Arbeit Macht Frei

Or, loosely translated, "Work shall set you free" - quoted over the entrance of concentration camps. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp, was one of the first, and was built as a model concentration camp; and would end up influencing the structure and organisation of the Nazi concentration camps. Unlike other concentration camps, Sachsenhausen was built very close to major cities, and is in fact in the middle of the town of Oranienburg.

It is one thing to read about concentration camps, but seeing the hard reality on the ground is very sobering. First there is the scale: the large yards and the general size of the camp. Then there is the opposite: the small barracks, both the reality of the designed numbers and the actual numbers. And then there are all the features that made the brutality of the concentration camps famous: the medical wards and Station Z, where prisoners were executed, and then cremated.

But I also have a sense of grudging, I am not sure if this is the right word, wonder, for the design and implementation. The Nazi regime was simply very efficient, in both exploitation and in their brutality. For starters, the design of the camp: arranged in an equilateral triangle, with Tower A, the entrance to the camp in the center of one of the sides. The gate, also one of the highest points in the camp, had machine guns that could reach, theoretically, every point in the camp.

Concentration camps was not just about "purifying" the population. It was also about slavery and it was the prisoners from the camps who are largely responsible for fuelling the growth of the German economy, thus funding the Nazi war machine. And many of the companies that benefited from the concentration camp work force are still around, although I don't think that they still operate their old factories at Oranienburg.


Tower A


Former prisoner baraacks are marked, only a few reconstructed barracks remain


Inside a reconstructed barrack


A Neo-Nazi attack destroyed parts of the reconstructed barracks in the early 1990s


The East Germans built a memorial in the 1960s


The camp has an even darker history than some other concentration camps. The Soviets used this part of the camp (which is incidentally outside the triangle) as part of their own camp, mainly for being minor Nazi figures, but also for being political opponents etc. There is a mass grave behind the camp of prisoners who died while under soviet captivity.


The execution trench ... enough said





Station Z Memorial