Oranienburg

Oranienburg  is in Brandenburg, about one hour north of Berlin, Germany.

Understand
During World War II, Oranienburg was home to the Oranienburg concentration camp (1933-1934) and Sachsenhausen concentration camp (1936-1945). Sachsenhausen ("Houses of the Saxons") is a sleepy suburb of Oranienburg.

Get in
Almost all visitors day-trip from Berlin.

By S-Bahn
is the terminus of the S-Bahn line S1, lying at the edge of Berlin tariff zone C.

By train
Regional trains RE5 and RB12 pass Oranienburg station on their way along the Nordbahn. The hourly RB12 is the only train that also stops at the nearby station.

By bicycle
The Berlin-Copenhagen Cycle Route passes through Oranienburg. From Berlin to Oranienburg, it is an approximately 50-km well-marked ride.

By bus
The bus network is part of the VBB transport association. The buses are operated by OVG. Tickets that include Berlin zone C (ABC or BC) should be valid on the buses.

Directions
Both train stations are about 2 km from the entrance to the camp, which makes walking a good option. From Oranienburg station, take the left exit, turn right and follow the scattered brown "Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen (memorial site)" signs to the camp. Alternatively, from Sachsenhausen (Nordb.) take a right from the station platform and turn right again onto the footpath, following backward alongside the tracks. After about a kilometer you will reach a road called Straße der Nationen (the crossing has a death march memorial), turn left here and walk for a few hundred meters to the camp.

There are also hourly buses between Oranienburg station and the camp. Take bus 804 (direction Malz) or bus 821 (direction Tiergarten) and exit at the bus stop Gedenkstätte.

History
The construction of KZ-Sachsenhausen started in 1936, and it was put in use in 1938. It was built with the barracks arranged in a half-circle around the central tower, bit several expansions had to be hastily built to accommodate the swelling population. Many inmates were forced to do slave labor at the nearby Klinkerwerk brickworks, and there were also profitable side lines of money counterfeiting and ammunition manufacturing. It was primarily a detention and work camp. While, the SS policy was to perform mass executions out of view in the East, a group of 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in Sachsenhausen in 1941. This was followed by the construction of a small gas chamber and crematorium to facilitate killing small groups. Overall, over 200,000 people were imprisoned in KZ-Sachsenhausen and tens of thousands were killed there, mostly through hunger, disease and torture.

The inmates of KZ-Sachsenhausen were a varied group. While Jews were interned, mostly before 1942, the bulk of the population was political prisoners of various kinds, especially actual or suspected Communists and Social Democrats. Other groups included common criminals, "asocials" (artists, playwrights, homeless, etc.), Jehovah's Witnesses, foreign nationals, homosexuals and Roma (Gypsies). In accordance with standard KZ practice, all inmates &mdash; including children &mdash; were tattooed with their ID numbers.

As the Red Army approached in 1945, the prisoners were marched off towards the North Sea in a death march that claimed over 6,000 lives. After the camp's capture (and inclusion in the GDR), the Soviets documented the facilities and conducted a large trial in Berlin of the responsible Nazis. They then turned the KZ into a prison camp of their own, "Special Camp No. 7", imprisoning former Nazi functionaries, and political prisoners. Until the camp was closed in 1950, some 60,000 people were imprisoned there, of whom about 12,000 died.

In 1951 the GDR police blew up the building with the gas chamber and crematorium. The area was then neglected. In the 1960s the camp was refitted by the Communists and opened as a museum commemorating Anti-Fascistic Struggle, entirely neglecting all non-Communist victims. Israel protested so loudly that a Jewish Museum was soon opened on the grounds. After the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet-era camp was rediscovered, documented and added to the exhibits. Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin visited in 1992; several weeks afterward the Jewish barracks were hit in an arson attack by neo-Nazis. A new building devoted to the Soviet camp, as well as a new roof over the remains of the crematorium complex were constructed.

Buildings and memorials




Eat
There are restaurants near Oranienburg station.

Go next

 * Hennigsdorf