Sachsenhausen Germany

Legendary

A Nazi concentration camp north of Berlin used to hold political prisoners including Joseph Stalin's oldest son.

Photo by Timothy E Baldwin

In 1943, the German government offered Joseph Stalin a trade. They would return his eldest son, a prisoner at Sachsenhausen, in exchange for a German field marshal the Soviets had captured at Stalingrad.

Stalin said no. His son Yakov died at the camp on April 14, 1943.

Sachsenhausen sits in the town of Oranienburg, about 35 kilometers north of Berlin. The SS opened it on July 12, 1936, sending 50 prisoners from another camp to build it.

The Nazis designed it as a model. The camp was laid out as a triangle, with a guard tower at the point that could see every barrack, and the SS used it to train the officers who later ran camps across Europe.

At first the prisoners were mostly Germans who opposed the Nazi government. Then came Jewish people, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, gay men, and anyone else the regime decided was an enemy.

When World War II began in 1939, the camp filled with prisoners from the countries Germany conquered, especially Poland and the Soviet Union. More than 200,000 people passed through its gates over nine years.

Tens of thousands of them died. Some were worked to death or starved, and thousands were killed outright, including at least 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war shot in the fall of 1941.

Famous prisoners included the former prime ministers of France and Spain, a Norwegian who later became prime minister, and Georg Elser, a German carpenter who had tried to assassinate Hitler.

Soviet and Polish troops liberated the camp on April 22, 1945. Only about 3,000 sick prisoners were left inside, since the SS had forced the rest to march away days earlier.

The camp's story didn't end there. Three months later, the Soviet secret police reopened it as Special Camp No. 7 and held Germans there until 1950, including many former Nazis.

East Germany opened the site as a memorial in 1961. Today it's a museum and place of remembrance run by the state of Brandenburg.

Walk through the entrance gate, which still carries the words "Arbeit Macht Frei," and stand in the roll-call ground where prisoners lined up every morning. Visit the reconstructed barracks and the small museum in the old kitchen building. Take the free audio guide and give yourself at least three hours, since the grounds are very large.