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What was the purpose and significance of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp?

by | Mar 7, 2024 | Concentration Camp

Want to explore sachsenhausen concentration camp? Come and join us on the Original Berlin Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial Tour.

Please without further ado, dive right into the details of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp guide information below. The purpose, importance, and background of this infamous camp will be discussed in this article in detail. Regardless whether you are student attempting to find some references for an essay or a layman who wants to know more about the subject of Holocaust this guide will help you lay the ground work. So, let’s get started!

1. Historical Analysis of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was among the Nazi concentration camp that was founded in 1936. Being situated near the town of Oranienburg, Germany it was identified as the main model camp as well as training facility specifically for the SS officers. Originally constructed as a prison for political prisoners, in the Second World War, it was one of the largest concentration camps for political enemies, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and gypsies, and other undesirables.

Originally, the camp was intended to reduce the inmates to a common level and make them work and suffer while preserving their animal existence. For many thousand of them it became a place of suffering, torture and death.

2. Life Inside Sachsenhausen

During the time of incarceration in Sachsenhausen, the inmates were subjected to strict and sometimes ridiculous rules, spying, and severe punishments. They were taken through forced labors, horrible feeding, and were cramped in unsanitary environments. The received physical and psychological torture, medical experiments and summary executions.

Another interesting aspect of Sachsenhausen itself was that it housed multiple affiliated subcamps including the Judenlager, or Jewish camp, and the Zellenbau, or isolation cell camp. These subcamps were used for using various classification methods in order to make the prisoners even worse than they were.

3. The Conclusion on Sachsenhausen

At the same time, Sachsenhausen contributed to the general process conceived by the Nazi regime of persecution and annihilation of people. It became a place for experimentation of new modes of oppression which would then be used wherever the Dachau group went. It also served another purpose of training, SS officers for other concentration camps.

Moreover, Sachsenhausen embraced a concentration camp medical experimentation on prisoners where the Nazis harvested death data that supported their eugenic and racial hypothesis.

4. The untapped history of the Second World War and occupation had to be written and the process of memorialization initiated.

The concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, was freed by Soviet troops on April 22, 1945. It was liberated in January 1945, but after that it was becoming the Soviet Special Camp, which was in use till 1950 and where former Nazi officials and collaborators were held. It was later turned to a memorial site and was opened for the public in 1961.

Today tourists can walk around the necessary buildings, exhibitions, and memorials in Sachsenhausen, which is symbolic andmacabre to remind of the holocaust.

Conclusion

The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp is a place that brings the picture of the holocaust in the world. It is only through the identification of the role and importance of such camps that future generations are informed of their existence and we never repeat them.

If we take the time to analyze and to meditate about places as Sachsenhausen, we are paying respect to those who perished and making efforts to ensure an environment of improved tolerance in the future.

Want to explore sachsenhausen concentration camp? Come and join us on the Original Berlin Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial Tour.

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What was the purpose and significance of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp?

Mar 7, 2024