Concentration camp near Berlin. Concentration camp Sachsenhausen - Labor liberates. Museums on the territory of the memorial
We decided to spend part of the last day in Berlin outside of it, namely in the city of Oranienburg, where the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was located, and now a memorial and museum dedicated to this tragic page of history.
The place is definitely very depressing and oppressive. The heavy rain that poured all day intensified the gloomy feelings, but after thinking about how much torment and suffering the prisoners of this death factory endured, we simply had no right to complain.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936. Due to its close location to Berlin and its ideal architectural plan, which was believed to express the ideology of the SS, Sachsenhausen played a special role in the entire concentration camp system.
His influence increased even more when the headquarters of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, the central department of the SS that managed the system of all concentration camps of the Third Reich, was transferred here from Berlin. Here, “personnel” were trained and retrained for newly created and already established camps.
Between 1936 and 1945, more than 250,000 people were imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, more than 100,000 of whom died. Initially, these were political opponents of the Nazi regime, but over time their ranks began to be replenished with more and more members of groups that were inferior, according to National Socialist criteria, in racial or biological aspects. By 1939, a large number of citizens from occupied European states arrived here. Tens of thousands of people died from starvation, disease, cold, medical experimentation, forced labor and abuse. Many were victims of systematic extermination operations carried out by the SS. Thousands of other prisoners died in death marches following the evacuation of the camp in late April 1945.
However, this is not the end of the history of Sachsenhausen as a camp. In May 1945, Soviet intelligence services began construction of ten special camps in the territories occupied by the Soviet Union. In August 1945, Special Camp No. 7 of the NKVD was transferred here, which three years later was renamed Special Camp No. 1. Almost all buildings were used by it, except for the crematorium and buildings where mass executions took place. More than 60,000 people passed through this camp. At least 12,000 of whom died from harsh prison conditions, starvation and exhaustion. It was closed in 1950, but many prisoners were transferred to prisons.
In 1961, the Sachsenhausen National Memorial was opened on the territory of the concentration camp, because this is a page of history that cannot simply be turned over and forgotten. Of course, visiting this museum now, we cannot even for a second imagine existence in this terrible place, but having been here, I would like to hope that this will never happen again, that people will become more humane and kinder, and learn something from this lesson of fate.
Due to heavy rain, it was not possible to see Oranienburg itself at all. We headed straight to Sachsenhausen. I will number the photos below according to this plan.
The obligatory phrase that was on the gates of almost all concentration camps was “Work sets you free.”
4. The main entrance to the territory passes through Tower "A". In the camp, all the towers were named alphabetically. The SS administrative offices were located here. The tower itself was a symbol of the prisoners’ complete submission to the SS power. Its purpose did not change much during the NKVD camp.
5. The entire camp is shaped like a triangle with Tower "A" at the base. There is a stone wall along the perimeter, and in front of it is an electrified barbed wire fence.
If a prisoner walked behind the sign (even by accident), he could be shot without warning.
Often prisoners who were unable to withstand the painful existence in the camp specifically went to the fence. The area between the stone fence and the wire fence was patrolled. Those who tried to escape were rewarded for killing.
7. In front of Tower “A” there was a checkpoint where prisoners went to roll call several times a day. This was also not an easy ordeal, which could sometimes last for hours, in any weather. In the event of an escape, the prisoners could stand here all night until the fugitive was discovered. Newcomers to the camp were forced to stand for hours without touching each other. Those who expected punishment stood until the sentence was carried out. Sometimes on bent legs with outstretched arms.
10. At the end of the path there was a gallows, so the parade ground was also a place of public punishment and torture. A memorial plaque is visible in its place on the left.
19. Around the parade ground there was a track for testing shoes, which was a path made of different materials (glass, gravel, cobblestones, etc.). Prisoners walked on it for hours, often with extra weight (sandbags) or in smaller shoes.
There were 9 watchtowers along the perimeter, manned by three guards.
