Sachsenhausen concentration camp

src: www.mustseeberlin.com

Sachsenhausen ("Saxon House", German pronunciation : [zaks? n'ha? z? n] ) or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg is a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 until the end of the Third Reich in May 1945. After World War II, When Oranienburg was at Soviet Occupation Territories, the structure was used as a special NKVD camp until 1950 (See NKVD special camp No. 7). The camp ground with the remaining buildings is now open to the public as a museum.

Video Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen di bawah Nazi

The camp was founded in 1936. It is located 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Berlin, which gives it a prime position among the German concentration camps: the administrative centers of all concentration camps are located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen is a training center. for officers of Schutzstaffel (SS) (often sent to oversee other camps thereafter). The executions took place in Sachsenhausen, especially Soviet prisoners of war. During the early stages of the existence of the camp, the execution was done in a ditch, either by shooting or hanging. A large prisoner task force was used from the camp to work in a nearby brick factory to fulfill Albert Speer's vision of rebuilding Berlin. Sachsenhausen was not originally intended as an extermination camp - on the contrary, systematic killings were carried out in camps in the east. In 1942 a large number of Jewish inmates were transferred to Auschwitz. But the construction of gas chambers and ovens by camp commander Anton Kaindl in March 1943 facilitated the means to kill more prisoners.

Maps Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Camp layout

The Main Gate or Guard Tower "A", with a Maxim 8mm machine gun, the type used by the Germans in the World War I trenches, is housed in the camp administration office. At the front gate to Sachsenhausen is the famous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei ("making work (you) free"). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Capturing a base from a triangular triangle-shaped site is a huge Appellplatz, where tens of thousands of prisoners will line up for morning and night calls. Configuring a semicircle, is a barrack of a detention zone I that spreads from the Appellplatz base.

Sachsenhausen was intended to set standards for other concentration camps, both in the design and treatment of prisoners. The camp perimeter is, roughly, an equilateral triangle with a semicircular circular coiled area centered at the gate of the main entrance at the border that flows northeast to southwest. Barrack huts are outside the calling area, radiating from the gate. The layout is intended to allow machine gun posts at the entrance gate to dominate the camp, but in practice it is necessary to add additional watches to the perimeter. The standard barrack layout is to have a central washing area and a separate living room with bowl and left wing toilet for a crowded bedroom.

There is a hospital inside the southern corner of the perimeter and the camp prison at the eastern corner. There is also a camp kitchen and laundry. The camp capacity became inadequate and the camp was extended in 1938 by a new rectangular area ("small camp") to the northeast of the entrance gate and the perimeter wall was changed to attach it. There is an additional area ( sonder lager ) outside the perimeter of the main camp in the north; this was built in 1941 for special prisoners who want to be ostracized by the regime.

src: ww2today.com

Resistance zone

The camp is safe and there are only a few escapes that work. The outline consists of a 3 meter (9.8 feet) high stone wall on the outside. Inside was a space guarded by guards and dogs; it is bordered on the inside by a lethal electric fence; in which there was a gravel "death strip" prohibited for the prisoners. Any prisoner who enters the "death strip" will be shot by the guard without warning. Officers will also force the detainees to cross this line in place of weapons and threaten to kill the prisoners if they do not cross, eventually the prisoners will cross the line of death and be killed anyway. Gifts such as extra leave are offered to guards who successfully shot and killed prisoners who entered the death zone.

src: i.ytimg.com

Captive labor

Sachsenhausen is the site of Operation Bernhard, one of the largest ever counterfeiting operations. Germany forced prison craftsmen to produce fake American and British currencies, as part of a plan to undermine Britain and America's economy, belonging to Reinhard Heydrich's head of Sicherheitsdienst (SD). More than a billion pounds in counterfeit banknotes have been found. Germany introduced the British counterfeit money of £ 5, £ 10, £ 20, and £ 50 into the circulation in 1943: the Bank of England never found them. Plans have been made to lower the British pound over London by plane. Today, this record is considered very valuable by the collectors.

An industrial estate, outside the perimeter of the west camp, contains an SS workshop in which prisoners are forced to work; those who can not work should keep paying attention during the working day. Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, is a major user of the Sachsenhausen laborers, using between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners on their He 177 bomber. Although official German reports claim that prisoners "work without fault", some planes crashed unexpectedly around Stalingrad and it was alleged that the prisoners had sabotaged them. Other companies include AEG and Siemens. Prisoners also worked at a brick factory, which some say should supply the building blocks for Hitler's dream city, Welthauptstadt Germania, which will become the world capital after the Nazis took over.

src: ww2today.com

Prisoner abuses

Camp punishment can be harsh. Some will be asked to consider "salute Sachsenhausen" where a prisoner will squat with his arms outstretched in front. There is a strip of marching around the launch site, where prisoners must line up on various surfaces, to test military shoes; between 25 and 40 kilometers (16 and 25 mi) are covered daily. Prisoners assigned to the camp prison will be kept in isolation on bad rations and some will be suspended from the post by their wrists tied behind their backs (strappado). In cases like escape attempts, there will be a public hanging in front of the assembled prisoners. War prisoners were made to run up to 40 km a day with heavy packs, sometimes after being given performance-enhancing drugs such as cocaine, into military shoes experiments in tests commissioned by shoe manufacturers.

