Concentration Sachsenhausen, located just outside Berlin, Germany, holds a significant place in history. This former Nazi concentration camp preserved as a memorial site serves as a stark reminder of the atrocities and human suffering that occurred during World War II. In this blog post, we will explore the historical significance of Concentration Sachsenhausen and understand the importance of remembering and learning from this dark period of our history.

1. The Origins and Purpose of Concentration Sachsenhausen

: Concentration Sachsenhausen was founded in 1936 by the SS, first as an exemplary camp. It was the second greatest Nazi concentration camp and acted as a benchmark for other concentration camps all over Europe. At first, Sachsenhausen was intended for incarceration of political prisoners and other Nazis’ political dissidents; communists, social-democrats, trade unionists, etc.

Later the camp changed its role and was used for political prisoners mostly Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. Sachsenhausen confined about 200000 people and the death rate is believed to be between thirty thousand and seventy thousand.

2. Grim Reality of Life: Concentration Sachsenhausen

The living conditions in Sachsenhausen were low and pathetic. Inmates starved, were loaded into economic development projects to work, and were beaten continuously by guards. The prisoners were tortured sexually, mentally, through providing medical experiments and receiving inhuman treatments.

The camp was meant to disorient and demoralise people; its network of watchtowers, interrogation cells, and killing zones and ‘Tower A’. It is important to know what happened here not to allow such experiences to take place again.

3. The Role of Sachsenhausen Today

Concentration Sachsenhausen is therefore mainly kept for it to be used as memorial and educational site for the million plus souls that perished and the immeasurable suffering that was inflicted during the Second World War. It has an important function in historical memorial and instructing the visitors with the dreadful acts of the Nazi party.

The memorial site is a platform that offers people an opportunity to learn about hatred, prejudice, and discrimination and make people discuss how they can eradicate such incidences in future. To some extent it becomes easier to learn from the past and thus helped in promoting tolerance of other people’s opinions and cultures.

3.1 maintenance of the historical site

The concerns have to do with the fact that Concentration Sachsenhausen must be preserved at any cost. Some of the features, including the preserved dorms, watchtowers and gas chambers, are more easily comprehensible since the actual site has been kept intact.

The memorial site also conducts research constantly to provide the broad public with more detailed information about how the camp operated and what people went through in it.

3.2 Education and Remembrance

The museum of Concentration Sachsenhausen organizes special guided tours as well as other programs in which any person, and in particular students, can learn about the holocaust and the role of fascism and persecution.

As an exhibition tool, memorial site helps to provide context through informations and documents and raises awareness about the victims and the stories. That way, practicing such behavior, we pay tribute to the victims, and at the same time promote the fight against prejudices and discrimination.

4. The Burden to Future Generations

All these survivors who spent their youthful years in Concentration Sachsenhausen now have aged and it becomes the social responsibility of future generations to vindicate their memory. Through personally going to memorial sites, publicly presenting and sharing knowledge about those sites and generally supporting their creation and maintenance, we positively participate in the construction of a collective memory of the events and lessons that took place during the holocaust.

It means we can consciously work towards creating a world that is much less cruel and much more accepting of each other as individuals.

To sum up, Concentration Sachsenhausen is again an impressive evidence of the victorious policy of hatred and discrimination at the cost of innocent people’s lives. By passing down the knowledge of the years and the memory of the victims that perished in Sachsenhausen, we can comply with the adage ‘Never forget, never again,’ and work toward the founding of any society in which genocidal horrors will never come to pass.