Leseprobe

1 3 2 G E R M A N Y | O R A N I E N B U R G / S A C H S E N H A U S E N Memorial and Museum “Soviet Special Camp No. 7 /No. 1” Sachsenhausen the “Concentration Camps Inspectorate”, has been attached to the memorial. Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936 by prisoners from the Emsland camps. It was the first concentra- tion camp to be founded after the appoint- ment of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as the chief of the German police in 1936. As a model and training camp for the SS and con- centration camps in the immediate vicinity of the German capital, Sachsenhausen occupied a special place in the system of National Socialist concentration camps: in 1938, the administra- tive headquarters for all concentration camps under German control was moved from Berlin to Oranienburg. The concentration camp complex in Oranien­ burg, covering almost 400 hectares, included extensive housing for the higher SS ranks and their families, the “Klinkerwerk” satellite camp built by the Lehnitz Lock in 1938 and extensive logistical and military areas for the SS. Between 1936 and 1945, the National So- cialists held more than 200,000 people from around 40 nations in the Sachsenhausen con- centration camp. At first, the SS imprisoned political opponents of the Nazi regime here: communists, social democrats, liberal and con­ servative politicians, followed increasingly by socially and racially persecuted people, such as Jews, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sinti Oranienburg / Sachsenhausen. Only a few kilo­ metres north of Berlin lies the extensive complex of the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. Used as a concentration camp from 1936 to 1945, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, maintained the largest of the ten special camps in the Soviet Occupation Zone here from 1945 to 1950. In 1961, the Sachsenhausen National Memorial was opened here, but, for as long as the GDR was in existence, it commemorated only the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp. After 1990, chapters of the camp’s story that had hitherto been kept secret and previously taboo groups of victims were included in the public exhibi- tion. Since 1993, the memorial has belonged to the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation and has been extensively redesigned. Today, it is a memorial site for both the Nazi concentration camp and the Soviet spe- cial camp. The history of Sachsenhausen and its various phases is presented and documented in a decentralised museum concept. A visitor centre opened in the entrance area in 2004 introduces the complex history of the site. In the immediate vicinity of the memorial are three mass graves of the Soviet special camp, designated as cemeteries, where 12,000 people were anonymously buried. Since the autumn of 2006, Szczypiorski House, an Inter­ national Youth Venue and Youth Hostel which is located in the former official residence of