Sachsenhausen

Despite the lack of advertising, the camp itself is quite nicely presented with a number of excellent exhibits, especially the newer post-GDR sections. Some of the older exhibits, however, are only in German and occasionally Russian. Nearly all the buildings on the site are authentic-looking reconstructions, many old building sites are only marked by stones. Entrance to the camp itself and to all the exhibitions is free. Many exhibitions are closed on Mondays but the camp remains open.

prison barracks

As if merely being in a concentration camp weren't enough, for difficult cases the camp included special prison barracks with isolation cells and interrogation read: torture facilities. It was not unusual for prisoners to spend months alone and blind shackled in tiny cells. One of the prison's inmates was Pastor Martin Niemöller , who famously remarked about not saying anything while they took away his neighbors. Nobody was left to say something when they came for him. Niemöller survived both Sachsenhausen and Dachau, and became a vocal pacifist.

Prison regulations extensively detailed permissible methods of torture; quite a few of the exhibit texts seem to be more annoyed by the fact that the guards occasionally exceeded the rules than by the fact that they were using torture in the first place. Official favorites included suspension from poles resulting in bone dislocation and a slow, painful death, beating with iron truncheons and whipping not allowed on bare buttocks until the regulations were amended in 1942.

death march memorial

The exact number of the Nazis' victims will never be known, as the bodies were cremated and, on the approach of the Red Army, some 8 or 9 tons of human ashes were dumped into a nearby canal. The victims of the death march, immediately before the liberation of the camp, are better commemorated with memorial stones set up along the route. The Soviets were less careful and left several mass graves in the vicinity of the camp, which have been duly and perhaps even slightly disproportionately marked.

barracks

Camp inmates were detained in barracks. Unheated in the winter, stifling in the summer, inmates were squeezed three together into a single 70-cm bed and permitted several minutes per day for washing two cold fountains per 400 prisoners and using the toilets. Regulations for camp life were detailed and the tiniest violations brutally punished: SS guards were known to suffocate prisoners to death by inserting their heads into the foot washbasins or toilets. Another favorite punishment was locking large groups of prisoners into the broom closets in the summer, usually resulting in several deaths from heat exhaustion.

station z

In 1942, the additional section known only as Station Z was constructed. Designed for murdering people clinically and quickly, Station Z consisted of a gas chamber, a firing range and a crematorium. While small in comparison with the death factories of places like Auschwitz, on several occasions up to 5000 people in several days were executed here.

At time of writing, only the ruins of Station Z are left, accompanied by a memorial and protected by a new white roof.