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Schizophrenia at Sachsenhausen
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936. It was the first new camp to be opened by Heinrich Himmler when he was appointed Chief of the German Police in addition to his position as Reichsführer-SS. Located in the Berlin suburb of Oranienburg the camp was designed by the SS’s own architects, and the central office of the Nazi concentration camp system was located there. In consequence, Sachsenhausen — with its high brick walls, concrete ‘roll call’ area, offices and lines of huts — had a more planned and permanent look than many other concentration camps of the 1930s, which were largely the outcome of improvisation following the Nazi seizure of power carried out in the wake of the Reichstag fire of 1933.
The camp has been preserved as the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum and is administered by the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation. It is open to visitors and on the day I visited the camp in September 2002 there were several parties of school children being shown around the site as part of their education in citizenship. But what was the content of the lessons they were being taught? The exhibitions of photographs, documents and other items, together with the plaques and memorials erected on the site, suggest that the message was blurred. The horrors of the camp — the execution pit, torture chambers and mass graves — were obvious enough, but because of the history of the camp the political message was schizophrenic. Let me explain.
In August 1945 the camp was taken over by Soviet forces. Nazi war criminals awaiting trial were held there, but the camp was also used to imprison enemies of the communist regime then being consolidated in, what was then called, the Soviet Zone of Germany, and which became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945, and 60,000 between 1945 and 1950. In 1950 the Soviets closed the camp as a centre for war criminals and political prisoners, and for the next ten years the buildings were used as barracks by Soviet forces and the GDR’s People’s Police. In 1961, the camp was designated the Sachsenhausen National Memorial by the Government of the GDR, which built various memorials and set up exhibitions outlining the history of the camp from foundation until its liberation by the Red Army in 1945. However no mention was made of the use of the camp by Soviet special security units in the period 1945-50. After the reunification of Germany in 1990 the camp was administered by the Brandenburg Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, and three years later control was transferred to the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation. The Foundation has added exhibitions on the period 1945-50, revealing certain facts previously concealed from the public. Thus the GDR and post-GDR exhibitions now coexist on the same site, with the GDR exhibitions covering the Nazi period and the post-GDR bracketing the Nazi and Communist years as a period of unbroken dictatorship.
The Brandenburg Memorial Foundation is carrying out a review of the Sachsenhausen site and has commissioned several research projects on the history of the camp. The outcome of this work is intended to provide an established interpretation that will be presented to the public. Until then the former GDR and post-GDR interpretations will continue side by side. It has been said that history is written by the victors and, without sounding too cynical, not much of the GDR’s interpretation of events is likely to prevail. Yet, in my opinion, some aspects of the GDR interpretation do deserve to survive any revisionist versions. Over 100,000 Germans were killed by the Nazis between 1933-39. Most of these were left-wing opponents of the Nazi regime, and many of them were communists. Surely they have earned their place in history?
Relatively few Jews were killed at Sachsenhausen. It was a ‘protective custody’ and not a death camp, although some Jews were incarcerated there after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 and held at the camp until their dispatch to the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942. The Holocaust was a terrible event and is, rightly, the subject of much historical research, but those who suffered and died at Sachsenhausen at the hands of the Nazis do not deserve to be marginalised and it is to be hoped that the German historians working on the Brandenburg project do them justice.
Shortly after German reunification there was a campaign by private property developers to be allowed to bulldoze Sachsenhausen to the ground and build a housing estate and supermarket on the site. Fortunately this was rejected and whatever the outcome of the Foundation’s review the survival of Sachsenhausen concentration as a memorial seems assured. In the meantime research by individuals is encouraged: there is a library and archives office on the camp open to anyone wishing to research the history of Sachsenhausen and its place in Hitler’s Germany.
