Most visitors to Sachsenhausen walk through the main gate, photograph the iron lettering, circle the triangular roll call ground, and leave believing they have seen the camp. They haven’t. A short distance away, on the canal bank, stand the broken walls of the place prisoners dreaded most: the Klinkerwerk, the camp brickworks.
If you come from Berlin and would like to know what really took place here rather than just going through the memorial, then this guide is the one for you; it outlines what the Klinkerwerk was, why being assigned to it seemed equivalent to receiving a sentence, and how one should approach it with respect.
What the Death Detail Really Meant
In Sachsenhausen, the Klinkerwerk was known throughout all the barrack blocks. The prisoners who were assigned to the penal companies carrying out the work at the clay pits and at the harbor had to perform the hardest and most dangerous kind of labor in the camp. They dug, carried, and loaded, all under guards who regarded exhaustion as a means of punishment and as a method of getting rid of the weak.
The SS had a special set of terms for this, and learning them changes how you interpret the records. In the camps, forced labor and beatings were usually given innocent-sounding names. For example, the guards referred to torture as “Sport” or “Leibesübungen”, which meant physical training. Murder was called “Sonderbehandlung”, that is, special treatment. Where a prisoner file was marked “Rückkehr Unerwünscht”, meaning return not desired, this indicated that the person would never be released and that, in the case of the camp being liberated, he should be killed.
When you are at the Klinkerwerk, remember this point: a phrase such as ‘work detail’ has an administrative ring to it. In reality, the brickworks was a place where forced exhaustion and execution went hand in hand.
Want to learn about another major industrial site where Sachsenhausen prisoners were forced to work? Read Heinkel Aircraft Factory and Sachsenhausen: How Prisoners Were Used to Build Nazi Warplanes to understand how forced labor was used in Nazi armaments production.
Reading the Ruins Honestly
The practical advice that most guides omit is that the Klinkerwerk is not polished. Instead of a neat, fully restored industrial site, you’ll find a large, weathered structure by the water, with an exhibition that outlines the site’s function. This ruggedness is an integral part of the experience and, at the same time, holds onto people’s expectations.
People who visit the camps’ memorials in Germany and Austria say the same thing: the physical remains are generally less complete than people suppose. At Auschwitz, the original ovens have long been removed, and what is on display consists of replicas. In the case of Birkenau, the Nazis destroyed the five crematoria. At Dachau, on the other hand, the gas chamber and crematoria are better preserved than those at Auschwitz. Sachsenhausen lies somewhere between the two in terms of preservation, with large sections still existing as foundations, outlines, and partial buildings.
You can’t interpret the absence of walls as proof that nothing happened. Information about what actually happened there comes from the camp’s layout, survivor accounts, the trials held after the war, and documentation left behind by the perpetrators. The SS kept very detailed records, which is why Sachsenhausen is so well documented. For instance, the experiments with poison bullets carried out on prisoners at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald in 1944 are almost entirely preserved in the form of typewritten medical reports and official correspondence, not through photographs. The lack of photographs does not indicate a lack of historical evidence.
The Question Every Visitor Asks
If you stay long enough in any of these places, somebody will ask how ordinary people could have done this. It is commonly observed that you can account for the mechanics of the situation, namely, that you first dehumanize people until they become things, and then anything that is done to them no longer seems like a moral action, yet those people who are able to explain it still claim that they can never really understand it.
What most distresses visitors is that so many of the perpetrators were entirely ordinary people. Richard Baer, the commandant of Auschwitz, had been a trained confectioner and had made chocolate before joining the SS. The doctors who carried out the experiments had taken an oath to cause no harm, and many of them did not hesitate to break it. That is why the Klinkerwerk matters, not merely because of the bricks it consists of. It illustrates an economy of cruelty operated by clerks, engineers, and administrators who regarded human beings as raw material.
Want to understand who benefited financially from this system of forced labor? Read How German Companies Profited From Sachsenhausen Prisoner Forced Labor to explore how companies exploited prisoners for economic gain.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Was forced labor in the camps actually productive, or was it just punishment?
It is true that the camps offered cheap labor and that the brickworks supplied materials for the regime’s building programs. Yet output was never the only aim; work was frequently arranged with the intention of exhausting and killing the prisoners, productivity and cruelty therefore belonging to the same system.
- Were the heavy tools and rollers used on prisoners really meant to exhaust them?
Yes. Prisoners across the camp system were made to haul loads that machines or animals should have moved, such as rollers for road work. These tasks served real purposes, but guards also used them deliberately to wear prisoners down.
- Are the objects and buildings at these memorials original or replicas?
It varies by site and by object. At Auschwitz, the gas chamber has the chutes where Zyklon B was dropped, but the ovens there are replicas because the originals are gone. Birkenau’s crematoria were destroyed. Dachau’s gas chamber and crematoria are more intact. Always read the information boards to see what is original.
- What was the point of the medical experiments carried out in these camps?
They served military and ideological aims, not genuine science. The poison bullet tests at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald, for example, aimed to create ammunition that would kill even from a minor flesh wound, for covert operations and assassinations. After the war, the Doctors’ Trial led to the Nuremberg Code, which requires voluntary informed consent in human research.
- How could ordinary people, even doctors and tradespeople, take part in this?
Historians attribute this to dehumanization, the slow escalation, and the use of euphemistic language which concealed the murders under terms such as “special treatment” or “evacuation”. The men who committed the crimes had ordinary careers prior to joining the SS. It is precisely this ordinariness that makes these places so alarming, and why memorials stress the importance of remembering them honestly.
