Photo-report from Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp, located near the town of Oranienburg in Germany. It was built in July 1936. Up to 60,000 people were imprisoned there annually during some years. At Sachsenhausen more than 100,000 prisoners died or were killed in a number of ways. There Nazi officers were trained and retrained as «workers» for new or already existing concentration camps. “The Inspection office of concentration camps” — later “Departmental group D” of the economic and administrative departments of SS (Schutzstaffeln) and “Residence of the central office of concentration camps” were located near the camp. In the camp an underground resistance committee existed, which guided a multi-branch camp resistance organization. It was such a well kept secret that the gestapo could not discover it.
On 21 April 1945, by official order, a death march was begun. It was planned for more than 30 thousand prisoners, in columns 500 each to be shipped out on foot to the Baltic Sea coast, be loaded on barges, taken to the open sea and the barges sunk. The weak and slow people were executed by firing squad. Thus, in the forest near Below in Mecklenburg several hundred prisoners were shot. However, the planned massextermination of prisoners failed — in early May 1945 the death columns on the march were liberated by soviet troops.
The town of Oranienburg, a suburb of Berlin. The guideboard shows the direction to the former death mill — Sachsenhausen СС (concentration camp).
A pre-war house near Sachsenhausen СС. People lived amidst the flowers while knowing that less than 100 meters from them, at the death mill, thousands of prisoners were perishing. At the distance of 200 meters from this house, in huge mass gravesmore than 100 000 victims are buried. The exact number is unknown. A majority of the archive was set on fire on purpose by the Nazis during the offensive of the Red Army.
The road along which thousands upon thousands of prisoners of different nationalities from different countries marched. Very few survived. In the distance, the entrance to Sachsenhausen СС Memorial can be seen.
Steles at the entrance to the СС Memorial.
The main entrance gate of Sachsenhausen СС. From the balcony of this gate, SS officers looked at the prisoners who stood on the Appelplatz (roll call grounds) for hours on end in any weather.
The cynical sign on the entrance gate: “Work makes one free”.
The Wailing Wall. In front of it are mass graves of the Sachsenhausen prisoners. On the wall there are memorial plates from the countries whose citizens perished in this horrifying Death Mill.
The Wailing Wall memorial plate of Ukraine, in the memory of the citizens of this country who perished in Sachsenhausen СС.
The Wailing Wall memorial plate of Belorussia, in the memory of the citizens of this country who perished in Sachsenhausen СС.
The Wailing Wall memorial plate of Republic of Austria, in the memory of the citizens of this country who perished in Sachsenhausen СС.
The main entrance gate and the adjacent wall.
Lives of many people ended upon this barbed wire. In despair prisoners threw themselves on it and were killed by electric current and the guards’ bullets from watchtowers.
Along this road, thousands of prisoners marched many of whom never came back. In the distance there is the memorial monument to the prisoners of Sachsenhausen CC. Burned by the Nazis during their retreat, the camp barracks are represented by the contours right and left from the road.
POW card No.5928 in Sachsenhausen CC, of Tolkach, Pavel Dmitrievich, taken captive 23 June 1941 In the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, soldier of rifle regiment 401, born in Belorussia, Minsk Region, the village of Mushichi. Perished in the camp 26 February 1943.
POW card of Kozlovskiy, Iosif Yakovlevich, engineer III rank, from Moscow, born 1 June 1906.
Kozlovskiy, Iosif Yakovlevich, engineer III rank, commander of combat engineer battalion. Perished in the camp on 2 February 1944, when a group of officers was being escorted to an execution by a firing squad. They attacked the escort and killed one of the SS men. All of them perished.
Captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army in Sachsenhausen CC. November 1941. Reported as MIA (missing in action) they were in fact prisoners here.
Captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army in Sachsenhausen CC. August 1941.
Captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army in Sachsenhausen CC. October 1941.
Pathology (Pathological Anatomy) Unit. The workplace of SS physicians. They “studied” the influence of starvation and hard work on people’s health. Sachsenhausen CC was an “experimental” camp.
Autopsy room (room for post mortem examination) of the pathology unit.
Here new methods of execution were researched and tested. Apart from extermination by labor and by different kinds of executions, including those by gun (for which there was a shootingrange in the camp), at Sachsenhausen so-called medical experiments on prisoners were also carried out. Survival experiments were conducted on twins. New medicines were tested on prisoners. Extreme endurance tests on humanswere carried out. For example, heat and cold tests, and dehydration tests. The Sachsenhausen camp physician who conducted and oversaw the experiments was subsequently himself sentenced to death.
The stairs down which corpses were moved down to a corpses storage depot of the Pathology Unit. This was the final journey for thousands of prisoners.
One of the three big corpses storage depots of the Pathology Unit. Beginning in 1939, at Sachsenhausen experiments on living people were carried out — liquid poisons weretested on prisoners. The substances were rubbed in the skin. The results of the experiment were reported personally to Himmler. The prisoners at first became blind, and then died in in terrible agony…
Photographs from the website and the museum of Sachsenhausen CC
Caption text and explanations prepared by Gennadiy Chernakov
specially for www.world-war.ru
Translated by Maria Aleksandrovna Shelyakhovskaya for
www.eng.world-war.ru