25. Literally two years after the concentration camp was built, the barracks within the “triangle” were already overcrowded. The supply of prisoners did not stop, so in the summer of 1938, by order of the SS, 18 more barracks were built, despite the fact that this contradicted the original architectural plan.
This area was called the "small camp" and was where most of the Jews were settled until they were transported to Auschwitz in 1943.
In place of the destroyed barracks there are only stones.
23. But several were restored, and they housed exhibitions telling about the life of camp prisoners in general and Jews in particular.
Sometimes the number of prisoners living in one barrack reached up to four hundred. At the same time, they were given only 30 minutes to get up, wash, get a portion of food and go to roll call. They washed in this room. From eight to ten people stood around such a bowl from which water flowed like a fountain. Everyone was in a hurry, it was very crowded.
A utility room where mops, brushes and other cleaning items were stored. Sometimes it turned into a torture room, just like the bathroom, for that matter. The prisoners were locked here, ordered to stand still and not lean on the walls. Sometimes so many people were locked here that they simply suffocated.
They were allowed to go to the toilet twice a day, in the morning and in the evening after roll call.
Living quarters for 250 prisoners.
Dining room.
This barrack has been restored and many elements in it have been preserved from the 30s. For example, paint on the ceiling. The lightest is the oldest. Most likely preserved from the time the barracks were built. The darkest is from when the memorial was first opened.
Restroom.
The dishes were part of the small number of personal belongings prisoners were allowed. Inscriptions - dates and places of conclusions of the owners. Sometimes they exchanged dishes for other items. For example, a Danish prisoner exchanged this bowler hat for cigarettes from a Soviet prisoner.
20. Again within the "triangle". Entrance to the prison territory.
Celenbau Prison was built in 1936. It was used not only as a camp, but also as a Gestapo prison.
It was one of the first structures erected on the territory of the camp. It was built by prisoners according to SS sketches.
Eighty solitary confinement cells housed special prisoners: government and prominent political figures, senior military officials, as well as workers in the labor movement from different countries. Among them was Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili.
The building was T-shaped, but currently only one wing remains.
This architectural form was popular for prisons. All cameras could be observed from one central point. This is the principle applied to the entire Sachsenhausen camp.
In five cells there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the National Socialist era, telling about the functioning of the prison.
Some other cells have memorial plaques to camp prisoners.
The prison was surrounded by a wall, so for the prisoners it was some kind of secret place of murders and brutal violence. When Sachsenhausen became a Special Camp there was still a prison here.
14. The obelisk was erected in 1961. The 18 triangles symbolize the countries from which the concentration camp prisoners came. Political and foreign prisoners were required to wear red triangles on their clothing.
At the foot of the obelisk there is a monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators. Two liberated concentration camp prisoners next to Red Army soldiers.
12, 13. On the right is the former kitchen. On the left is the former prisoners' laundry, now a cinema where a documentary film about the camp is shown.
The kitchen building was built by camp prisoners in 1936. During the special camp it was used for the same purpose. The quality of food was inversely proportional to the number of prisoners. The more people there were, the worse they were fed.
There are drawings on the walls from the time of the camp.
A cold room in which perishable foods were stored.
The original staircase is no longer in use. During reconstruction, the building plan was slightly changed.
16. Ditch for executions. We are already outside the triangle.
15. In the spring of 1942, prisoners were ordered to build a large building that contained a crematorium, morgue, gas chambers and other mass murder devices. Prisoners entered the camp through Tower "A", and left it dead through this place, called Station "Z". Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration at the camp, were sent there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.
Monument to the dead.
"And I know one thing - the Europe of the future cannot exist without honoring the memory of all those, regardless of their nationalities, who at that time were killed with contempt and hatred, tortured to death, forced to starve, gassed, burned and hanged..." ( Andrzej Szczypiorski, prisoner of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1995)
A memorial installation in memory of the fallen Soviet soldiers, who were killed in the back of the head, drowning out the shots with loud music. A special device was made for this. Before death, prisoners underwent a so-called medical examination so that their height could be measured. More than ten thousand people died this way.
