Sachenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial

As the first company to offer tours to Sachsenhausen, we seek to provide tours that do justice to a complex and difficult history and place the camp and memorial in the broader context of the camp system, the Holocaust, and Germany's postwar grappling with the crimes of the Nazi period. In Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp just outside Berlin, tens of thousands perished at the hands of the Nazis in conditions of appalling brutality. The camp became a training ground for the SS and the site of the headquarters of the whole concentration camp system. After the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as a camp for their own political enemies – thousands more were to perish over the next five years. For this tour, Original Berlin Walks’ guides are trained to unravel the complex history of the Holocaust. Using witness accounts and historical research, our qualified guides shed light on what life was like as a prisoner, how some were able to survive, and we address: • Why Sachsenhausen and the concentration camp system were established by the Nazis. • How the conditions in the camp worsened in 1939. (Visit the barracks where many of the thousands of Jewish prisoners sent to the camp after the so-called “Kristallnacht” were incarcerated) • How the SS used the execution complex at Sachsenhausen to perpetrate acts of mass murder, including the killing of 10,000 Soviet POWs in 1941. (See the foundations of Station Z, the mass execution facility) • How some Jewish prisoners survived by working in the forgery workshop, counterfeiting millions of pounds sterling. • How some prisoners were subjected to excruciating medical experiments. (See the oldest intact concentration camp barracks at the infirmary as well as the pathology lab) • Attempted escapes from the camp, including the tunnel dug by British POW “Jimmy” James and others. • The “death marches” at the end of the war and the liberation of the camp by the Red Army. • How the Soviets turned Sachsenhausen into a Special Camp for their own enemies after the war, who they imprisoned, and the fate of these prisoners. • How the East German regime manipulated the history of the camp for its own ends.