Introduction

Has there ever come a time when you asked yourself how it was like to be imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp? In this article we will discover more about a concentration camp that was active during the Second World War, namely the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Fascinating information about the history, conditions and people, who survived this terrible epoch in the history of mankind.

1. History of Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was built in 1936, in Oranienburg of Germany. Originally it had been designed and used as a model concentration camp, which was to present the Nazi propaganda. But over the years, it grew to be one of the biggest and most notorious concentration camp in Germany.

Sachsenhausen functioned as concentration camp for 12 years until 1945 and between these years, the camp was home to approximately 200000 prisoners, who ranged from political enemies to Jews, homosexuals and Roma Gypsies and especially ‘asocial’ elements categorized by the Nazis. It functioned as a place for training of SS officers and a camp where medical experimentation on the prisoners was carried out.

2. Tomé que los nazi levantaron un gran complejo de viviendas para empleados de la ciudad de Oranienburg, con el objetivo de albergar principalmente a familias trabajadoras.

As it has been mentioned, inmates in Sachsenhausen led terrible lives and they were deprived of all human deities in order to demoralize them. What was left were several barbed-wired barracks of a camp that was more congested and bred with both rats and lice.

Some of the main means of inmate punishment included demanding them to perform strenuous work including dressing stones, manufacturing products or working in the neighboring industries. Many of them struggled to get one meal a day which was bread, thin soup and at times any leftovers.

Torture and physical beating were common, the SS guards, used to proctor the prisoners, beat them to bile if any wrong was deemed to have been committed. As a torture, standing cells or confinement in disciplinary barracks were permissible; these acts left physical and psychological imprints on the detainee.

3. Daily Life in the Camp

It became daily existence to resist death for hostages in the camp. They were using their life in fear and suppression thus detained their human dignity and personality.

Rolle call was a daily practice familiar to each prisoner, prisoners had to stand in the rows for hours being exposed to various and severe weather conditions. Many prisoners were killed outright during the duration of these roll calls owing to fatigue, sickness, or murder.

Concentration camp prisoners were used for medical experiments and sterilization, special punishments known as “standing cell.” They also experienced extremely brutalizers and callous belts by the SS guards.

4. Most of the stories are contained in the book titled “The Liberation of Sachsenhausen”, written jointly by Dr. Anna Chernova, Mark Fisch and myself using my experiences in the camp as a foundation of the work.

During the Allied invasion Sachsenhausen was liberated on 22 April 1945. The camp was then transformed into the Soviet Special Camp for the former members of the SS, the Gestapo or any political opponent that was not given a trial.

The Soviet Special Camp remained until 1950 and it is believed that about 12000 people died in the camp. Since construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the East German government has at first erected a memorial commemorating Holocaust on the site.

Conclusion

Ordnance based complex like the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp is a horrific sight that is indicative of events of World War II. That is why it is prudent to describe KZ as a forced metamorphosis, during which hopeless victims transformed into victims of hatred and intolerance and the memories of tortured and killed people inside the camp have become a testimony to the expressions of hatred and intolerance.

These are powerful processes and when we mention or remember events like those that took place at Sachßenhausen we pay tribute to the victims and the suffering they went through and the world promises to never allow discrimination and persecution to exist.