Buildings that housed workshops in which prisoners were forced to work.
17. Pathological department.
Here, medical experiments were carried out on prisoners of Sachsenhausen, testing new types of poisons, toxic substances, including gases, drugs against burns, typhus, and other injuries and diseases.
Experiments on the effects of chemicals on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners. So, to kill prisoners, the SS decided to use poisonous gases, which were used to destroy garden pests. But they did not know the lethal dose for people, and in order to determine it, they experimented on people herded into the basement, changing the dose and observing when death would occur.
Sachsenhausen supplied medical educational institutions in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects. It was in Sachsenhausen that some of the first and most sophisticated medical experiments on living people were carried out.
There were morgues in the basements of the pathology department.
18. Hospital barracks. The doctors here were more like observers. Prisoner doctors of non-Jewish origin were allowed to treat patients.
This ended our visit to Sachsenhausen. The rain did not stop and I wanted to catch the next train to Berlin. I'm sure there's a lot we didn't see. The museum of the NKVD special camp was examined very superficially, and the sea of information presented is absolutely impossible to read and view. It's probably best to explore the memorial with a guide, but the audio guide is also quite interesting and informative. If you're in Berlin, it's definitely worth coming here.
Excursions around Berlin will not leave anyone indifferent. It’s worth at least for a minute to imagine how much history, how many tragic and joyful events this city contains, in order to want to touch it all a little closer. Berlin has gone through many stages of development, and now the city rightfully bears the status of the creative capital of Germany, and sometimes even of Europe. Street artists, artists, designers, architects and people of other creative professions have created a special, bohemian atmosphere around themselves, which has now become an integral part of Berlin. We invite you to get acquainted with this and other sides of Berlin.
For anyone coming to Berlin, excursions in Russian will come in handy. A sightseeing tour of Berlin is suitable for travelers who come to Berlin for the first time. If you want to touch the spirit of the city, feel the rhythm of its life, understand and feel who Berliners are and what motivates them, then unusual excursions around Berlin are ideal for you. You'll get a glimpse of modern life in the city, visit some of the city's most creative bars and art spaces, discover Berlin's signature street art, and learn about the phenomenon of guerrilla gardening. Not only that, you can even take part in it! Berlin offers more than just entertainment and a good time. An excursion to a former concentration camp, offered by one of our guides, is a difficult emotional experience. But this is also the history of Berlin.
Tours of Berlin are conducted by journalists, photographers, designers and architects, because who, if not a local resident, can tell you about the city best? All guides offer not only a route, but also a special story, their own interpretation, complemented by interesting stories and facts. Why should you choose walking tours of Berlin over bus tours? Yes, the bus will give you a speedy advantage for sightseeing, but will you be able to get into the spirit of the city? Will you have time to understand and feel it? Will you drink coffee in a colorful eatery and sit on the banks of the Spree, looking at the masterpieces of street art? Travelers always strive for impressions, and what will give them in full if not excursions around Berlin and live communication with the creative residents of the city!
”, in March 1942, became part of Management Group “D” (concentration camps) Main Administrative and Economic Directorate of the SS.
There was an underground resistance committee in the camp, which led an extensive, well-secret camp organization, which Gestapo could not be opened. The leader of the underground is General Zotov Alexander Semenovich (see below the memoirs of prisoners “The Invisible Front”.
On the night of April 20, 26,000 prisoners left Sachsenhausen - this is how the march began. Before leaving the camp, we rescued the sick brothers from the infirmary. We got a cart on which they were transported. In total there were 230 of us from six countries. Among the sick was Brother Arthur Winkler, who did much to expand the work of the Kingdom in the Netherlands. We, Witnesses, walked behind everyone and constantly encouraged each other not to stop.
Although about half of the prisoners who participated in the death march either died or were killed along the way, all Witnesses survived.
