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 had passed through its sinister gates, most of them political opponents, Jews, Roma people and, after 1939, POWs. Tens of thousands 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 unmoved.
Thousands more succumbed during the death march of April 1945, when the Nazis evacuated the camp in advance of the Red Army. Note the memorial plaque to these people as you walk towards the camp from S-Bahn station Oranienburg (at the corner of Strasse der Einheit and Strasse der Nationen).
Unless you’re on a guided tour, pick up an audioguide (€3) at the visitor center to get a better grasp of this huge site. Between mid-October and mid-March, avoid visiting on a Monday, when all indoor exhibits are closed.
The permanent exhibit is spread over 13 buildings, with each section explaining its historical purpose and the events that took place there.
Just beyond the perimeter, the Neues Museum (New Museum) introduces Sachsenhausen's precursor, the nearby Oranienburg concentration camp, set up in a repurposed brewery in March 1933. Proceed to Tower A, the entrance gate, cynically labeled, as at Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Sets You Free). Inside is a stomach-turning exhibit on the arbitrary and sadistic brutality meted out by SS officers on camp inmates using eight case studies.
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. Famous inmates in the next-door prison included Hitler's would-be assassin Georg Elser and the anti-Nazi minister Martin Niemöller, author of the widely quoted "First They Came..." poem.
The memorial's largest exhibit in the infirmary barracks on the other side of the roll-call area illustrates the camp's poor medical care, its response to infectious diseases, and the horrific medical experiments and crimes performed on prisoners, including the castration of homosexuals.
Moving towards the center, 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 in the exhibit about Station Z, which was separated from the rest of the grounds and consisted of a firing squad site, four cremation ovens and a gas chamber. The most notorious mass executions took place in autumn 1941, when more than 13,000 Soviet POWs were executed here in the course of four weeks.
In the far right corner, a modern building and two original barracks house the Soviet Special Camp Museum, which documents Sachsenhausen's stint as Speciallager No 7, a German POW camp run by the Soviets from 1945 until 1950. About 60,000 people were held here; some 12,000 of them died, mostly of malnutrition and disease. After 1950, Soviet and East German military used the grounds for another decade until the camp became a memorial site in 1961.
A Café in the Neues Museum serves sandwiches, cakes and hot and cold beverages. There's also a bistro in the parking lot outside the visitor center. You're allowed to bring food and drink with you. There are cafes, bakeries and small markets outside Oranienburg train station.
The S1 makes the trip three times hourly from central Berlin (eg Friedrichstrasse station) to Oranienburg (ABC ticket €3.60, 45 minutes). Hourly regional RE5 trains leaving from Hauptbahnhof and RB12 trains from Ostkreuz are faster (ABC ticket €3.60, 25 minutes). The camp is about 2km from the Oranienburg train station. Turn right onto Stralsunder Strasse, right on Bernauer Strasse, left on Strasse der Einheit and right on Strasse der Nationen. Alternatively, bus 804 makes hourly trips from the station straight to the site (use the same ticket as for the train, seven minutes).
