sticks with steel wire, rubber lashes, hung on a pole with ropes or chains for his arms twisted. The SS men called these mockery punishment, and prisoners - criminals. In reality, the only “crime” of the prisoners was that they were captured or were Jews. Horrible torture was invented for women in childbirth. Germans experienced new types of poisons on Sachsenhausen prisoners, poisonous substances, gases, drugs against typhus, burns, other injuries and ailments.
The experiments on the effect of chemical materials on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. For the killings, the SS men used poisonous gases to destroy garden pests. But they did not know what lethal dose people needed. To determine it, they conducted experiments on prisoners driven into the basement, changing the dose and recording the moment of death.
Enemies of the Nazi regime from all over Europe were placed in Sachsenhausen. Despite the existence of a language barrier, genuine inter-ethnic solidarity and brotherhood reigned in the camp. Czechs, Norwegians, German anti-fascists, Dutch - senior workers' teams, wardens of barracks, clerks rescued the Soviet people. The exhibition contains a lot of evidence.
Some prisoners - Danes and Norwegians - received food parcels. At risk to themselves, they shared food with Soviet prisoners. If the SS men became aware of this, both were severely punished.