According to the memoirs of Boyko N.E. , prisoner of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp:
No matter how hard I tried to stay on my feet, I still collapsed. The bag fell nearby, burst, and the cement crumbled. The guard, seeing such a picture, jumped up to me with a machine gun with a bayonet at the end. He would have pierced me through if I had not, gathering my last strength, dodged. He finally reached me with a bayonet and pierced my leg above the knee. In the heat of the moment I ran. The German raised his machine gun. The prisoners screamed out loud, and he did not pull the trigger. And only then did I feel blood running down my leg...
Concentration camp map
Tower "A"
Tower “A” was a distribution panel for controlling the current, which was supplied to the mesh and barbed wire that surrounded the camp in the form of a large triangle. It also housed the camp commandant's office. In addition, this tower served as a camp checkpoint. There was a cynical inscription on the gate: “ Arbeit macht frei"("Work sets you free"). In total, the camp had nineteen towers, which, with their sectors, shot through the entire camp.
Appelplatz
Place of roll calls, which were held 3 times a day. In the event of an escape, the prisoners had to stand on it until the escapee was captured. The parade ground was also a place for public executions - there was a gallows on it.
Shoe testing track
Nine different surfaces of the track around the parade ground, according to the Nazis, were needed to test the shoes. The selected prisoners had to cover forty-kilometer distances at different paces every day. In 1944, the Gestapo made this test more difficult, forcing prisoners to cover the distance in smaller shoes and with bags weighing ten, and often twenty-twenty-five kilograms. Prisoners were sentenced to undergo a similar shoe quality check for periods ranging from one month to a year. For especially serious crimes, indefinite punishment was imposed. Such crimes included repeated attempts to escape, escape, intrusion into another barracks, sabotage, dissemination of messages from foreign transmitters, incitement to sabotage, pedophilia (Article 176), seduction or coercion of heterosexual men of the main camp into homosexual contacts, homosexual prostitution committed by mutual consent homosexual acts of heterosexual men. The same indefinite punishment awaited homosexuals arriving in Sachsenhausen (Articles 175 and 175a).
“Shoe test” - officer (chrome) boots were subjected to ordinary “breaking in” for future potential owners. The prisoners endured at most -1 month, because their legs were swollen and were worn down until they bled. On the day it was supposed to carry (?) pairs of boots.
Station "Z"
Station “Z” is a building outside the camp where the massacres took place. It contained a device for firing a shot to the back of the head, a crematorium with four ovens and an attached 1943 gas chamber. Sometimes vehicles with people, bypassing registration at the camp, were sent there directly. In this regard, it is not possible to establish the exact number of victims killed here.
Ditch for executions
The so-called “shooting range”, with a shooting range, morgue and mechanized gallows. The latter was a mechanism with a box into which the prisoner's legs were inserted, and a loop for his head. It turned out that the victim was not hanged, but stretched, after which they practiced shooting.
Hospital barracks
Medical experiments were carried out on the territory of Sachsenhausen. The camp supplied medical schools in Germany with anatomical demonstration objects.
Prison building
Camp (and Gestapo) prison Zelenbau ( German Zellenbau) was built in 1936 and had a T-shape. Eighty solitary confinement cells housed special prisoners. Among them is the first commander Regional Army general Stefan Groth-Rowiecki, shot in Sachsenhausen after the start Warsaw Uprising. Some leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement were also here, such as Stepan Bandera , Taras Bulba-Borovets, some of whom were released by the Germans at the end of 1944. The prisoner was also a pastor. Niemöller. It also contained other clergymen (about 600 people in total), statesmen and prominent political figures, senior military officials, as well as leaders of the labor movement from Poland , France , Netherlands , Hungary , USSR , Czechoslovakia , Luxembourg And Germany. Currently, only one wing of the prison has survived, in five cells there is a permanent exhibition of documents from the times of National Socialism, telling about the functioning of the prison. In some other cells (General Grot-Rowecki) there are memorial plaques to the camp prisoners.
Groups of prisoners
According to available information, representatives of sexual minorities, among others, were kept in the camp. Between the beginning of the concentration camp and 1943, 600 carriers died in the camp pink winkel. Since 1943, homosexuals worked mainly in the camp hospital as doctors or nurses. After the war, most of the surviving gay prisoners were unable to receive compensation from the German government.
