"IF THIS IS A MAN ..."

"SACHSENHAUSEN - Berlin DE"

"Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud, Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no".

(Primo Levi's quote)

berlin germany history neverforget Photography primo levi reportage Sachsenhausen

1933 - 1934

On 21 March 1933, the “Day of Potsdam”, on which Germany’s conservative elites bestowed their seal of approval on Hitler, the first state concentration camp in Prussia was set up by the local SA regiment, Standard 208, in a disused brewery towards the centre of the town of Oranienburg. The early concentration camps in Germany were mainly local “revenge camps”, in which the National Socialists incarcerated their political and intellectual opponents from the street fighting and verbal mudslinging in the Weimar Republic, as a deterrent. It was not unusual for the victims and perpetrators to come from the same milieu; they might even be neighbours, or members of the same family. When Willi Ruf, a Communist, was put in Oranienburg Concentration Camp, for example, he found his father on the other side, serving as an SA guard.

Oranienburg concentration camp was recognised, financially supported and administratively overseen by various state bodies. Most of the inmates in this camp were interned on the orders of mayors and district administrators, as representatives of local government. The camp commandant, SA Sturmbannführer Werner Schäfer, also used Oranienburg concentration camp for propaganda purposes. Many reports and articles appeared in the German press about this “model” camp. Items about Oranienburg concentration camp were shown in the weekly newsreel report, the ‘Wochenschau’, in some 5,000 cinemas around Germany.

Between March 1933 and the closure of the camp in July 1934, a total of around three thousand people were interned in Oranienburg concentration camp. Most of these were political opponents from Berlin, Oranienburg and the surrounding area. Among the internees there were also members of the Reichstag, the German parliament, and of the Prussian regional parliament, senior employees of Berlin Radio and many intellectuals. They were almost exclusively Communists to begin with, but were joined by a small number of Social Democrats as well from June-July 1933 on. A few internees were members of centrist and right-wing parties such as the German Centre Party and the German National People’s Party, and some were even members of the “Stahlhelm”, the Nazis’ operational cell organisation. These latter were treated as “prisoners of honour” and given privileged conditions of internment.

During the “Night of the Long Knives”, or “Röhm Purge”, and the ousting from power of the SA in July 1934, the camp was taken over and closed by around 150 SS men led by the Inspector of Concentration Camps, SS Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke. On 13 July the prisoners were transferred to Lichtenberg concentration camp. From then on, Oranienburg concentration camp was treated as a “reserve camp for Berlin for any need that may arise”.

1936- 1945

Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the supper of 1936 as a model and training camp.

Tens of thousands of the more than 200.000 prisoners interned here died as a result of hunger, disease, forced labour and mistreatment of were victims of systematic extermination operations by the SS.

1945 - 1950

In August 1945, a good three months after the end of the was and the liberation of Europe from National Socialist domination, the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, moved its Special Camp No.7 to the center of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Of the 60.000 prisoners interned there, 12.000 died for se same reasons of the past.