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Jews arrested during Kristallnacht stand under guard before being deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Zeven, Germany, November 10, 1938. See more photographs |
SACHSENHAUSEN |
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The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was the principal Nazi camp for the Berlin area. Located near the Oranienburg camp, north of Berlin, the Sachsenhausen camp opened on July 12, 1936, when the SS transferred 50 prisoners from the Esterwegen concentration camp to begin construction of the camp. In the early stage of its existence the Sachsenhausen camp held mainly political prisoners. During the nationwide Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom of November 1938, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the summary arrest of about 30,000 Jews and their incarceration in three concentration camps: Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald. Almost 6,000 Jews were deported to Sachsenhausen in the aftermath of the pogrom. |
In mid-September 1939, shortly after World War II began, police arrested 900 Jews--mainly Jewish citizens of Poland and stateless Jews--living in the greater Berlin area and incarcerated them in Sachsenhausen. Conditions in the camp worsened following the outbreak of war. Many prisoners would die in Sachsenhausen due to exhaustion, starvation, exposure, abuse, and lack of medical care. German forces in Poland summarily executed or deported to concentration camps thousands of Poles, especially teachers, priests, government officials, and other leaders, in an attempt to eliminate the Polish educated elite and thereby prevent organized resistance to German rule in Poland. Some of these Poles were sent to Sachsenhausen. On May 3, 1940, for example, 1,200 Polish prisoners arrived in Sachsenhausen from the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. The prisoners included many juveniles, more than 60 Catholic priests, officers of the Polish army, teachers, doctors, and minor government officials. |
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See artifact Bible found at liberation |
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On April 4, 1941, SS doctor Friedrich Mennecke, the head of the Eichberg State Mental Hospital and a collaborator in the Nazi Euthanasia Program, conducted a selection among the prisoners at Sachsenhausen. Over the next three months Mennecke ordered prisoners too ill or weak to work to be killed as part of an operation code-named 14f13, which expanded the Euthanasia Program to ill and exhausted concentration camp prisoners. In June 1941, the SS transported the prisoners Mennecke selected to Sonnenstein, a "euthanasia" center used in the systematic killing of the physically and mentally disabled. German doctors at Sonnenstein gassed these prisoners. |
The first group of Soviet prisoners of war sent to Sachsenhausen arrived at the camp at the end of August 1941. By mid-November 1941, the SS deported about 18,000 Soviet prisoners of war to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In all, more than 13,000 Soviet prisoners of war were shot at Sachsenhausen. In retaliation for the August 1944 Warsaw Polish uprising, the Germans expelled most of the Polish population from Warsaw and ultimately deported about 65,000 Poles to concentration camps in Germany. More than 3,500 expelled Poles were sent to Sachsenhausen before German forces defeated the uprising in early October. As of mid-January 1945 there were more than 65,000 prisoners in Sachsenhausen, including more than 13,000 women. During the war, forced labor utilizing concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important in German armaments production. As a result, the Sachsenhausen camp system expanded to include more than 60 subcamps concentrated mainly around armaments industries in the greater Berlin area in northern Germany. Prisoners in the Sachsenhausen camp were also subjected to medical experiments. As of mid-January 1945 there were more than 65,000 prisoners in Sachsenhausen, including more than 13,000 women. With the approach of Allied forces, SS camp guards began the forced evacuation of 30,000 prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They forced the prisoners on a death march to the northwest. SS guards shot prisoners who were unable to keep up. Soviet troops liberated the surviving prisoners on May 2 near the town of Schwerin, Germany. Soviet forces liberated the Sachsenhausen camp itself on April 22, 1945. They found only about 3,000 ill and weak prisoners in the camp. Camp records indicate that the SS deported more than 140,000 prisoners to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. At least 30,000 of these prisoners died. The SS also deported to Sachsenhausen tens of thousands of unregistered prisoners, including more than 18,000 Soviet prisoners of war shot shortly after arrival. A Soviet investigation commission convened at Sachsenhausen after the war to collect evidence of SS crimes committed there. The commission's work led to the trial of 16 former SS camp guards before a Soviet military tribunal in Berlin in late October 1947. In November 1947, the Soviet military tribunal convicted all the defendants. The tribunal sentenced 14 of the defendants to life in prison (the Soviet Union abolished capital punishment in May 1947). Two of the defendants received 15-year prison terms. |
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