NKVD special camp
Former prisoners of war were held here - Soviet citizens who were waiting to be returned to the Soviet Union, former members of the Nazi Party, Social Democrats dissatisfied with the communist system, as well as former German Wehrmacht officers and foreigners. The camp was renamed “Special Camp No. 1”. “Special Camp No. 1” is the largest of the three special internment camps in the Soviet zone of occupation - was closed in
The picture shows Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler during a visit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Concentration camp Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen was created in the summer of 1936 in the Oranienburg region, 30 km north of Berlin, on the same days when the Second Olympic Games were held in Berlin under the slogans of Pierre Coubertin “O Sport, you are Progress,” “O Sport, you are Peace.”
The first prisoners of Sachsenhausen were German anti-fascists and those whom the National Socialists classified as “inferior” citizens based on racial or biological characteristics.
From 1936 to 1945 More than 250 thousand prisoners from 27 countries passed through Sachsenhausen. It was not possible to establish their exact number, as well as all their names - before fleeing from the camp, when the Soviet offensive against Berlin began, the SS men destroyed many documents.
Since 1938, the central leadership of the German concentration camps, who had moved from Berlin, was located in Sachsenhaus.
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, trains with citizens from the occupied countries of Western Europe, and later from Poland and the USSR, began to arrive at the camp.
In September - November 1941, transports with Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive in Sachsenhausen one after another. Half-dead people sat and stood in the freight car, huddled closely together. Among them were those who died on the way. Those who arrived were sent to the “production” yard, where they were shot while powerful radios howled. Often prisoners were forced to sing Russian folk songs in chorus.
At the same time, in the fall of 1941, an unprecedented action of mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was carried out in Sachsenhausen - 18,000 soldiers and officers brought from the eastern front were shot at once. All of them were shot in the back of the head. This murder of prisoners of war, which has no analogues in military history, was called a “Russian action” by the SS. The heroes of this action, the SS men, were rewarded with a vacation in Sorrento.
The camp is shaped like a triangle. At the main entrance there is a cynical inscription "Arbeit Mach Frei". Right at the entrance there is a parade ground, where roll calls of all prisoners were held 3 times a day.
In barracks 38 and 39 there were Jewish prisoners. In fact it was a "small camp" inside Sachsenhausen. There the SS detained all the Jews in the camp from November 1938 to October 1942.
Like other Nazi death camps, Sachsenhausen had a sophisticated system of torture. The slightest offense resulted in severe beatings with rubber whips, sticks with steel wire, and hanging from a pole with chains or ropes by outstretched arms.
In Sachsenhausen there were stationary and mobile crematoria, gas chambers, gallows, torture chambers with instruments of death.
New types of poisons, toxic substances, including gases, drugs against burns, typhus, and other injuries and diseases were constantly tested on prisoners of Sachsenhausen. Experiments on the effects of chemicals on people were carried out only on Soviet prisoners.
For example, the effects of poisonous gases used to destroy garden pests were tested on prisoners. To determine the dose lethal to humans, the SS experimented on people herded into the basement, changing the dose and observing when death occurred.
Another type of bullying is testing the strength of shoes, both those intended to equip soldiers and civilian ones. The “trampling” prisoners had to walk all day long along a special road with sharp stones and gravel, carrying a pound-sized backpack filled with sand on their shoulders. Few people could stand it.
The shoe path has been preserved - now there is a memorial wall there.
From the beginning of 1942, Germany began to experience an acute shortage of labor, and Sachsenhausen was transferred to the jurisdiction of Group D of the SS Main Economic Directorate in order to make the most of the labor of prisoners, including Jews. At the same time, however, it was ordered not to forget about the main goal - the destruction of as many opponents of the Nazi regime as possible. The combination of these seemingly incompatible demands was achieved by forcing prisoners to work from morning to night in inhumane conditions and to live from hand to mouth while awaiting death.