Dr. Wolfgang Wirth conducts experiments using deadly poison gas, Sulfur mustard, at the camp.

There were also suspected drug trials tested on detainees who were unwilling in 1944 designated, "D-IX," at the Sachsenhausen facility. Designed to improve stamina and endurance, this drug, supposedly comprised of cocaine cocktails, methamphetamine (Pervitin), and oxycodone (Eukodal), is designed to see the use of Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe members to improve mission performance where longevity and fatigue become a related issue. While these medicines were used in their respective forms by all branches of the German military, the specific nature and use of D-IX (especially experiments on Sachsenhausen prisoners) did not have sufficient evidence to be considered credible, although experiments by the Nazis on detention were unwilling to utilize the compound psychoactive away from the myth, and almost can not be mastered beyond the plane of sense.

src: c8.alamy.com

Aftermath

About 30,000 inmates died there because of fatigue, illness, malnutrition, pneumonia, etc. due to poor living conditions. Many were executed or died as a result of brutal medical experiments. During his lifetime, more than 100 Dutch resistance fighters were executed in Sachsenhausen. The Netherlands then sought the extradition of Czechoslovakia from AntonÃÆ'n ZÃÆ'¡potockÃÆ'½, who became President of Czechoslovakia, for his alleged role in Dutch assassinations during his time as capo at the camp. According to an article published on December 13, 2001 at The New York Times, "In the early years of the SS the practice of mass murder methods was then used in the Nazi death camps of about 30,000 victims war in Sachsenhausen, mostly Russian prisoners of war ".

Many women were among Sachsenhausen's inmates and their subcamps. According to the SS file, more than 2,000 women live in Sachsenhausen, guarded by female SS staff ( Aufseherin ). Camp records show that there is one male SS soldier for every ten inmates and for every ten SS men there is an SS woman. Several subcamps for women were established in Berlin, including the NeukÃÆ'¶lln.

Sachsenhausen's bodyguards include Ilse Koch, and then Hilde Schlusser. Anna Klein is also known for her presence at the camp.

Towards the end of the war, 13,000 Red Army troops arrived at Sachsenhausen. More than 10,000 were executed in the camp by being shot in the back of the neck through a hidden hole in the wall when measured for uniform. Their bodies are then burned in a crematorium.

In August 1945, the Soviet Special Camp No. 7 were transferred to the former concentration camp area. Nazi functionaries were held in camps, like political prisoners and inmates sentenced by the Soviet Military Tribunal. In 1948, Sachsenhausen, now renamed "Special Camp No. 1", was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Occupied Territories. 60,000 people interned for five years including 6,000 German officers who were transferred from the Western Allied camps. Others are Nazi, anti-Communist and Russian officials, including Nazi collaborators.

One of the camp commanders was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

By the time the camp closed in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.

With the fall of communist East Germany it is possible to conduct excavations in the former camps. In Sachsenhausen, the bodies of 12,500 victims were found; most of them are children, teenagers, and the elderly.

src: ww2db.com

Camp Sachsenhausen today

After the Soviets stopped using Sachsenhausen as a concentration camp, the site was used, for several years, by the East German "Kasernierte Volkspolizei", which in fact was a police division and was in fact the precursor of the country's own army officially established in 1956. 1956 was the year in which planning began adapting the concentration camp as a national memorial. It was inaugurated four years later on April 23, 1961. The first director of the name "Sachsenhausen National Memorial" ( "Nationalen Mahn-u GedenkstÃÆ'¤tte Sachsenhausen" ) was Christian Mahler, at a time senior police officer, who returned in the Nazi period was an inmate at Sachsenhausen between 1938 and 1943. The plan included the removal of most of the original buildings and the construction of obelisks, sculptures and meeting areas, reflecting the East German Government's current views.

The Government of East Germany emphasized the suffering of political prisoners of other detained groups in Sachsenhausen. The memorial contains eighteen red triangles, symbols the Nazis gave to political prisoners, usually communists. There is a plaque in Sachsenhausen built to commemorate the March Death. The plaque has pictures of malnourished males, all wearing red triangles of political prisoners.

In 2015, the Sachsenhausen camp site, in Strasse der Nationen 22 in Oranienburg, is open to the public as museums and memorials. Some buildings and structures survived or have been reconstructed, including guard towers, camp entrances, crematorium ovens and camp barracks.

After the reunification of Germany, the camp was entrusted to the foundation that opened the museum on the site. The museum displays works of art made by inmates and piles of gold teeth as high as 30 centimeters (12 inches) (extracted by Germany from the prisoners), camp scale models, images, documents and other artifacts depicting life at the camp. The administrative building where the entire German concentration camp network is run has been preserved and can also be seen.

After the discovery in 1990 from the mass graves of the Soviet period, a separate museum has been opened documenting the Soviet-era history at the camp, â € .

This compound has been damaged by the Neo-Nazis several times. In September 1992, barracks 38 and 39 of the Jewish Museum were heavily damaged by the arson attacks. The perpetrators were arrested, and the barracks were reconstructed in 1997.

Source of the article : Wikipedia