Have you ever seen Sachsenhausen (concentration camp)? What does he represent? 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 an NKVD transit camp for displaced persons.
History
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) was founded in 1936, in July. In different years, the number of prisoners contained in it reached 60,000 people. More than 100,000 prisoners died in various ways in this death factory.
Here the "cadres" for the already created and newly created camps were trained and retrained. Since August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the Inspectorate 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, coordinating an extensive, superbly conspiratorial organization of prisoners. The Gestapo failed to locate her. The underground was led by General Alexander Semyonovich Zotov.
In 1945, on April 21, the death march was ordered to begin. The Nazis planned to transfer more than 30 thousand prisoners in columns of 500 people to the Riviera of the B altic Sea and place them on barges. They wanted to take these ships away from the coast and flood them. Exhausted and lagging behind people on the march were shot. So, in Mecklenburg, in the forest near Belov, several hundred prisoners were killed. The planned mass liquidation of prisoners, however, could not be carried out, as Soviet troops arrived in time to help. They released people on the march in early May 1945.
G. N. Van der Bela (Sachsenhausen prisoner number 38190) wrote that 26,000 prisoners left the camp on April 20 at night. That is how the march began. Of course, first they found a wagon and took the sick from the infirmary on it.
About half of the prisoners who participated in the death march were either killed on the way or died. But witnesses survived. The advanced units of the Soviet troops in 1945, on April 22, entered the Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) itself, where at that time approximately 3,000 prisoners remained.
A Tower
So, we continue to consider Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) further. Tower "A" - what is it? This is an electric console that distributeda current fed to barbed wire and a grid stretched around the camp in the form of a large triangle. The tower also housed the commandant's office and the Sachsenhausen checkpoint. The gate was inscribed with the cynical phrase Arbeit macht frei ("Work sets you free"). In total, the concentration camp had nineteen towers, from which its territory was shot through.
Platz checks
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) was very scary. History testifies that there was a checkpoint in this institution. It carried out roll call three times a day. If there was an escape 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 - the gallows stood here.
Station Z
What did Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) look like? Photos of this institution can be found in any thematic publications. On them you can see station Z - a building located outside the territory of the concentration camp. It was in it that the massacres were carried out.
This building housed a device with which the executioner shot in the back of the head, a gas chamber, built in 1943, and a crematorium consisting of four furnaces. Sometimes vehicles with people went there directly, bypassing registration in a concentration camp. That is why no one can establish the exact number of people killed here.
Shoe test
Around the parade ground was placed a track of nine different surfaces, which the Nazis made to test shoes. Every day, selected prisoners on it overcame forty-kilometer distances at different speeds. In 1944, the SS men complicated this test. They forced people to wear smaller shoes and carry bags weighing ten and sometimes twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to such shoe quality checks for periods ranging from one month to a year. If a person committed a particularly serious crime, he was given an indefinite punishment.
Such atrocities were considered sabotage, escape, re-attempt to escape, visiting another barracks, incitement to sabotage, popularization of messages from foreign transmitters, pedophilia (art. 176), homosexual prostitution, seduction or coercion of heterosexual men of the main concentration camp into homosexual contacts, homosexual acts committed by mutual consent of heterosexual men. Homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen received indefinite punishment immediately (Articles 175 and 175a).
Hospital barracks
Sachsenhausen is a concentration camp where terrifying medical experiments were carried out. This facility supplied German medical institutes with demonstration anatomical items.
Ditch for executions
What else is Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) famous for? The list of prisoners is long. This factory of death was equipped with a so-called shooting gallery, with a mortuary, a mechanized gallows and a firing shaft. The gallows was equipped with a noose for the prisoner's head and a box in which they placedhis legs. In fact, the victim was stretched, not hung. The Gestapo used her as a target while practicing shooting.
Prison building
The camp prison and Gestapo Zelenbau were built in 1936. They were T-shaped. Special prisoners were kept in eighty solitary cells. Among them was General Grot-Rowiecki Stefan, the first commander of the Home Army. He was shot in a concentration camp after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising.
Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) swallowed up a lot of people. Bandera Stepan, Taras Bulba-Borovets and some other leaders of the nationalist movement in Ukraine were also imprisoned in this prison. Some of them were released by the Germans at the end of 1944.
Pastor Nemöller also languished in captivity here. This casemate also contained other priests (about 600 souls in total), senior military officials, various political figures, as well as members of the labor movement from France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the USSR and Luxembourg.
Today, the only wing of the prison remains intact, in five cells 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 (of General Grot-Rovetsky) there are memorial plaques to the prisoners of the concentration camp.