Hard labor, cold, hunger, and disease crushed people - thousands died. But more and more transports arrived at the camp, where most of them were Russians and Ukrainians. They were imprisoned in a concentration camp for escapes, sabotage, and anti-Hitler propaganda. Newly arrived prisoners were used in the most difficult jobs.
Specially selected prisoners, who were artists, printing and banking workers before the war, produced counterfeit money, primarily British pounds and American dollars. This secret production was called "Operation Bernhard".
The people who made an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hitler were also placed in the camp; after an investigation, they were sent to Sachsenhausen.
Former prisoner of the camp, pilot Mikhail Devyataev, in his book “Escape from Hell,” spoke about the abuses of prisoners of war, among whom they were constantly looking for Jews.
In July 1944, Devyatayev’s plane was shot down over occupied territory and the pilot was captured. After an unsuccessful escape, he was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, where he learned all the horrors of camp life. Later, together with a group of other prisoners, he was transferred to a branch of the camp on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea.
Here, in the northern part of the island, on the site of the former fishing village of Peenemünde, there was a top-secret test station run by the famous rocket specialist Baron Wernher von Braun. There were also airfields, factories and numerous service complexes. There was a railway ferry crossing from the mainland across the strait to the island. It was from Usedom that the shelling of England with V-1 aircraft began on June 16, 1944.
There was no question of escaping from Usedom either by land or by sea. But there were planes: And then Devyatayev and his comrades decided to capture one of the Heinkel heavy bombers based on the island and fly it to their own.
Devyatayev and nine other Soviet prisoners developed an escape plan. A significant obstacle was that Mikhail had never flown on a Heinkel, and the aircraft control system was unfamiliar to him. While clearing snow from the wings of the plane, Mikhail studied the location of the instruments and carefully followed the actions of the pilot checking the instruments, who did not pay any attention to him. The security routine was analyzed and a plan was drawn up to hijack the plane. It was decided to fly over the sea, since there were no anti-aircraft guns there.
Finally, on February 8, 1945, a German Heinkel bomber with ten prisoners on board took off from the Peenemünde airfield under the noses of the guards. Over the sea they met a bomber returning from a mission. To the surprise of the fugitives, who had already prepared for death, the Germans did not open fire on them and flew past. Later, when an enraged Goering arrived at Usedom to investigate, it turned out that the German pilots had no shells left, since they had all been used on the mission; in addition, they only had enough fuel to reach the airfield.
Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev spoke in detail about his stay in Sachsenhausen and Peenemünde, as well as about his unprecedented escape from the camp in the aforementioned book “Escape from Hell,” which was republished more than once, including abroad.
But well-deserved fame came to the Hero only after the death of Stalin. But then, in 1945, everything was different. “Immediately after the escape,” the pilot writes, “they didn’t particularly admire me or my friends on the crew. Quite the contrary. We were subjected to a tough test. Long and humiliating.”
Stalin’s order to consider those captured as traitors lived in the minds of the investigators; For many years, Mikhail Petrovich was not given the opportunity to work in his specialty. He did odd jobs and was a laborer.
“And so,” he writes, “I stuck around until 1957. Good people and the press helped me restore my good name. But just recently I found out: Academician Sergei Pavlovich Korolev also helped me. I met him back in 1945. Colonel Korolev asked questions me about the Wehrmacht missile center, about the plane on which he escaped."
S.P. Korolev contributed to conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on Devyatayev. The good name of the pilot’s friends and escape comrades was also restored. Many years later, the pilot visited Peenemünde. At the place where the Heinkel took off there is now a granite obelisk with the names of all ten participants in the escape: M.P. Devyataev, I.P. Krivonogov, M.A. Yemets, F.P. Adamov, V.K. Sokolov, D. Serdyukov, I. Olenik, V. Emchenko, N. Urbanovich, P. Kutergin.
