Sachsenhausen is a concentration camp. History, description. Crimes of the Nazis

Have you ever seen Sachsenhausen (a concentration camp)? What is he like? Who created it? These and other questions you will find answers in the article. Sachsenhausen is a concentration Nazi 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 a transit camp of the NKVD for displaced persons.

History

Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) was founded in 1936, in July. In different years, the number of prisoners held in it reached 60,000 people. In the territory of this death factory, more than 100,000 prisoners died in various ways.

Here, "cadres" were prepared and re-trained for the already created and newly created camps. Near Sachsenhausen on August 2, 1936, the headquarters of the "Inspectorate of concentration camps" was located, which in March 1942 became part of the Governing Group D (concentration camp) of the Main Economic and Administrative Body of the SS.

Sachsenhausen is a concentration camp in which an underground opposition committee was created, coordinating the branched, splendidly conspiratorized organization of prisoners. The Gestapo did not manage to find it. The underground was led by General Alexander Semyonovich 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 be thrown into the Riviera of the Baltic Sea and placed on barges. They wanted to take these vessels away from the shore and flood them. Weakened and lagging people on the march were shot. Thus, in Mecklenburg, several hundred prisoners were killed in the forest near Belov. The planned mass liquidation of prisoners, however, was not possible, since Soviet troops arrived in time to help. In early May 1945 they liberated people on the march.

GN van der Bel (prisoner Sachsenhausen, number 38190) wrote that 26,000 prisoners on April 20 night left the camp. This is the beginning of this march. Of course, at first they found the cart and drove the patients from the infirmary.

About half of the prisoners who participated in the death march either were killed on the way or died. But witnesses survived. The advanced units of Soviet troops in 1945, on April 22, entered Sachsenhausen itself (a concentration camp), where at that time there were about 3000 prisoners.

Tower A

So, we continue to consider Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Tower "A" - what is it? This is an electric switch that distributed the current flowing to the barbed wire and the net stretched around the camp in the form of a large triangle. In the tower there were also the commandant's office and the Sachsenhausen checkpoint. At the gate was inscribed a cynical phrase Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes free"). In total, the concentration camp had nineteen towers from which its territory was being shot.

Placement checks

Very scary was Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). The history testifies that in this institution there was a parade of checks. It was called 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 carried out at this place - there was a gallows here.

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 concentration camp. It was in it that massacres were carried out.

In this building was placed the device with which the executioner fired at the back of the head, a gas chamber built in 1943, and a crematorium consisting of four ovens. Sometimes transport with people went there directly, bypassing the registration in the concentration camp. That's why no one can establish the exact number of people killed here.

Shoe Testing

A route of nine different coatings was placed around the parade ground, which the Nazis made for the testing of shoes. Daily selected prisoners on it overcame 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. The convicts were sentenced to such a test of the quality of footwear for periods from one month to a year. If a person committed a particularly serious crime, he was given perpetual punishment.

Such atrocities were sabotage, escapes, repeated attempts to escape, visits to other barracks, incitement to sabotage, popularization of messages from foreign transmitters, pedophilia (Article 176), homosexual prostitution, seduction or coercion of heterosexual men in the main concentration camp for homosexual intercourse, homosexual acts committed by Mutual consent of heterosexual men. Homosexuals who arrived in Sachsenhausen received an indefinite sentence immediately (articles 175 and 175a).

Hospital hut

Sachsenhausen is a concentration camp, the medical experiments in which were carried out terrifying. This facility supplied Germany's medical institutions with demonstration anatomical subjects.

Rav for executions

What else is Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) famous for? The list of prisoners is great. This factory of death was equipped with a so-called shooting range, with a morgue, a mechanized gallows and a shooting shaft. The gallows were equipped with a loop for the head of the prisoner and a box in which his legs were placed. In fact, the victim was stretched, not hanged. The Gestapo used it as a target, practicing shooting.

Prison Building

The camp prison and the Gestapo of Tselenbau were erected in 1936. They had a T-shape. Special prisoners were kept in eighty single cells. Among them was General Groth-Rovetsky Stefan, the first commander of the Army of Craiova. He was shot in a concentration camp after the Warsaw Uprising began.

Many people swallowed Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Bandera Stepan, Taras Bulba-Borovets and some other leaders of the nationalist movement of Ukraine were also imprisoned in this prison. Part of them the Germans were released in late 1944.

Here, in captivity, Pastor Nemöller also languished. This casemate also contained other priests (altogether about 600 souls), higher military officials, various political figures, as well as participants in the labor movement from France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the USSR and Luxembourg.

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 factory of death. In some other cells (General Grot-Rovetsky), commemorative plaques were placed for the prisoners of the concentration camp.

