29/09/2017
Harjinder Singh Kukreja
Visited and offered Sikh prayers at Sachsenhausen N**i concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany where over 100,000 Jews were killed.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in July 1936, by teams of prisoners transferred there from small camps in the Ems area and elsewhere. On the front entrance gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (German: “Work Makes [You] Free”).
Location: Germany, 35 km from Berlin
Established: 1936
Liberation: April 22th, 1945, by a unit of the 47th Soviet Army.
Estimated number of victims: 70 - 100000
Subcamps: 44 subcamps and external kommandos
Sachsenhausen was intended to set a standard for other concentration camps, both in its design and the treatment of prisoners. The standard barrack layout was two accommodation areas linked by common storage, washing and storage areas. Heating was minimal. Each day, time to get up, wash, use the toilet and eat was very limited in the crowded facilities.
Before the outbreak of World War II, most of the inmates were German communists or Soviet prisoners of war, including some Jewish prisoners. In November 1938, just after the events of Kristallnacht,1,800 Jews were jailed in Sachsenhausen and about 450 of them were subquently murdered in the following weeks.
In September 1939, thousands of communists, social-democrats and former trade union leaders were arrested in Germany. About 5,000 of them were sent to Sachsenhausen, as well as 900 Jews. At the end of September 1939, there were 8,384 prisoners in the camp. In November 1939, this number increased dramatically to 11,311 prisoners. Also at this time, the first Typhus epidemic broke out. Because the SS refused to provide the prionsers with any medical caret and due to the lack of food, hundreds of inmates died in the following weeks. The dead were originally sent to the crematories installed in nearby Berlin, located not far from Sachsenhausen. But as the war progressed, the first crematory was built in Sachsenhausen in April 1940.
After the start of the war, the number of deaths in Sachsenhausen increased dramatically. In 1939, more than 800 prisoners died there, but in 1940, this number increased to nearly 4,000.
Like all other N**i concentration camps, the conditions of life in Sachsenhausen were incredibly barbaric. There were daily executions by shooting or hanging, and many more died as a result of casual brutality and the poor living conditions and treatment. Sachsenhausen was not intended to be used as an extermination camp, however. Most of the Jewish prisoners were sent to camps in the east. In October 1942, all of the Jewish inmates of Sachsenhauen were sent to Auschwitz.
Camp punishments were harsh. Some were required to assume the “Sachsenhausen salute,” whereby a prisoner would squat with his arms outstretched in front. There was a marching strip around the perimeter of the roll call ground, where prisoners had to march over a variety of surfaces, to test military footwear; between 25 and 40 kilometres were covered each day. Prisoners assigned to the camp prison would be kept in isolation on poor rations and some would be suspended from posts by their wrists tied behind their backs. In cases such as attempted escape, there would a public hanging in front of the assembled prisoners.
In March 1943, a gas chamber was added to “Station Z.” This gas chamber was used until the end of the war. The number of gassed victims is unknown because the transports for gassings were not registered in the entry registers of the camp.
With the advance of the Red Army in the spring of 1945, Sachsenhausen was prepared for evacuation. On April 20–21, the camp’s SS staff ordered 33,000 inmates on a forced march northeast. They were divided into groups of 400. The SS intended to embark them on ships then sink those ships. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive this death march; those who collapsed en route were shot by the SS.
On April 22, 1945, the camp’s remaining 3,000 inmates, including 1,400 women were liberated by the 47th unit of the Red Army and Polish 2nd Infantry Division of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie. Most of them were starving, ill and too weak to welcome their liberators. Like in several other camps, and despite the medical care they received from the Allied armies, many inmates died in the days following the liberation.
About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Some 100,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition or pneumonia from the freezing winter cold. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal medical experimentation.
Sachsenhausen was also the site of the largest counterfeiting operation ever, perhaps. The N**is forced Jewish artisans to produce forged American and British currency, as part of a plan to undermine the British and United States’ economies, courtesy of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief Reinhard Heydrich. Over one billion pounds in counterfeited banknotes was recovered. The Germans introduced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes into circulation in 1943: the Bank of England never found them.
In 1956, the East German government established the site as a national memorial, which was inaugurated on 22nd April 1961. The plans involved the removal of most of the original buildings and the construction of an obelisk, statue and meeting area reflecting the outlook of the then-government. The role of political resistance was emphasised over that of other groups.
At present, the site of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is open to the public as a museum and a memorial. Several buildings and structures survive or have been reconstructed, including guard towers, the camp entrance, crematoriums and the camp barracks.
Following the discovery in 1990 of mass graves from the Soviet period, a separate museum has been opened documenting the camp’s Soviet-era history.
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