During the war, at least ten pilots escaped from captivity on a fascist plane: N. Loshakov, Abashidze, Martimyan, A. Karapetyan, A. Kozyavin, P. Marchenko, V. Moskalets, M. Devyataev, N. Petrov, P. Chkauseli. All of them, having landed on Soviet territory, were immediately arrested; no one escaped a prison sentence. And only one of them - Mikhail Devyatayev - after rehabilitation, in 1957, was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Without in any way detracting from the hero’s merits, I note that Devyatayev is seventh in this list in terms of escape time. And the first who dared to take such a daring step was 19-year-old Nikolai Loshakov, junior lieutenant of the 14th Guards Fighter Regiment, who fought in the hot year of 1943 near Leningrad.
But let's return to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1945, shortly before the arrival of Soviet troops, the SS men hastily evacuated the camp. Over 30 thousand prisoners were driven without sleep or rest to the Baltic Sea, where barges were waiting for them - everyone was to be sent to the bottom of the sea. Those who could not walk were killed on the spot. This bloody action is known as the "death march". It claimed the lives of several thousand more prisoners.
Approximately 3 thousand sick people remained in the camp, as well as doctors and orderlies, who were liberated by Soviet and Polish troops on April 22–23, 1945.
In 1947, a trial of German war criminals took place in Berlin, during which the atrocities of the SS men in Sachsenhausen were proven. The SS men carefully concealed the truth about crimes and terror in the camp - disclosure was punishable by death. But, despite this and the destruction of documents, many names and events were still restored. The camp "Führers" were sentenced to long prison terms.
After the liberation of the concentration camp, it was used by the NKVD from 1945 to 1950. as Special Camp No. 7, and since 1948 Sachsenhausen becomes Special Camp No. 1 - the largest NKVD camp in the zone of Soviet occupation of Germany. Until the closure of the camp in March 1950, a total of about 60 thousand people were held here, of whom at least 12 thousand died from hunger and disease.
April 22, 1961 The Sachsenhausen Museum was opened. At first, the camp buildings were not included in the exhibition. Instead, special memorial structures were erected, which were supposed to symbolize the “victory of anti-fascism over fascism.” The museum used only individual objects related to the history of the camp.
A monument to Soviet soldiers-liberators was erected.
Only in 1993, after the reunification of Germany, the museum in Sachsenhausen included in the exhibition objects that were recognized as “guarantors of memory.” After reconstruction, Sachsenhausen became a European place of mourning.
In 1992, after an arson organized by neo-Nazis, barracks 38 and 39, where Jews were housed until the end of the war, were partially destroyed. The newly built museum of Barracks 38 now presents the Jewish history of Sachsenhausen. Barrack 39 features interviews with Jewish prisoners about their lives in Sachsenhausen.
In the one-volume encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945", released for the 40th anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Germany, along with such articles as "Ghetto", "Babi Yar", "Fascist extermination camps", a separate article "Sachsenhausen" is presented ". It describes the memorial complex opened in 1961 on the site of the camp.
In December 2002, a unique exhibition “Soviet prisoners of war in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. 1941-1945” opened at the Moscow Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill. - the first in the country entirely dedicated to Soviet people who found themselves in a fascist concentration camp. It was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the German Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, which also includes the Sachsenhausen Museum.
The exhibition began its journey to Moscow in Germany on the 60th anniversary of the “Russian action”.
The exhibition stands presented numerous documents, photographs, drawings, and other materials telling about the crimes of the Nazis, the courage and heroism of the prisoners of Sachsenhausen, and their destinies. Among them is a poem written by one of the camp prisoners:
I will return to you, Russia,
To hear the noise of your forests
And see the blue rivers,
To follow the path of my fathers.
The poem became famous after the war, but the name of the prisoner who wrote it was learned only in 1998. This story is given by Lazar Medovar in the article “Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp,” dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Victory over Germany.
“In 1958, when clearing the territory of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, on the site of which it was decided to build a memorial, worker Wilhelm Hermann found a bundle in one of the destroyed buildings. It contained a notebook with notes and poems in Russian. Author unknown. Later they found out that the Norwegian prisoner Martin Guslo, a senior electrician in the Sondercamp team, had hidden the package at the request of Mikhail Tilevich.