NKVD Special Camp

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 awaiting return to the USSR, Social Democrats, dissatisfied with the Communist-Socialist social system, former members of the Nazi Party, and former German officers of the Wehrmacht and foreigners. In 1948, this facility was renamed "Spetslager No. 1". As a result, the largest of the three special camps appeared, which contained interned in the Soviet zone of occupation. It was closed in 1950.

This institution 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 starvation and hunger during the imprisonment.

Groups of prisoners

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 a pink triangle. Between the time of the creation of the concentration camp until 1943, 600 representatives of sex-minority were killed in it. Since 1943, homosexuals have mostly worked in the camp hospital as nurses and doctors. After the war, many of the surviving prisoners of non-traditional orientation, the German government 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 install a statue, an obelisk, and create a meeting place. The role of political confrontation was emphasized and emphasized in comparison with other groups.

Today Sachsenhausen is a museum and a memorial. Its territory is open for visiting. Several buildings and buildings were preserved or were reconstructed: the concentration camp gates, guard towers, camp barracks (on the Jewish side) and crematorium stoves.

In memory of the homosexuals who died in the camp in 1992, a commemorative plaque was opened. In the museum in 1998 there was an exposition dedicated to Jehovah's Witnesses - Sachsenhausen prisoners.

Known prisoners

A lot can still be told about Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Lists of prisoners have been studied so far. The most famous prisoners of this death factory were:

• The son of JV Stalin - Dzhugashvili Yakov. He was shot 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 is 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. He died of leukemia.
• Fritz Thiessen is a major German industrialist, politician, head of the steel corporation. He was transferred to Buchenwald.
• Alexander Semenovich Zotov - general, who led the underground of the camp.
• Jurek Becker - a German writer and screenwriter, got to the camp small, with his mother.
• Max Lademann is a German public and political figure, a Communist, a revolutionary.
• Lothar Erdman 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 Helvig (August 1937 - 1938), Herman Baranowski (1938 - September 1939), Walter Eisfeld (September 1939 - March 1940), Hans Loritz (April 1940 - August 1942), Anton Kindle (August 31, 1942 - April 22, 1945).

The road to Sachsenhausen

Many people are interested to see Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). How to get to this death camp? It is necessary to go from Berlin's central railway station in the direction of Brandenburg to the station of Oranienburg by suburban train (S-Bahn). The journey lasts 45 minutes.

After you arrive in Oranienburg (the last stop), you need to walk to Sachsenhausen 3 km (walk takes 20 minutes) or to get there by bus. The museum entrance is free. Here you can buy an audio guide. If you need a guide, then you need to collect a group (not less than 15 people). Everyone must pay 1 euro. Here excursions are conducted in all languages.

From Russia to Berlin, many fly by plane. You can find information about inexpensive tickets to Germany. Also, you can get to Berlin from Moscow from Belorussky railway station by train, which runs a couple of times a week. The journey time is from 26 to 29 hours.

Some information

A lot of grief brought people Sachsenhausen (concentration camp). Stalin could not get his son out of him. The blockers, led by the commandant of the concentration camp, competed in improving the instruments of death. According to the idea of SS men, crematoria and gallows had to arouse the fear of thousands of prisoners of war brought to Sachsenhausen. The photographs presented at the exhibition and the explanations to them indicate another: there were neither fear nor horror on the faces of the prisoners who were going to the execution.

It is known that in appearance the Germans were not able to distinguish 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, therefore, a Jew. Prisoners were also made to shout the word "corn". If a person carted, he was instantly shot.

As in other death camps, Sachsenhausen developed sophisticated methods of torture. For a minor offense, a man was brutally beaten with sticks with steel wire, rubber bands, hung on the post with ropes or chains for his wrenched hands. These scoffers SS called punishment, and prisoners - criminals. In fact, the only "crime" of prisoners was that they were captured or were Jews. Terrible torture was invented for women in childbirth. On prisoners Sachsenhausen Germans tested new types of poisons, poisonous substances, gases, preparations against typhus, burns, other injuries and ailments.

Experiments on the influence of chemical materials on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. To kill the SS men used poisonous gases, which exterminated the garden pests. But they did not know what kind of lethal dose people needed. To determine it, they conducted experiments on the prisoners who were driven to the basement, changing the dose and fixing the moment of death.

In Sachsenhausen put the enemies of the Nazi regime from all over Europe. Despite the existence of a language barrier, genuine international solidarity and brotherhood reigned in the camp. Czechs, Norwegians, German antifascists, the Dutch - senior working teams, the elders of barracks, scribes helped Soviet people. The exhibition contains a lot of evidence.

Some prisoners - Danes and Norwegians - received food parcels. They risked sharing food with Soviet prisoners. If this became known to the SS, both those and others were severely punished.