Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial
Quick Overview
Description
Time
Choose your start time.
Duration
5 or 6 hours
Meeting Point
The lobby of your hotel
Prices
5 hours
€499
6 hours
€559
Highlights
- Your very own expert, licensed guide for the day will come to your hotel to pick you up and get the tour underway, travelling with you via public transport to Oranienburg – location of the former Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, now a memorial centre and museum.
- Learn about the history of the camp, from its establishment by the Nazis, to its use by the Soviets post-WWII.
- See areas of the camp such as the camp kitchen, the execution trench and the crematoria.
- Look around the Jewish barracks and learn about everyday life and survival for prisoners under the brutal conditions enforced by the SS.
- See the infirmary, where prisoners were subjected to horrific medical experiments.
- Learn of the fate of various notable prisoners and hear stories of survival and valour amid the horror.
- Understand what became of the camp and its inmates as the Red Army advanced and how it came to be Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 after Soviet liberation.
- Travel back to Berlin in the company of your guide, who will drop you off at your hotel.
Your personal guide will meet you at your place of accommodation and travel with you via regional train or S-Bahn to the town of Oranienburg, just outside of which the concentration camp was located. You will be able to learn about the attitude of the local population towards the camp and its inmates, and hear of acts of both collaboration and resistance as you approach the memorial site on foot through the town.
After a brief break upon arrival at the site, your guide will give you insights into the history of the camp and the different stages of its evolution. Initially intended to hold political prisoners, it later expanded to include individuals targeted due to their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability, effectively becoming a training ground for the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. The Nazis ultimately imprisoned more than 200,000 people here, tens of thousands of whom died.
As they lead you through this extensive site, our qualified guides will be able to sensitively relay the realities of life and death in the camp: from rationing and the brutal roll call, to the different forms of hard labour that inmates had to endure. Seeing the guard towers, the infirmary and pathology laboratory, the Jewish barracks, the punishment cells, the camp kitchen, the execution facilities, and the gas chamber and crematoria, you will gain an understanding of how detainees suffered on a daily basis – and how all too many died from starvation and succumbed to disease, or fell victim to systematic execution or Nazi medical crimes.
After the liberation of Sachsenhausen in 1945, the camp was repurposed by the Soviets as a “Soviet Special Camp”, where enemies of the new Soviet state were incarcerated up until 1950. This development entails a discussion of how the concentration camp was memorialised by the East Germans during the Cold War years and commemoration of the site since German reunification in 1990.
At the end of the tour, on the journey back to the centre of Berlin, your guide will be happy to give you tips on how best you might spend the rest of your time in Berlin.
Example Itinerary
The following list of sites is intended to give you an idea of what you can expect to see on this tour. Please note that our exact route through the camp may vary on the day depending on circumstances and your hotel pick-up point.
- Oranienburg – learn how the town’s inhabitants collaborated with, profited from or opposed the camp.
- The Concentration Camp Inspectorate – the administrative authority for the entire concentration camp system of the Third Reich
- Communications bunker
- SS training facility and guards’ quarters
- Former SS villas – built by concentration camp inmates and inhabited by high-ranking Nazi officials
- Former Commandant’s House – now an exhibition space
- Tower A – machine gun nest located at the entrance gate
- Electric fence
- The old Jewish barracks
- The prison cells – where camp inmates faced punishment and special prisoners of the Gestapo were incarcerated
- The gallows – located on the roll call square
- The East German memorial of 1961
- The execution trench
- Station Z – mass murder, execution trench, “neck shot facility”
- Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 – how the camp continued to be used under the Soviets
- The pathology centre – where SS doctors performed so-called autopsies
- The infirmary
- The Death March memorial
Insider Reviews
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