Sachsenhausen concentration camp was one of the biggest and most well-known of the Nazi concentration camps in World War II, and was located in Oranienburg, outside of Berlin, Germany. Originally active from 1936 to 1945, Sachsenhausen was a crucial camp that further set up other camps and also participated in holocaust. This blog post will look at history and importance of Sachsenhausen, with view of spilling more light unto history.

The Foundation of Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen: doors to the concentration camp were opened in 1936 and was one of the prisons built by Hitler’s government. It served basic administrative purpose first as a model camp for training of SS personnel. Sachsenhausen camp was indeed very large and the architectural plan adopted was replicated in other similar establishments. Built as a punishment and death facility for undesirables; the camp comprised political inmates, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, and everyone else who was unwanted under Nazi Germany rule.

It causes no surprise that living in the camp was deplorable, inhumane and demeaning o the prisoners. Imprisonment forced prisoners to work in hard labor, lack decent food, suffer from diseases and were always afraid. The SS guards ensured discipline through humiliation, flogging, shooting or hanging and other forms of brutality to help drive home the notion of fear in the prisoners.

Practice and Murder in Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen was one of the locations where many different experiences and range of medical research was carried out on inmates. Physicians used inmates for experimentation, which involved administering cold temperature, Malaria, and Sterilization. Most of such experiments entailed dreadful outcomes that left most of the victims either permanently disabled or dead.

Besides being a concentration camp that acted as a site of veritable medical experimentation with human guinea pigs, Sachsenhausen also included a gas chamber and a crematorium. Preposterous volumes of inmates were killed in these centers as the Nazis wanted to destroy anyone they considered a nuisance.

Resistance and Liberation

But its [the camp’s] prisoners did not resign themselves to the brutal regime and did organise acts of resistance and solidarity. Instead, parents set up clandestine newspapers, circulated papers, and wrote in secret diaries. Sitting in prison, some freedom fighters such as Martin Niemöller tried to record these event with the intention of offering hope when the Nazis were overthrown.

The camp was liberated in April of 1945 with the help of Soviet liberators. The Nazis had already removed many of the prisoners and had put them on to the most severe kind of death marches. At the time of liberation, only approximately 3 thousand of severely undernourished and ill people stayed in the camp. Sachsenhausen was then made into an isolated NKVD special prison camp housing political prisoners from all over the Soviet-occupied zone which until 1950 was called the Special Camp No.7 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of USSR.

Visiting Sachsenhausen Today

Currently, Sachsenhausen is a memorial and museum which show people how the prisoners of the Holocaust were treated. There is various [sic] of preserved buildings and structures, and reconstructed and destroyed barracks, gas chambers and crematoriums. Information included at the museum gives the general background of the camp, some people’s testimonies, as well as photographs unveiling atrocities that occurred in this place.

This means when one is planning to visit Sachsenhausen then there should carry a positive attitude and that he should have a@implementation

human for the respect of human suffering during that time to be understood. To appreciate the significance of the events that occurred there and pay a tribute to the innocent lives lost. H2 Group offers a guided tour which gives more information about the history of the camp and the suffering of the people behind the barbed wired fence.

Final Thoughts

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp is one of the most significant sites, which tell about the Holocaust period. It becomes humanly possible only in case of extending our efforts to understand and remember the experiences of those who really suffered and perished within these walls, farther, who died in their dungeons to put an end to such evil acts once again. Sachsenhausen remains a memory lessoned dedicated for the victims and to remind the society the virtues of tolerance, justice and compassion.