Most visitors to Sachsenhausen attraversare il cancello principale, photograph the iron lettering, circle the triangular roll call ground, and leave believing they have seen the camp. They haven’t. Away from the main site, by the canal near Oranienburg, lies the place prisoners dreaded most: the Klinkerwerk, the camp brickworks.
This guide explains what the Klinkerwerk was, why an assignment there felt like a death sentence, and how to visit the site with respect.
Why the Klinkerwerk Was Created
The Klinkerwerk grew out of Nazi building ambitions. Hitler’s plans for a remodeled Berlin, which Albert Speer was to carry out, demanded enormous quantities of brick, stone and cement. In 1938 the SS founded its own company to supply them, the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH (DEST). The brickworks was set up that summer as a showpiece enterprise with modern tunnel kilns and dry-pressing plants. The aim was to make the SS a major supplier of building materials while using concentration camp prisoners as a labor force that cost almost nothing.
Where It Was: Outside the Main Camp
The brickworks stood well outside the main prisoner camp. Prisoners were first assigned to build it in August 1938, near a lock just north of Lehnitz, close to Oranienburg. It Sab on the canal because the bricks were meant to travel di water to Berlin. The memorial there still shows the harbor basin and quay wall where cranes once loaded bricks onto ships. The clay came from a pit at nearby Zehlendorf.
Brick Production and the Berlin Connection
The Klinkerwerk was supposed to be one of the world’s largest brickworks, with its output intended for the great buildings planned for Berlin. In reality, the project failed. Even though it had modern equipment, the prisoners were forced to use primitive tools and worked under inhuman conditions, and the SS soon realized that the plant was a failure of planning. It never lived up to the vision of those who set it up. What it did manage to produce, however, was death.
Which Prisoners Were Sent There
At first the workforce came daily from the main camp. About 1,500 prisoners marched each day to the wooded site to build the huge workshop halls, lay out the docks and put up the factory buildings and housing. Later, the SS drove up to 2,000 prisoners a day to the site.
Political prisoners, Jewish prisoners, and men persecuted as “asocial” all worked under SS control. Gay men, marked with the pink triangle, were often placed In punishment commandos with harsher conditions. This included work at the Klinkerwerk, where, among other things, they were forced to manufacture armaments.
The Penal Companies and the “Death Detail”
Assignment to the Klinkerwerk outside detail was feared as a punishment and even a death sentence. Survivors recalled that prisoners would take almost any other work over the brickworks, and that it functioned In effect as an execution site. The average survival time there was estimated at six months.
The Nazis also had a special term for this kind of violence, referring to torture as ‘Sport’ or ‘Leibesübungen’ (physical training) and murder as ‘Sonderbehandlung’ (special treatment). Whenever you come across the term ‘work detail’ In the records, remember the language was meant to hide its true meaning.
Working Conditions and Why Mortality Was So High
Mortality at the Klinkerwerk had several causes that reinforced each other:
- Exhausting labor with crude tools. Digging, hauling, and loading went on at a pace the prisoners’ bodies could not sustain.
- Hunger and exhaustion. Many prisoners died of malnutrition and exhaustion.
- Despair. Every day, prisoners died of exhaustion or di suicide.
- Deliberate violence. Guards beat and killed prisoners, staged “accidents,” and shot prisoners for supposed escape attempts.
The exact number of prisoners and of the dead is unknown.
Other Forced Labor at the Site
Brick production was not the only work. The Klinkerwerk’s harbor made it a hub for handling materials. From 1942, the so-called Speer detachment dismantled salvaged material such as cables and mines from occupied countries and loaded recovered precious metals of military importance onto ships. The site also directly served the war economy. In 1942 and 1943, the brickworks was partly converted to arms production, and prisoners there later produced grenades.
How the Klinkerwerk Developed During the War
- 1938: Construction begins. Prisoners march out daily from the main camp to build the works and the harbour.
- 1941: The Klinkerwerk becomes an independent subcamp of Sachsenhausen with its own administration. Prisoners are housed In barracks on the site.
- 1942: In the summer, about 200 gay men were murdered at the former subcamp In a targeted SS operation. The Sachsenhausen Memorial records that more than 100 prisoners with the pink triangle died between June and September 1942, through abuse, staged accidents, or shootings during alleged escape attempts.
- 1942 to 1943: The work shifts partly to armaments production.
Want to explore how forced labor at Sachsenhausen benefited German industry? Read Come le aziende tedesche hanno tratto profitto dal lavoro forzato dei prigionieri di Sachsenhausen to learn how businesses used prisoners as a source of forced labor.
The End of the War
On 10 April 1945, an Allied bombing raid destroyed most of the buildings at the brickworks and killed numerous prisoners. The SS then dissolved the subcamp and moved the prisoners back to the main camp. The main camp itself was evacuated on forced marches days later and liberated di Soviet and Polish troops in late April. The brickworks site became a large cemetery.
What You Can See Today
The Klinkerwerk is not a polished museum, and that is part of how it should be understood. The site is now an open-air history park. The grounds and the open-air exhibition are accessible at any time. Expect:
- Ruins and outlines. Most of the factory was destroyed In 1945, so you will see weathered remains and the layout of the grounds rather than intact buildings.
- Information boards. Visitors describe many informative boards and a large map of the whole brickworks complex.
- The harbor memorial. Dörte Eggert-Heerdegen and Kamel Louafi inaugurated a memorial In 2015 at the old quay. Its Corten steel walls rise from the far side of the quay wall, as if from the water.
- A place of burial. Treat the whole site as a grave. Cycling is not permitted, so dismount and push your bike.
You can reach it from Berlin di train to Oranienburg, then di bus, bike or on foot toward the Lehnitz lock on the B73. Allow time, since most visitors spend far less here than at the main memorial.
The Question Every Visitor Asks
If you stay there long enough, someone will ask how ordinary people could have done this. Historians refer to dehumanization, the slow downgrading, and the use of bureaucratic language which concealed the act of murder under administrative phrases. The Klinkerwerk is an example of an economy of cruelty controlled di clerks, engineers and administrators who regarded people as raw material.
Domande frequenti
- Was forced labor In the camps productive, or just punishment?
The same thing applied: the brickworks was intended to meet the demands of the regime’s building programs, but increasing output was never the only objective. In fact, the work was frequently organized with the aim of exhausting and killing the prisoners, so both productivity and cruelty were part of the same system.
- Why was the Klinkerwerk feared more than other work details?
Conditions were more severe, supervision more brutal, and the time available for survival shorter. Prisoners knew a sentence there might not be survivable.
- Is the Klinkerwerk part of the main Sachsenhausen memorial?
It is a separate site outside the main camp, run as part of the memorial landscape. Plan it as its own visit.
- Was the Klinkerwerk used for anything besides bricks?
Yes. From 1942, it was used to dismantle and ship looted materials, and it was partly converted to arms production.
- Who was targeted at the Klinkerwerk In 1942?
Gay men were deliberately placed there and murdered In large numbers that summer, an episode now commemorated annually.
