Excursion to Sachsenhausen concentration camp

This camp is not as famous as Buchenwald or Auschwitz. Nevertheless, it was the main, “exemplary” camp of the Third Reich. Here was the "Concentration Camp Inspection", here the future leaders of all the other camps were trained, here the methods of detention and extermination of prisoners were developed. In the medical barracks that have survived to this day, inhuman medical experiments were carried out.

Sachsenhausen contained “special prisoners”, such as Stalin’s son Joseph Dzhugashvili, Stepan Bandera, General Dmitry Karbyshev and pilot Mikhail Devyatayev, who made a legendary escape on a hijacked German plane. And in this camp, in the strictest secrecy even from the service personnel, fake British pounds sterling and American dollars were printed by the hands of Jewish prisoners. This incredible story served as the plot for the film “Fake Money”. And it happened here.

I've been preparing this tour for a long time. He read the memoirs of surviving prisoners and the memoirs of wardens, reviewed photographic documents from Soviet and German archives, studied the speeches of the camp commanders and the minutes of their interrogations at the Nuremberg trials. A lot of what I found was completely unexpected. You will learn about all this on the tour. Depending on the age and psychological strength of my guests, I vary my stories. If you are traveling with children, or you are afraid of terrible dreams, I can soften the impression of visiting the memorial.

The tour begins from the moment we get into the car. From the center of Berlin to the memorial we will drive 30-40 minutes (depending on the traffic density). During this time, I will introduce you to the historical setting of the first years of Hitler’s reign, tell you the background of the camps and show you photo documents that will help to introduce Germany of the 30s and its main characters.

Arriving in Sachsenhausen, we will stop at the three-dimensional plan - the scheme, and look at the camp "from a bird's eye view." We will clearly see what is the “principle of fully firing space” and understand how the “exemplary demonstration camp” was arranged. After that, we'll go inside. The first courtyard served as a soothing idyll - a beautiful park, a lake with swans, a peaceful house of the commandant. It was used for propaganda photos and for displays to foreign visitors. And then there is the main gate with the famous inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes free). It was here that this inscription appeared for the first time. Later, it decorated all the main gates of the Reich concentration camps. Tower A, through which we will enter the camp, has survived. That’s just a terrible large-caliber machine gun, constantly “supervising” the camp, no longer adorns its balcony, and the high-voltage generator does not hum, sending electric current through the wires.

We will visit two barracks and see with our own eyes how those who found themselves in this “hell on earth” had to live. We will pass through the building square, in the center of which was a gallows. I will tell you what secrets this square holds. After all, it was carried out demonstrative executions, punishments of rebellious, as well as testing army shoes, by the method of “wearing on the feet of prisoners.”

We will then visit the remaining prison. There were “particularly dangerous criminals” here. The names of many of them are well known to us. In the courtyard of the prison, poles with hooks were preserved, on which prisoners were hung and beaten with whips or rods. We'll definitely go into the camp kitchen. Conscription in the kitchen was the easiest and most pleasant, but still caricatures and comics decorating the “potato basement” make a strange impression. The kitchen building is today a museum where we will see many of the terrible artifacts of camp life.

We will also visit the "camp in the camp" - the zone where "special" prisoners were kept. We will see two-room “cameras” with its own bathroom. I will tell you about how Yakov Dzhugashvili (the son of Stalin) lived and died here and about other prisoners of this “special camp”, some of whom lived here with their wives and children.

The culmination of the tour, of course, is Zone Z, a death zone, a former industrial courtyard turned into a place for executions. A small sand quarry was converted into a moat and equipped with a device for shooting. German communists, Jews, resistance members from Holland, France, Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries died here. And in 1941, the truck garage was rebuilt into a “medical post”, where mass shootings were carried out under the guise of a medical examination. A little later, the shower for drivers was rebuilt into a gas chamber. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in this building in 1941 alone, and were brought to Berlin to demonstrate the “inferiority and wretchedness” of the Soviet army. Zone Z also preserved the ovens in which the bodies were burned. It is here that a monument to the dead is installed - a sculptural group that will not leave you indifferent.

After leaving this gloomy place, we will visit the medical barracks, which are preserved in their original form. Inhumane medical experiments were conducted here. I'll tell you about some of them.

On the way to the car, I will tell the story of the Death March, the Nazis’ attempts to destroy prisoners and traces of the camp, and the story of Sachsenzausen’s liberation. On the way to Berlin, I try to get my guests out of their darkest experiences. I talk about the fate of post-war Germany, the rescue of former prisoners and the punishment of their executioners. Today’s Germany is doing a great deal to ensure that this horror never happens again. I will try to end our journey into the past on an optimistic note.

This tour is a strong and unforgettable impression.

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