Special camp of the 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 Sovietcitizens who were waiting to 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 facility was renamed "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 establishment lasted only 5 years. But during this period, it managed to take 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, in Sachsenhausen, among others, there were carriers of the pink triangle. Between the creation of the concentration camp and 1943, 600 representatives of sexual minorities died in it. Since 1943, homosexuals have mainly worked in the camp hospital as nurses and doctors. After the end of the war, many of the surviving gay prisoners were not compensated by the German government.
Sachsenhausen today
The government of the GDR in 1956 established a national memorial on the territory of the concentration camp, which was solemnly opened in 1961, on April 23. The then government planned to dismantle the lion's share of the original buildings and install a statue, obelisk,create a meeting place. The role of political confrontation was overemphasized and stood out in comparison with other groups.
Today Sachsenhausen is a museum and a memorial. Its territory is open to the public. Several structures and buildings have survived or been reconstructed: the gates of the concentration camp, watchtowers, camp barracks (on the Jewish part) and crematorium ovens.
In memory of the homosexuals who died in the camp in 1992, a memorial plaque was opened. In 1998, an exposition appeared in the museum, which was dedicated to the Jehovah's Witnesses - prisoners of Sachsenhausen.
Known prisoners
A lot more can be said about Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). The lists of his prisoners are still being studied. The most famous prisoners of this death factory were:
- The son of I. V. Stalin - Dzhugashvili Yakov. He was shot dead by sentries in 1943, on April 14, during 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 - a captured 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 German industrialist, politician, head of a steel corporation. Was transferred to Buchenwald.
- Alexander Semyonovich Zotov - the general who led the undergroundcamp.
- Jurek Becker, a German writer and screenwriter, ended up in the camp when he was young with his mother.
- Max Lademann - German public and political figure, communist, revolutionary.
- Lothar Erdmann is a social democrat, a German journalist.
Commandants of the concentration camp
The commandants of Sachsenhausen were Karl Otto Koch (July 1936 - July 1937), Hans Helwig (August 1937 - 1938), Hermann Baranowski (1938 - September 1939), W alter Eisfeld (September 1939 - March 1940), Hans Loritz (April 1940 - August 1942), Anton Kaindl (August 31, 1942 - April 22, 1945).
Road to Sachsenhausen
Many people are interested in seeing the Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). How to get to this death camp? From the Berlin Central Station, travel in the direction of Brandenburg to the station Oranienburg by suburban train (S-Bahn). The journey lasts 45 minutes.
After you have arrived in Oranienburg (final stop), you need to walk 3 km to Sachsenhausen (a walk takes 20 minutes) or take a bus to get there. The entrance to the museum is free. You can purchase an audio guide here. If you need a guide, then you need to gather a group (at least 15 people). Each must pay 1 euro. Tours are offered here in all languages.
From Russia to Berlin, many fly by plane. You can find information about cheap tickets to Germany. You can also get to Berlin from Moscow from the Belorussky railway stationtake a train that 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 the people. Stalin could not get his son out of it. The blockfuhrers, led by the commandant of the concentration camp, competed in improving the instruments of death. According to the plan of the SS, the crematoria and the gallows were supposed to cause fear among the thousands of prisoners of war brought to Sachsenhausen. The photographs presented at the exhibition and the explanations to them testify to something else: there was neither fear nor horror on the faces of the prisoners going to the execution.
It is known that in appearance the Germans were not able to distinguish between Soviet people - for them they were all the same person. To identify the Jews, the Nazis forced the prisoners to strip naked in order to find the circumcised. If circumcised, then a Jew. The prisoners were also forced to shout the word "corn". If a person burred, he was immediately shot.
As in other death camps, sophisticated methods of torture were developed in Sachsenhausen. For a small offense, a person was severely beaten with sticks with steel wire, rubber whips, hung on a pole with ropes or chains by twisted arms. The SS called these mockeries punishment, and the prisoners - criminals. In reality, the only "crime" of the prisoners was that they were captured or were Jews. Terrible tortures were invented for women in childbirth. On the prisoners of Sachsenhausen, the Germans tested new types of poisons, toxic substances, gases, drugs against typhus, burns, other injuries andailments.
Experiments on the influence of chemical materials on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. For the murders, the SS used poisonous gases, which exterminated garden pests. But they didn't know what lethal dose people needed. To determine it, they conducted experiments on prisoners driven into the basement, changing the dose and fixing 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 interethnic solidarity and brotherhood reigned in the camp. Czechs, Norwegians, German anti-fascists, Dutch - senior workers' teams, headmen of barracks, clerks rescued the Soviet people. The exhibition contains a lot of evidence of this.
Some prisoners - Danes and Norwegians - received food parcels. At the risk to themselves, they shared food with Soviet prisoners. If the SS became aware of this, both were severely punished.