Former prisoner M. Tilevich says: “One day Victor Mazhula came up to me: “There is a notebook with poems, do you want to read?” He did not name who gave the notebook - this was not accepted in the camp, but the notebook was given to him to read and destroy. The poems contained everything that the prisoners lived in the camp: dreams of freedom, hatred of fascism, love for the Motherland, for their loved ones. One of the poems began with the later famous quatrain that I just cited.
The notebook had to be saved, and I turned to my Norwegian friend for help. He wrapped it in rubberized cloth and, together with Victor Mazhula, buried it under the foundation of the kitchen motor. I stood nearby to warn of danger."
Since then, the name of the author of the manuscripts has remained unknown. It was assumed that he died on February 2, 1945, on the day the SS executed dozens of Soviet officers-prisoners of the camp. The poem continued to live. Almost all central newspapers wrote about him. Former prisoner of Sachsenhausen Leonid Mikhailovich Pyatykh (in the post-war years he headed higher musical educational institutions in Sverdlovsk and Vladivostok) composed a suite for piano “He has returned to you, Russia.” But the search for the author, despite the participation of Komsomolskaya Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda correspondents, was unsuccessful. And only in 1998 his name became known - Georgy Fedorovich Stolyarov.
In 1937, as a sixteen-year-old boy, he was arrested on false charges of setting fire to a school in the village near Zhlobin, where he lived. A year and a half later, he was completely acquitted and released. However, a year and a half of being behind barbed wire made him an enemy of Soviet power. And when the Germans came to Belarus in 1941, he began to collaborate with them, working in a local newspaper. Disillusionment with the fascist “new order” came very quickly, and after a series of sabotages he ended up in Sachsenhausen.
Friendships in the Sondercamp work team with Mikhail Fischer, Sergei Chervicilov and Mikhail Zaits forced him to reconsider and reevaluate a lot. He hated fascism and in his poems predicted its inevitable death. Stolyarov survived both the camp and the death march. But in the NKVD filtration camp he was sentenced to 10 years for past collaboration with the occupiers. His repentance, patriotic poems, and behavior in a German concentration camp were not taken into account by the investigators. He did not have to serve his time - he died in the camp from bronchial asthma, remaining unknown.
Ella Maksimova spoke about how the name of the author of the famous poem was established in the Izvestia newspaper on March 17, 1998 in the article “Epiphany in Hell.” At the exhibition, a photocopy of a sheet of paper with a poem written by Sergei Stolyarov was shown.
Pages of recordings of “Russians in the camp” by the German anti-fascist artist Emil Buge, who in 1938 fought in Spain against Franco, and then after returning to Germany in 1939, were arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, have been preserved.
As he knew German and Spanish, he was sent to work in the camp office. He had to stay in the camp for five and a half years - from December 39th to April 45th. Buge wrote notes about the events in the camp in beaded handwriting and pasted them into glasses cases, hiding the notes from the Germans. In 1944, he managed to transport them to freedom. Among the records were pages telling about the murders of Soviet prisoners of war.
Drawings by another artist, Odd Nansen, brother of the famous polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, have been preserved. The drawings illustrate the hard labor of camp prisoners.
The German exhibition in Moscow, which appeared many years after the fall of fascism, is another evidence that Germany does not want to forget the past, even the most shameful and difficult. They believe that this is a guarantee that the atrocities of the Nazis will not be repeated. But isn't the NKVD camp in Sachsenhausen similar to the Nazi camps? After all, every fifth person died there! – Of the 60,000 prisoners who passed through this camp, 12,000 died!
Do Russia and Ukraine want to remember the past? What was it really like? A past not distorted by anti-Semitism, class and other prejudices, populism and omissions? There are big doubts about this. An example of this is the “games” around the memorial in Rostov-on-Don and Babi Yar in Kyiv.
Written based on articles by Lazar Medovar: “Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp” and others. Photographs borrowed from G.D. Borshchevskaya and others.
To be continued.
