KZ Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

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As promised, Andreas took us to Sachsenhausen a suburb of Oranienberg about one hour by train from Brandenburg where during WW2 the Konzentrationlager Sachsenhausen concentration camp was located. The girls were studying WW2 at school and Kee was excited to go the concentration camp. The camp was started in 1938 and over 200 000 people were imprisoned here and tens of thousands were killed mostly through hunger, disease and torture. Camp inmates were detained in barracks. Unheated in the winter, stifling in the summer, inmates were squeezed three together into a single 70-cm bed and permitted several minutes per day for washing (two cold fountains per 400 prisoners) and using the toilets. Regulations for camp life were detailed and the tiniest violations brutally punished: SS guards were known to suffocate prisoners to death by inserting their heads into the foot washbasins or toilets. Another favorite punishment was locking large groups of prisoners into the broom closets in the summer, usually resulting in several deaths from heat exhaustion.

As if merely being in a concentration camp weren't enough, for difficult cases the camp included special prison barracks with isolation cells and interrogation facilities. Prison regulations extensively detailed permissible methods of torture; quite a few of the exhibit texts seem to be more annoyed by the fact that the guards occasionally exceeded the rules than by the fact that they were using torture in the first place. Official favorites included suspension from poles (resulting in bone dislocation and a slow, painful death), beating with iron truncheons and whipping (not allowed on bare buttocks until the regulations were amended in 1942).

The other special barracks were the infirmary for the dead and dying. Medical experiments, including dissection of live victims, were carried out in the operating room. Downstairs were facilities for storing corpses.
In 1942, the additional section known only as Station Z was constructed. Designed for murdering people clinically and quickly, Station Z consisted of a gas chamber, a firing range and a crematorium. While small in comparison with the death factories of places like Auschwitz, on several occasions up to 5000 people in several days were executed here.
all this was very sad for us but we did not feel as emotional as we did in Verdun for the soldiers of WW1.

The education part of this blog is courtesy of wikitravel.

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Photos

Labour will set you free
but it never set the Jews free